KEY INSIGHTS
From the 2022 School Leavers data recently released:

• 15% left without any NCEA qualification (up 50% since 2017’s 10% figure)
  • 25% left without getting NCEA Level 2 (not shown in graph above)
    • 48% (~1/2) left without getting NCEA Level 3 or UE (not shown in graph above)
• 21.5% left before turning 17-years-old (up 36% since 2017’s 15.8% figure)
  • 33% more 16-year-olds left school
  • 63% more 15-year-olds left school
    (data for 14-year-olds wasn’t provided)

KEY QUESTIONS

1. Are these declining retention and qualification metrics a concern? If so, how much? If not, why not?
2. How do we apportion the cause of these declining metrics between our:
   1. Covid response
   2. Education policies/governance
   3. Teacher-only days/strikes
   4. Cost of living pressures
   5. Other social factors?
3. Can we determine from this data that National-led Governments outperform Labour-led Governments on education matters?
4. How do we improve these metrics again? (Assuming we want to.)

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HAVE YOUR SAY

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FULL DATA ANALYSIS
Please contact us if you would like the full data set and research.

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NOTES:

• All publicly available years have been published. We have asked the Ministry of Education how to source data before 2012.
• Multiple NCEA achievement levels could have been graphed.
  • We choose to show the % of Kiwi kids who are leaving school without any NCEA qualification at all, as we felt that was the most important insight.
  • In the insights section above, however, we have also showed the % not achieving NCEA Level 2 (widely considered to be the bare minimum needed when leaving school), and also the % not achieving NCEA Level 3 or UE (University Entrance).
• 17 years of age has long been considered the key retention age because, by law, 6-16 year-olds must be enrolled in school (there are some exceptions).
  • In the insights section above, we have also shown the increase in 16 and 15-year-olds leaving school.
  • There was no figure for 14-year-olds leaving school, but we have asked the Ministry of Education for that too.
• We compared 2022 results to the 2017 year when National was last in power. Even though the 2017 election took place on the 23rd of September with a couple of months in the school year left to run, we felt it was fair to consider the 2017 education results as Nationals. The announcement of a Labour-NZ First coalition Government came on the 19th of October, almost a month after the election.
• We reduced the vertical axis to a narrower range containing the data, because:
  • Qualification and retention metrics are never close to 0%.
  • This view helps us see the changes more easily.
  • Small % shifts can have a significant impact on individual lives and social outcomes.
• We have also included an inset image that shows the full 0-100% scale.
• There are many variables that impact school retention and qualifications, including:
  • Covid response/lockdowns
  • Education policies/governance
  • Teacher-only days/strikes
  • School closure days, e.g. bad weather
  • Cost of living pressures
  • Other social factors
• We chose blue for National-led governments and red for Labour-led governments, being their party colours.
• We use the Covid yellow stripes to represent that period of lockdowns.
• All numbers are provisional and subject to revision.

Thank you to the Factors who helped pull this together.

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SOURCES:

• School Leavers Data = https://www.educationcounts.govt.nz/statistics/school-leavers > Pivot Tables: School Leavers (2012-2022)

Data published by The Ministry of Education
(c) Crown Copyright
Licensed for use under the creative commons attribution licence (BY) 4.0

• Covid lockdown history = https://covid19.govt.nz/about-our-covid-19-response/history-of-the-covid-19-alert-system/

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Did we make a mistake, or have you got smarter data?  Let us know.