Sliding education levels continue in latest school-leaver data; more and more students leaving school before turning 17

The share of students leaving school before they turn 17 is the highest in a decade, as education standards continue to fall across the board.

That’s according to the latest school leaver data, published today, which also shows the gaps between rich and poor and Māori and non-Māori continuing to widen.

Barely half (51.8%) of all students in 2023 left school with NCEA 3 or above, the lowest rate since 2014, and a continuation of the years-long declining trend. For Māori, the proportion was only 33.2%, and while Pacific students bucked the trend by improving on 2022 results, the proportion leaving school with NCEA 3 or above was still well below half (44.7%).

A major contributor to those results was the fact that more than a fifth of all students (21.4%, and 36.4% for Māori) left school in 2023 before they turned 17, the highest proportion since 2013.

“In 2023, 14,101 school leavers left school before the age of 17, an increase of 5.7% from 2022,” an Education Counts report said.

The results will be further fuel for the Government to justify its policies aimed at turning around education achievement levels, including plans to fast-track changes to the maths curriculum.

The Ministry of Education attributed the lower retention rate to the “increased cost of living, the strong labour market, disruption to learning due to Covid-19, and decreased attendance”.

Only 6.7% of these students left school due to moving overseas, while for 14.9%, it was because they were “continuously absent” – the highest such proportion in a decade.

Meanwhile, the gap between rich and poor (as measured by the Equity Index) is widening: there’s an almost 40% achievement gap for NCEA 3 or above between school leavers from the richest and poorest backgrounds, with the biggest fall in achievement among the least advantaged students.

“In 2023, 73.2% of school leavers from schools with fewer barriers had attained NCEA Level 3 or above. This was higher than the percentage of school leavers from schools with moderate (49.0%) and more (35.4%) barriers to achievement,” the Education Counts report said.

The biggest decreases in school leavers’ achievement were at NCEA 1 and 2.

In 2023, 83.8% of school leavers (71.7% for Māori) achieved NCEA Level 1 or above, a drop by 1.6 percentage points from 2022 and down by 6.2% since 2017.

Achievement among Māori school leavers has fallen by almost 10% since 2018.

“Barriers to attainment appear to have grown for Māori school leavers compared to total school leavers. The gap between attainment of NCEA level 1 or above for Māori and total school leavers has grown from 8.9 percentage points in 2019 to 12.1 in 2023,” the report said.

The drops among Pacific (by 0.5 percentage points) and European/Pākehā (1.4 percentage points) school leavers were much less sharp, and while it was higher for Asian students (2.7 percentage points) the achievement level was also much higher (92.1% leaving school with at least NCEA Level 1).

For NCEA Level 2 and above, the proportion leaving school was less than three-quarters (74.4%) of school leavers in 2023 – the lowest in a decade and a 1.3 percentage point fall compared with 2022.

“Signs of continued inequity are apparent. On average school leavers who identify as Māori, Pacific, or male, or who are from schools with more barriers to achievement are more likely to leave school without NCEA Level 2 or above,” the report said.

School-leaver data is considered the most comprehensive measure of secondary student attainment because it captures all students.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has said there is an education crisis in New Zealand and he is determined to turn it around with a series of policies across teacher training, the curriculum, standardised testing and tackling truancy, among others.

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.