Alwyn Poole
Villa Education Trust
Innovative Education Consultants
There has been some digging going on with the level of disengagement with state schools in New Zealand and some recent releases of 2020 system-wide qualifications statistics.
Keeping it simple:
There are 826,347 school students in New Zealand.
10,500 of compulsory age have opted out to the point that they are not enrolled anywhere. (making it 836,857 who should be there).
33,053 are in private schools.
7,893 are home-schooling.
Only 68% are fully attending according to Ministry data.
So, we have around 299,000 students in NZ who have opted out of, or are significantly disengaged from, the State school system. (i.e. above 35%) Please let that sink in.
In 2020 12% of our school leavers (7,003 young people) left with no qualification. It was 23% for Maori and 4% for Asian students.
Seventy percent of Asian students achieve UE; European, 47%, Pasifika 27%, Maori are at 23%.
Decile 1 school leavers have UE at 17.5%. Decile 10 school leavers have UE at 73%. (NB: when schools publish their qualifications statistics, always make sure they are talking about school leavers and not their survivors – some schools have lost up to 40% of their students by 17yo – their Y13 NCEA stats do not reflect that important aspect.)
I need no further commentary than the Ministry of Education motto (on each letter and email).
“We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes.” (not even kidding!)
The government/Ministry is proposing nothing that will be effective for addressing this. The sound that you don’t hear right now is the incredibly incompetent and clueless leaders of our education bureaucracy taking responsibility for this and resigning.
What do you think the adult level/societal consequences are of this ongoing debacle?
Please share so others can discover The BFD.