The years-long slide in education standards somewhat halted in 2024, with improvements at NCEA Levels 2, 3 and University Entrance for those leaving school when compared with the previous year.
These are the first increases at any level since 2020, but the proportion of school leavers achieving at least NCEA Level 1 dipped to its lowest mark in a decade, Māori fell further behind non-Māori, and the gap between rich and poor remained as pronounced as ever.
The just-released school leaver data for 2024 follows the Government’s announcement last week to scrap NCEA in the next five years and replace it with new qualifications, where students will be given a clear mark out of 100 for each subject.
School leaver data is considered a more accurate picture of educational achievement than NCEA results because it includes all students, including those who dropped out before getting a chance to sit some levels of NCEA. It also captures other assessments, including Cambridge International Assessment.
Achievement levels had been in annual decline at every level, leading to Prime Minister Christopher Luxon calling it an education crisis. But 2024 brought improvements for the first time since 2020.
The exception was the proportion of school leavers (84.2%) with NCEA Level 1 or above, which dropped slightly from 2023 (84.6%). This was the lowest rate in a decade.
All other measures increased:
It’s possible a greater tendency for schools to drop NCEA Level 1 had an impact on last year’s results, potentially increasing the likelihood of more students failing to reach NCEA Level 1.
“We can’t be certain whether the decision by some schools to no longer offer NCEA Level 1 is having a significant impact on the proportion of school leavers attaining that qualification,“ said Curriculum Centre manager Rob Mill.
“However, many of the schools that have moved away from offering Level 1 tend to be schools with students facing fewer socio-economic barriers (schools with lower equity index numbers), which may influence patterns in the data.”
After new NCEA standards came out in 2013, only 45% of students leaving a state school had NCEA Level 3. This rose to 50% in 2016, 51% in 2019 and 57% in the first year of the pandemic, when Covid disruption enabled students to receive bonus credits.
It was all downhill from then and across the board – until 2024.
An Education Review Office report in 2023 said New Zealand is not alone in experiencing a post-Covid collapse, while a 2024 academic paper called A Generation At Risk estimated the impact of Covid was up to six months of “learning loss”, and up to eight months for students with higher socio-economic barriers.
The 2024 results buck the trend of post-Covid collapse.
“The data does suggest a potential turning point,” said Stuart Deerness, senior lecturer in teacher education at the Auckland University of Technology.
“The improvements across higher qualifications [from NCEA Level 2 to UE] are genuinely encouraging and show that teachers’ dedicated work to reverse post-pandemic learning disruption is paying off for the majority of senior students.
“Combined with more students staying to age 17-plus, this indicates we are becoming more effective at moving engaged learners through to meaningful qualifications.”
This contrasts with the drop in NCEA Level 1 achievement, with nearly one in six school leavers with no formal qualification.
“The recovery is real but unevenly distributed, with a widening equity gap where students from poorer areas and those struggling with issues like chronic absence are being left further behind,” he said.
“Our most vulnerable learners are disengaging from the system entirely. While the mainstream improves, a marginalised group requires urgent, targeted support to prevent them from leaving school empty-handed.”
A far greater proportion of students with few socio-economic barriers (as measured by the equity index) left school in 2024 with NCEA Level 1 (96.3%) compared with those facing the most barriers (72.3%).
This was also the proportion (72.3%) of Māori school leavers in 2024 with NCEA Level 1 or above, lower than for Pacific school leavers (81.4%).
“The gap in NCEA Level 1 attainment rates between Māori school leavers and all school leavers increased in 2024 to 11.9 percentage points, up 0.5 percentage points from 2023,” the Ministry of Education report on the results said.
“This was the largest gap since 2014, and 3.8 percentage points more than in 2017 when the gap was smallest.”
The difference between rich and poor was far more pronounced at NCEA Level 3 or above: 84% of school leavers with few socioeconomic barriers gained this level, more than double the proportion of those who faced the highest barriers (36.2%).
Only 37.1% of Māori school leavers had NCEA Level 3 or above, while for Pacific school leavers it was just shy of half of them (49.5%).
Since 2020, the proportion of Māori school leavers with NCEA Level 3 or above has decreased across all school equity index bands.
Female students are still doing better than their male counterparts, but the achievement gender gap is shrinking over time. In 2024, 59.5% of female leavers attained NCEA Level 3 or above, compared with 51.6% of male leavers.
The office of Education Minister Erica Stanford did not respond to a request for comment.
Last week, Stanford announced plans to replace the NCEA system, saying it was enabling students too much flexibility at the expense of credibility.
Under the new scheme, Year 11 students will face what is being called a Foundational Skills Award with a focus on literacy and numeracy. English and mathematics will be required subjects for students at this year level.
Year 12 and 13 students will seek to attain the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE) respectively.
This will replace the current system with a structured approach that requires students to take five subjects and pass at least four to receive the Year 12 and 13 certificates.
Feedback on the proposed new scheme is open until September 15, with Cabinet making final decisions in December.
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.