The Herald has crunched the University Entrance and NCEA Level 3 data for every high school in the country from 2020 to 2024. Senior writer Derek Cheng and head of data journalism Chris Knox have decoded the numbers to find the most improved schools – and why they’ve done so
well.
“They might be poor, but they’re not stupid,” says Haeata Community Campus school principal Dr Peggy Burrows.
“Our children are some of the brightest children I’ve ever taught in 46 years of being in education.”
With an Equity Index score of 549, the school’s 550-odd students (Years 1-13) are among the most socio-economically disadvantaged in the country.
They’re also in a new school – built to replace four schools shut down after the Christchurch earthquakes – that has had to cope with the tragic death of a student at an ice-skating rink and, more recently, mouldy school lunches.
Yet it is one of the most consistently improved schools since 2020.
Part of that has been a turnaround in bad behaviour. Not so long ago, Haeata had more stand-downs, suspensions, exclusions, and restraints than nearly any other school in the country.
“In 2016, crown damage – kids breaking things, smashing things – was at $197,000. In 2017, it was $176,000, and in 2018 it was $147,000,” said Burrows, who was brought in in 2020 to assess what was wrong, and how it might be fixed.
In May 2020, no one in Year 11 had any NCEA Level 1 credits, a situation Burrows said was “pretty dire, you can imagine the horror of that”.
After completing her report, she was encouraged to apply to become the principal, which she did so she could “put my money where my mouth is”.
Crown damage dropped to $37,000 in 2020, and more than halved again to $16,000 in 2023. The number of stand downs fell just as sharply, from 132 in 2019 to 49 in Burrows’ first year, and then 18 in the following year.
“We put in place systems and structures to support students to actually feel a sense of belonging. When you’re getting that level of damage, it’s because perhaps inherently the kids didn’t feel they belonged,” Burrows told the Herald.
This was further nurtured by grounding staff-student relationships in kaupapa Māori leadership (half the student population is Māori).
“That is why you see such a significant shift. We have all of those underpinnings, from a te ao Māori-Mātauranga Māori perspective,” she said.
Last year, 42.6% of school leavers had achieved NCEA Level 3 or its equivalent, up from just 10.8% in 2020.
These are not high-achieving figures, but Haeata has sprung from the depths of despair to “now being on the playing field, and we’re just going from strength to strength”.
This interactive graphic shows the proportion of school leavers at each secondary school who have achieved NCEA Level 3 – or its equivalent – in 2024.
We cross-reference this with the school’s Equity Index (EQI) score, which indicates the level of socio-economic barriers for the school’s students. The higher the EQI, the more socio-economic barriers the school’s students face.
Each data point, representing a school, has a line running to the school’s 2020 result. The details are revealed if you hover on a data point: the school’s name, its 2024 result in the left margin, a line above or below the point with its 2020 result, and the percentage-point difference between them.
The line will be above the data point if the school’s results have improved, and below the data point if they have worsened.
You can search for any school in the search bar, or click on any of the data points.
This will bring up a table with the school leaver results in 2024 as well as for the comparison year, along with a graph tracking the change in the school’s results since 2020.
You can also change the comparison year to any year since 2020, or change from NCEA Level 3 to University Entrance attainment results.
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.
The graph includes all secondary schools, but the Herald only considered those with at least 50 students aged 16 and over for the most-improved.
Schools with smaller numbers are more prone to having outlier results at both ends of the spectrum; a school with three students in Year 13, for example, is more likely to go from a 0% to 100% pass rate – or from 100% to 0% – than one with 300 Year 13 students.
Haeata Community Campus pupils with principal Dr Peggy Burrows. Photo / Supplied
Caution should be taken with the data. It’s not definitive. It doesn’t mean that sending your child to a school that has improved will necessarily lead to their grades improving.
There are innumerable factors, such as fostering a sense of belonging, that contribute to the academic success of a school’s students.
Some of those factors have nothing to do with the particular school: poverty and health and housing intersect with education outcomes, as do child-parent relationships, trauma, or adverse childhood experiences.
‘You don’t leave without a qualification’
Others are school-dependent: teaching excellence, suitable facilities and abundant resources, an invested staff who aren’t just there to collect a paycheck, but are invested in the students’ futures.
Another is instilling a sense of purpose, something that’s core to the teaching ethos of Waimate High School principal Jo Hunnikin.
“The kids were just walking out the door at the end of the year, and I said, ‘What’s going on? You haven’t got what you need. Come back’,” she told the Herald.
“My vision is that they leave with a purpose and a sense of self-worth, whatever that looks like for them. So we made it clear that school is where you get a pathway.
“And they all came back. They got some success and built some self-belief. And now we’ve got this culture of: ‘You don’t leave here without a qualification’.”
There are still “surly kids” who want to leave school as soon as they can.
“But now they say, ‘I’m leaving as soon as I’ve got Level 2.’ Or they realise they can actually do this and think, ‘What do I need to do to get merit, or excellence endorsements?’”
The proportion of school leavers at the rural Canterbury school with NCEA Level 3 or more than quadrupled from 2021 (15%) to 2024 (68%). The retention rate has also jumped, from 63% in 2023 to 84% last year.
This is despite the school, like many others in more rural areas, struggling with resources, including specialist teachers.
Some of that shortfall is made up through generous community support, whether that be in donations so the school can buy tools for the workshop or lights for its stage production, or mentorships in local businesses.
“We run a gateway programme, a ‘try before you buy’,” Hunnikin said.
“They (local businesses) get to experience different students and think, ‘This one will fit in my business, I’ll offer them an apprenticeship.’ Or a student goes out into the community and says, ‘I thought I wanted to be a plumber, but now I don’t want to. I want to do something else.’
“If our kids transition out of school but maybe with no qualification, we want them to have a job, or have something so they leave with a purpose. I always say I want them to leave on a Friday, and have a reason to get up on a Monday.”
A culture shift to focus on individial future pathways has contributed to improved NCEA Level 3 success at Waimate High School, in rural Canterbury. Photo / Supplied
The ‘flaw’ in NCEA is also its value
One theme emerged from a number of most-improved schools: the flexibility of NCEA has been invaluable in tailoring a learning programme to each student’s diverse learning needs.
The Government, however, sees NCEA as so flexible that it can be gamed. Students can gain Level 2 or 3 with a mash-up of mostly internal assessments across several subjects, for example, and then not show up to the exam at the end of the year.
Education Minister Erica Stanford is in the process of replacing NCEA with a more structured system, with subject scores out of 100 along with grades from A to E.
It will supposedly still have enough flexibility to help students who benefit from that, but not so much that it’s detrimental to overall student learning.
How this will be achieved is yet to be worked out – and the Government has pushed out its decision-day for the new system to February.
The feedback to the Government’s proposed overhaul has seen a divide between rich and poor emerge: principals from mostly wealthy schools have penned a letter backing a new system, while the heads of mostly poorer schools have called for “an immediate halt” until the reforms can be better planned.
Education Minister Erica Stanford has been leading reforms in the sector, supported by Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who has called the level of education achievement in NZ a “crisis”. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Hunnikin praises how NCEA can be tailored to a particular cohort of students at Waimate High School.
“Some of our disengaged boys don’t want to be at school. They just want to be on the farm. So how can we tie that in?
“We’re in the process of setting up a centre for agricultural excellence. We’ve managed to get primary ITO (Industry Training Organisation) accreditation, and we’re building a course to try and keep those kids at school longer.”
Those students will always end up on the farm, she said.
“This way, they’ll end up on the farm with some microcredentials they need to be better farmers.”
Dumping NCEA “will not help us at all or the way we do things”, but she hoped for some flexibility in the system replacing it.
Flexibility was also key for the likes of Mākoura College and Taumarunui High School, featured among last year’s most-improved.
Neither school runs a traditional timetable.
“Rather than sitting in the same class every hour, every student is on an individual learning programme based on their interests, their particular needs in terms of literacy and numeracy, and any gaps in their learning,” Taumarunui High School principal John Rautenbach previously told the Herald.
Both schools are a similar size, with high socio-economic barriers (EQI scores in the highest band), and about two-thirds of the student body Māori.
Kelston Boys’ High School in Auckland, one of the most improved schools since 2020.
Photo / Google Maps
Two of 2024’s most-improved schools – De La Salle College, in Manukau, and Kelston Boys’ High School, in west Auckland, also have similar profiles: higher socio-economic barriers (EQI 487 for De La Salle, EQI 507 for Kelston), and larger rolls of mostly Pasifika students.
At De La Salle, retention rose to an impressive 95.6% in 2024, while the proportion of school leavers in 2024 with NCEA Level 3 was 82.2%, up from 47.6% in 2023.
For Kelston Boys’, the NCEA Level 3 achievement rate was only a third of school leavers in 2021, but this jumped to 56.7% in 2023, and 64.2% last year.
At Haeata, Burrows said NCEA remained a great qualification – if managed well – and the Government was in danger of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
NCEA gave students a way to earn credits by learning in a way that suited them, she said, whereas some students don’t cope well with a high-stakes end-of-year exam.
“Our really top academics are still achieving excellence in NCEA at all levels. Our more diverse learners, who are much more practical, can do courses that might take them two years [instead of one year for others] to achieve, but they’re still really earning their credits.”
Whatever emerges in the coming years, Burrows said students at Haeata will continue to thrive.
“They might be poor, but our kids will thrive because they’re certainly as bright as anywhere else. Our staff are well-trained and qualified, the most qualified I’ve ever taught with.
“Whatever changes happen, our staff will embrace those changes, and we will make sure our children are not disadvantaged in any way.”
2024 results – check your school
The Herald has also plotted the attainment rate, the percentage of school leavers who had NCEA Level 3 (or equivalent) and UE, for each school in 2024.
The graph, with EQI on the horizontal axis, indicates that the school system is far from egalitarian, with social barriers closely related to educational achievement. This mirrors the trend of previous years.
A cautionary note about the data: trends can be observed, but nothing definitive can be inferred. It doesn’t mean, for example, that sending a student to a large school with a low EQI score will necessarily lead to high achievement in NCEA.
NCEA attainment levels have been trending down, but in 2024 there was an upward trend for the first time since 2020, and almost across the board except for NCEA Level 1. This was partly due to an increasing number of higher-achieving schools offering alternatives for Level 1.
In 2024, 55.5% left with NCEA Level 3 or above, up from 52.8% in 2023, while 40.2% left with UE, up from 38.6% in 2023.
Retention also improved, to 81% of school leavers in 2024 from 79.3% in 2023.
Experts have said it is too early to say that the education tide is turning, and there remains concern that those at the bottom are falling further behind.
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.
Chris Knox is a scientist turned data-journalist who investigates the stories behind the numbers, and creates interactives for Herald readers to explore them.
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