Around 15% of students who leave school have no NCEA qualifications

More and more students are leaving school with no NCEA or equivalent qualifications, a Ministry of Education report shows.

In 2022, around 15% of school leavers had not passed NCEA level 1 – that’s a 2.8% increase from 2021.

The number of school leavers with NCEA Level 1 or above has been decreasing since 2017, the report said.

Vaughan Couillault​, head of the Secondary Principals Association, said some students are making the tough choice between completing the school year or leaving to help pay the power bill.

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“People are under financial stress. Kids are having to provide for their families,” Couillault said.

“It’s not people going, ‘that’s it, I’m out’. It’s students who are working multiple part-time jobs and can’t keep up.”

But that’s not the case for everyone, Couillault said. Other students are ditching school for alternative career paths.

“If they are going off to become a tradie – a plumber or an electrician — that’s good thing. It’s a career pathway.

“But if they’re going straight into a low paying job that concerns me. It might have a career cul de sac attached to the end of it,” he said.

Māori students in English medium schools appear to be affected the most.

In 2022, around 27% of Māori school leavers did not attain NCEA Level 1 or above, an increase of 3.6 percentage points from 2021.

This does not hold true for Māori students who were predominantly learning in te reo Māori. Only 13.5% of those leavers did not have a NCEA qualification.

“The larger decline in attainment for Māori leavers suggests they have been affected more by disruption of learning due to Covid-19, severe weather events and increases to the cost of living since 2021,” the report said.

Around 52% of school leavers achieved NCEA Level 3 or above, the lowest rate since 2014.

Cherie Taylor-Patel​, immediate past president of NZ Principals Federation, said completing school qualifications gives students choices.

“The concern is that students leaving young – without qualification – they are going into lowest paid jobs to help their family and cope with the rising cost of living.

“That leaves them with fewer options,” she said.

The report said the impacts of Covid, the rising living costs and a decreasing number of schools offering level 1 NCEA courses were to all blame for low attainment rates among school-leavers.