Retention of students in senior secondary schools

What We Have Found

In 2014, 83.2% of students remained at school to their 17th birthday. Retention rates have been gradually increasing since 2009 but differences remain between girls and boys, and Māori and non-Māori

Date Updated: July 2015

Indicator Description

Percentage of students staying on at school to age 17.

Why This Is Important

Completion of upper secondary education is associated with a range of economic and social benefits both in New Zealand and across the OECD. Retention to senior secondary schooling is linked to higher levels of skills and knowledge required for participation in our increasingly knowledge-based society and the wider global community (OECD, 2013).

According to Norton et al. (2000) the risk of unemployment for those with no school qualifications or only Year 11 qualifications is higher than for those with Year 12 or Year 13 qualifications. The positive effect of each additional year of schooling on incomes has been estimated to range from 5 to 10%.

Lashlie (2005) found that one of the factors important for successful school leaving for boys was merely staying at school until the end of the Year 13. This is because it takes boys longer to achieve a high level of maturity and self-management than girls, and that boys' schools in particular can "hold boys steady while the chaos of adolescence sorts itself". Simply keeping boys at school (by making school relevant) until they have decided what they want their next step in life to be can reduce the chances of a boy "arriving at a prison gate".

How We Are Going

In 2014, 83.2% of students stayed at school to the age of 17. There has been a 3.9 percentage point increase in this number since 2009 (79.3%) and there has been a 0.6 percentage point decrease since 2013 (83.8%).

Female students (85.7%) were more likely to remain at school until age 17 than their male counterparts (80.7%).

Figure 1: Percentage of school leavers retained until age 17 (2009 to 2014)
2014-inID-1955-fig1

Ethnic Group

In 2014, Māori students had the lowest proportion of students remaining at school to age 17 (69.1%). This compares with a retention rate of 82.5% for Pasifika and 84.9% for European/Pākehā. Asian students had the highest retention rate (94.8%).

Asian students displayed the greatest increase in the proportion remaining at school to 17 from 2013, with a 0.7 percentage point increase. Pasifkia was almost unchanged with a 0.1 percentage point increase. Māori and European/Pākehā saw decreases of 0.9 and 1.4 percentage points respectively.

Māori students displayed the largest improvement in the proportion of students remaining at school until age 17 since 2009 with a 6.6 percentage point increase. This was followed by Pasifika who saw a 3.5 percentage point increase while European/Pākehā saw a 3.4 percentage point increase.

The gap in retention between Māori and non-Māori has closed by 3.1 percentage points since 2009.

Figure 2: Percentage of school leavers aged 17 or older by ethnic group (2009 to 2014)

Gender

Girls are more likely to stay at school until 17 than boys (85.7% compared to 80.7%). Since 2013, girls have seen a 1.1 percentage decrease while boys have seen a 0.3 percentage point decrease.

The size of this gender gap has decreased in 2013, from 5.9 percentage points in 2009 to 5.0 percentage points in 2014. This difference between 2012 and 2013 is because of an increase in the proportion of 17-year-old boys remaining at school.

Figure 3: Percentage of school leavers aged 17 or older by gender (2009 to 2014)

Decile

There is a clear correlation between decile (the socio-economic mix of the school the student attended) and the percentage of school leavers aged 17 or above. Schools in the lowest quintile (deciles 1 and 2) draw their students from communities with the highest degree of socio-economic disadvantage. In 2014, 91.8% of students from schools in the highest decile (deciles 9 and 10) remained at school until the age of 17. This was 17.9 percentage points higher than schools in the lowest two deciles (74.0%).

Figure 4: Percentage of school leavers aged 17 or older by quintile and ethnicity (2014)

There is a large variation in the percentage of students remaining at school until age 17 amongst schools within each decile. While, on average, lower decile schools have poorer retention rates than higher decile schools, some decile 1 and 2 schools have higher retention rates than many of the decile 9 and 10 schools.

Figure 5: Percentage of school leavers who were retained at school aged 17 and above,
   by school decile (2014)

References

Evidence about what works for this indicator can be found in:

  • Hutmacher, W. (2001). Introduction. In W. Hutmacher, D. Cochrane, N. Bottani (Eds). In Pursuit of Equity in Education: Using International Indicators to Compare Equity Policies.  Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  • Lashlie, C. (2005). He'll Be OK: Growing Gorgeous Boys Into Good Men.  Auckland: Harper Collins.
  • Norton, P.,Sanderson, K., Booth, T., & Stroombergen, A. (2000). A literature review of the effect of school resourcing on educational outcomes. Report to the Ministry of Education.  Wellington: Ministry of Education.
  • OECD (2001). Schooling for tomorrow: What schools for the future? Paris: OECD.
  • OECD (2013). Education at a glance 2013. Paris: OECD.


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