Targeted courses key to saving dropouts

Auckland consistently ranks highly in lists of the world's best cities but is never number one. So what would it take to turn Auckland into a first-class city? This week the Herald begins a 10-day series examining some of the biggest hurdles Auckland faces, from housing and transport to entertainment and education. We look at what we are doing, what we need to do, and why Auckland's success matters to the rest of the country. In part three of the series we look at education.

• Share your ideas and join the debate on Facebook, on Twitter (#worldclassAKL) or email us worldclassakl@nzherald.co.nz

• WORLD CLASS AUCKLAND - Part 1: Housing
• WORLD CLASS AUCKLAND - Part 2: Environment

Each year around 2000 students leave Auckland high schools with no qualifications. Many of these will do so before age 17. Most likely they will end up in a category alongside others who did the same - a pool of youth who are neither working nor learning which numbers around 75,000 nationwide.

They're called NEET - not in employment, education or training and can be found Australia, the UK, Canada, in similar percentages to us, currently 11 percent. With no education, they face bleak futures and are more likely to end up on welfare or in the justice system.

"Dropout" was this year identified by the OECD as a problem for New Zealand, saying better teacher quality and more approaches were needed to keep children at school, including more youth apprenticeships.

Stuart Middleton, from MIT, says getting more equitable outcomes for more students - particularly the growing demographic of Maori and Pasifika who are overrepresented in NEET stats - will be key to ensuring Auckland is a top-class city.

"The groups in Auckland who aren't getting great success are the groups that are going to make us a great city in a decade's time," he says.

"If we don't do that now we are going to struggle."

The government has also recognised the issue. Reports have noted retention is only improving slowly, while truancy has not improved. Its Tertiary Education Strategy says a "substantial" number of young people are at-risk, and stated: "We need to do more to reduce the number of young people not gaining the qualifications or work experience they need for a career."

Work so far has been the introduction of the Youth Guarantee Scheme, a programme that provides fees-free training for those aged 16-20 who have left school without NCEA Level 2. As of this year there's almost 10,000 funded places.

There's also workplace learning provided by Gateway, and STAR, which funds schools' careers education. Trades Academies enable students to take a combination of school and tertiary while still at school - taking, for example, courses at polytech two days a week. Numbers in those courses have grown rapidly to 995 in Auckland this year since its inception five years ago.

"Making sure students make informed careers choices and are supported for a successful transition from school to further study and/or employment is a key focus for the education sector," the ministry of education said. It said the key principle was building networks between schools, tertiary providers and industry.

Middleton says the amount of work needed now is the results of a system that was "careless" for a number of decades with progression and success. The old-fashioned attitude of valuing academic success more highly was also a setback.

"The world's most liveable city is still going to require plumbers and drainlayers and builders. Those who believe they're not worthwhile occupations, it's just arrogance and snobbery," he says.

MIT is one institution that works with high school students. It takes kids from a wide range of schools who are considered at 14 to be potential failures - truant, or on the verge of leaving - and talks to parents and schools to see if the students want to go to their Tertiary High School instead.

They study NCEA and simultaneously study technical qualifications. Last year the results were phenomenal - 100 percent in Level 1, 93 percent level 2, 87 per cent in level 3 - about same as decile ten schools. Middleton is a strong advocate for more such partnerships, and is urging educators to think along more flexible lines.

"We do know there are different ways of working that will get different results. We can do something about it if prepared to work differently," he says.

"All students can achieve to a high level if they get the right programme at the right time."

CASE STUDY: Netherlands

One of the criticisms of New Zealand's education system is that there is a lack of structured pathways to future jobs that fall outside traditional academic lines. The Netherlands is one system which recognises the value of both vocational and professional education and has a highly comprehensive system that aims across all sectors of the economy. As such, their rate of youth not in employment or education is one of the lowest in the world, at 7 percent.

Instead a one-size-fits-all approach, there are three paths students can take from age 12. One is more vocational, while the other two are aimed towards university. Sixty percent of students are in the vocational stream, which is then split into several more levels, from "practical", where the focus is more on work experience and students will enter the job market earlier, up to "theoretical" which sees students go on to polytech. Students can move horizontally between the paths if they are excelling or struggling. All students are still required to to national exams.