This year the Herald’s award-winning newsroom produced a range of first-class journalism, including exploring the NCEA and UE results of every college around NZ, the collapse of the Du Val property empire, revealing claims a former funeral director at Tipene Funerals was swindling grieving clients and charting the 10-year police probe that brought down Wayne Doyle and the Head Hunters.
The following article was one of the best-read Premium articles in 2024. The story originally ran in December.
- Student achievement in 2023 took a tumble, but not every school went backwards.
- The Herald has crunched the University Entrance and NCEA Level 3 data for every high school in the country and clear patterns emerge, as well as several schools that defied the national trend.
- Senior writer Derek Cheng and head of data journalism Chris Knox explain what the numbers mean and our interactive chart shows how well your school and others have done.
The 2023 school leaver data mirrors that of 2022, suggesting an education system in New Zealand that’s far from perfectly egalitarian.
Social privilege still plays a strong role in student achievement, with well-off students generally performing much better than those growing up in poorer, socially disadvantaged households. This correlation seems to apply even more strongly when comparing state schools with integrated and private schools, which charge fees.
The Herald has plotted the 2023 school leaver results for every secondary school, which are shown on an interactive graphic below, allowing students and parents to see how they compare and which type of schools seem to do best.¹
The pattern is clear when looking at NCEA Level 3 and UE achievement rates relative to a school’s Equity Index (EQI) score, which replaced the old decile system. EQI uses a combination of factors to judge student equity, such as parents‘ incomes, qualifications and ages at the birth of their first child, along with any criminal record, time spent on a benefit, social welfare interventions for their children, and the number of times the family has moved home. The higher the EQI, the more socio-economic barriers the school’s students face.
The Ministry of Education’s school leaver data looks at statistical patterns at a national level. The Herald has reported that the proportion of school leavers with NCEA dropped in 2023 to where it was about a decade ago, a trend reversal from the years leading into the Covid pandemic.
The graphic goes deeper, offering a school-by-school breakdown using information obtained under the Official Information Act.
We have calculated an achievement rate for each school based on how many school leavers fell short of NCEA Level 3 and University Entrance respectively, relative to the number of students aged 16 and over at the school. We have then cross-referenced this with each school’s EQI score, as well as the school’s achievement rate in the years since Covid arrived.
The data shows not only a growing gap between rich and poor, but the kinds of schools that are generally faring better. Larger schools or those with lower EQI scores (meaning those students had fewer socio-economic barriers) did relatively well in 2023, compared to 2022. Smaller schools with higher EQI scores tended to drop more steeply than the national average.
A cautionary note about the data: trends can be observed, but nothing definitive can be inferred. It doesn’t mean, for example, that sending a student to a large school with a low EQI score will necessarily lead to high achievement in NCEA.
“Many of our students come in with that social advantage, which helps, but you still have to teach them‚" says Stephen Hargreaves, principal of Auckland’s Macleans College, which had one of the lowest EQI scores (389) for a state school in 2023, and the second-best achievement rate (93.7%) for NCEA Level 3. Only Wellington Girls’ College (96%), which had an even lower EQI score, bettered it.
Masterton’s Mākoura College was one of the schools defying the national trend, with an improving achievement rate despite its small size (239 students), and an EQI score (530) in the highest band.
“We have what I call structured aroha. That means you care about the kids that walk through the gate,” principal Simon Fuller says.
“It requires staff who genuinely understand that for the kid in front of them, every moment in education is a life-changing one. You can’t work at Mākoura if you’re just here to collect your paycheck.”
Auckland Girls' Grammar School (AGGS) is larger (1000 students), but stood out with the highest achievement rate for a school with an above-average secondary school EQI score. This means its students - 70% Pasifika, 23% Māori - faced more socio-economic barriers than a majority of their national counterparts.
AGGS principal Ngaire Ashmore says the staff feel uniquely obliged towards their students.
“Our students come from far and wide: Pukekohe, Howick, Massey, the North Shore. Whānau make huge sacrifices to send their daughters here. It’s not cheap traveling into and out of the city every day.
“They’re going without things, day-to-day living costs, to send their students here. That’s a massive sacrifice. That weighs heavy on our shoulders.”
Post-Covid collapse - but who is bucking the trend?
NCEA achievement rates were steadily improving in the pre-Covid years, most consistently with Level 3, but have since dropped dramatically.
In 2013, when new NCEA standards were implemented, only 45% of students leaving a state school had NCEA Level 3. This rose to 51% in 2019 and to 57% in the first year of the pandemic, when Covid disruption enabled students to receive bonus credits.
But it dived to 48.7% in 2022, and dipped further in 2023 to 47.5%, leaving the achievement rate where it was about a decade ago. Steeper post-pandemic drops occurred for NCEA Levels 1 and 2, while the rate fell to a new low for University Entrance (32.8%) for state school leavers in 2023.
To look at how this drop was playing out in individual schools, the Herald calculated a ‘not-achieved rate’. The percentage of the students aged sixteen and over leaving schools without achieving NCEA Level 3 in 2020 and 2023. This is the result of either leaving school before the end of year 13 or by completing year 13 without reaching the required standard.
The Herald only considered those with at least 75 students aged 16 and over. Schools with smaller numbers are more prone to have outlier results at both extremes of the spectrum; a school with three students in Year 13, for example, is more likely to have a 100% pass rate (or a 100% fail rate) than one with 300 Year 13 students.
The graph below shows how the increase in students leaving without NCEA Level 3 or higher was most obvious at poorer schools with socio-economic disadvantages, as measured by EQI score.
Almost all state schools had a higher percentage of their 16 years and older student population leaving school without NCEA Level 3 in 2023 than in 2020.
But some schools bucked the trend. Leading the most-improved pack was Mākoura College, which went from 32.2% of students aged sixteen and over leaving without NCEA Level 3 in 2020 to 19.1% in 2023. This was despite an EQI score in the highest band (523 to 569), indicating its students were the most socially disadvantaged.
Another school in the same EQI band among the most improved was Taumarunui High School (EQI 527): 64.4% of students who could leave school did so without NCEA Level 3 in 2020. This dropped to 54.8% in 2023.
About two-thirds of students in both of these schools are Māori. They also did well in the improvement stakes when comparing 2023 to 2021.
The special character school Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery in Christchurch also improved: 41.2% of potential leavers left without achieving in 2020. In 2023, this decreased by 10.1 percentage points to 31.1%.
After Wellington Girls‘ College and Macleans College, the state schools with the lowest not-achieved rates in 2023 were Westlake Boys’ High School (7.6%, EQI 398) and Westlake Girls’ High School (8.1%, EQI 402), both in Auckland.
High-achieving schools with students facing more socio-economic barriers included Napier Girls' High School (10.6%, EQI 443), Otago Girls‘ High School (11.5%, EQI 436), and Palmerston North Girls’ High School (11.7%, EQI 435).
Iona College, an integrated school in Havelock North, was the only school (with more than 75 students aged over 16) where no students left without NCEA Level 3 last year.
Parts of this section have been rewritten to clarify that the calculated rates refer to the percentage of a school’s student population aged 16 and over who left school without NCEA Level 3.
So what’s the secret sauce?
Interviews with several leaders from stand-out schools reveal common and unsurprising threads, such as excellent and dedicated teachers, families and communities invested in educational excellence, and making school a place where students and staff alike want to be.
These factors foster engaging relationships between students, parents and teachers. A lack of these will far more likely lead to students wagging class, parents being diverted from investing in their child’s future, and teachers mostly interested in going through the motions.
Some schools put extra emphasis on pastoral care, including more “restorative” than punitive approaches to bad behaviour. Some policies embraced expressions of cultural identity, encouraging a sense of belonging rather than shame for who you are.
“We have made a conscious effort so students are allowed to wear pounamu; 15 years ago they would have had to tuck it under their shirts,” says Dawn Ackroyd, principal of Napier Girls' High School, where a third of students are Māori or Pasifika.
“We’ve made big inroads to introduce culturally responsive and relational pedagogy. It’s about nurturing the students.”
Year 9 cohorts are assigned a dean who follows them through to Year 13, she says.
“They get to know the students and the families really well. If a student’s wellbeing is not right and they don’t have a good sense of who they are, then it’s difficult for everything else to follow.”
There are still many traditions - school assemblies, a school song - at the 140-year-old school, because they contribute to a sense of “being connected to something that has stood the test of time”.
Streaming is one of the traditions that’s been dropped, enabling a greater focus on “personalised learning”.
This has been taken to higher levels at the most-improved schools.
“The child is central in determining their own learning, to retain love and enthusiasm for learning,” says Ao Tawhiti Unlimited Discovery principal Anita Yarwood.
“Students' timetables are determined by the interests, strengths, and [learning] gaps. They’re not determined by any traditional chronological year where you have to do NCEA Level 1 in Year 11. When a student’s ready to be assessed, they can be assessed.”
That has allowed Year 12 student Hannah Martin to do Level 2 English, maths and classical studies last year, and Level 3 maths and statistics this year. “It gives you flexibility to push yourself where it suits you. At a different school, I wouldn’t get the opportunity to work at a higher level.”
Is there a danger of cherry-picking less essential subjects to make higher achievement more likely?
“There could be, and that’s why family meetings with the parents and the child and weekly meetings with the students are really important. Parents and students are making informed choices,” Yarwood says.
Students still have structured literacy to Year 6, and literacy in Years 7 and 8, she adds.
“Choice increases as students get older because we understand the importance of foundational literacy and numeracy to be able to access the wider curriculum. However, we also don’t believe that for them to be successful, they have to just learn those skills in a particularly narrow context or for a particular amount of time each day.”
Flexibility is also part of the success story at Mākoura College, principal Fuller says, “right down to the minute-by-minute plan they’re on for any given period”.
“We’re not making them just sit in rows and do the same thing at the exact same time. You have times during the week where students can choose where they need to go, based on the pressures they have for that week, [such as] an assessment that’s coming up.”
The school also works on student emotional regulation (how to get students into the “green” brain - calm but alert - rather than the “red”, “yellow”, or “blue” brain), and while most successful schools have high levels of community buy-in, Fuller says Mākoura’s community is exceptional.
“I have not come across a more loyal, passionate, welcoming, friendly, caring community. Everyone knows everyone and everyone looks out for everyone.
“And when you stand in front of the kids and you say to them, ‘In 2023, we’re one of the highest performing NCEA Level 3 schools in the country for a low-decile co-ed,‘ their eyes just light up and that sense of self-belief goes up a notch.”
Taumarunui High School, which is also thriving under increased flexibility, is a similar size to Mākoura.
“We don’t run a traditional timetable. Rather than sitting in the same class every hour, every student is on an individual learning programme based on their interests, their particular needs in terms of literacy and numeracy, and any gaps in their learning,” says principal John Rautenbach.
The school tries to enable what students want, even if that means using Te Kura (correspondence school), online learning, or reaching out to mentors in the community.
“A student is doing an internship at a law firm and she is going off to Waikato next year to do her law degree. You need community buy-in to enable that.”
For AGGS, the threads of community support have been strengthened over the school’s 130+-year history.
“We’ve got a history of Pacific and Māori students from when people migrated to New Zealand and the inner city, before they moved out into the suburbs. We continue to have the daughters, the granddaughters, the great-granddaughters, the cousins of those students that came in the 40s, 50s, and 60s,” principal Ashmore says.
During Covid, she says the school board and the local Rotary Club provided funding to help Year 13 students.
“We employed two retired teachers, and they came in for eight weeks at the end of term 3. And the board has continued to fund it because it is a model that continues to work today.”
She had a warning for the Government.
“We’ve been really fortunate to have the lunches-in-school programme, which helps. I worry that our Government is trying to cut costs, and that’s not going to have the best outcome for students in the long-run.
“Good student achievement doesn’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a whole lot of things that contribute. What happens at school is one, what happens at home is another, but also what our Government decides are priorities has an impact.”
For Palmerston North Girls' High School (1200 students, EQI 435), loyalty to the school has translated into many former teachers coming out of retirement when the school needs them.
“While a lot of other schools are struggling to get day relievers, we’re probably quite fortunate in that we have quite a few specialist, science, maths, English teachers who come in as day relievers,” says principal Tracy Walker.
Another part of the school’s success is high expectations, she says, as well as being girls-only.
“It’s very concentrated here. Students who perhaps might have coasted previously just feel that intensity when they enter the classroom. And if you need extra support, we’ll provide it.
“The girls do seem to thrive. They feel more confident. They feel more open to taking risks, being the leader. They don’t stand back. That’s part of it as well.”
This is echoed by Otago Girls' High School principal Bridget Davidson, who stresses the importance of mentorship for students (peer support tutoring) and teachers (taking on beginner teachers).
There’s also an element of luck, she adds.
“We have really specialist teachers in all the areas, and that’s really important, but I totally understand the shortages across the country.”
Ambition is also kindled as alumni - most recently Paris Olympian kayaker Lucy Matehaere - return to give speeches to inspire the students.
“And we just have lots of fun things so that they come to school,” Davidson adds, “like cultural day and Pink Shirt Day and Active April - stuff like that.”
Principal Hargreaves points to more traditional factors when it comes to Macleans’ success.
“Good teaching, obviously. Students can’t outperform the teachers in front of them. Supportive families is another, and we are lucky to have a community that really values education and supports these students to do well.”
But he also points to Macleans shunning NCEA Level 1, which a report this week said was “not a fair or reliable” measure.
“We decided to write our own content-rich courses to make sure they would set the students up really well for year 12, whether they went into NCEA Level 2 or the Cambridge equivalent.
“That seems to be paying dividends. Because we have more time in class in year 11, we have fewer assessments and we get more teaching done. That’s potentially one of the reasons why our students maybe have done better.”
It was a gamble “to some extent”, he says.
“But I back our teachers. We’re probably lucky in that we’ve got a very big faculty, over 200 teachers, and a lot of very experienced staff. So if any school is going to have the know-how to write good courses, it’ll be us. We could draw on what we’ve seen in Cambridge. We could draw on what we’ve seen in NCEA.
“We’ve got teachers who train from different parts of the world. So we could also bring that knowledge to bear as well. And it means that our courses I believe are well-written, well assessed, well reported on.”
¹The school data used in the interactive graphic was provided by the Ministry of Education. Both the leavers data and the year 13 data excludes international students. Please contact newsroom head of data Chris Knox at chris.knox@nzme.co.nz if you believe the data about your school is incorrect.
READ MORE: What’s going wrong in our schools?
New report sheds light on stagnant system failing to keep up with seismic shifts in society
Post-Covid collapse: NCEA and UE results fall, school leavers lack qualifications
The damning testimonials showing how the education system is failing neurodivergent kids
What the dire state of education means for the next generation
Christopher Luxon is bringing forward an action plan on maths. How bad is the ‘crisis’?
More and more students leaving school before turning 17
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
Chris Knox is the Data Editor and Head of Data Journalism for the Herald.
