Indicators Live: Education at a Glance 2009, Results for New Zealand

5. How does our achievement compare?

Education at a Glance traditionally draws on data from OECD’s triennial Programme for International Assessment (PISA) to provide new insights into the determinants of education performance. This year some further results are presented from the PISA 2006 survey.

5.1 The profile of 15 year-old top performers in science

High-level skills are critical for the creation of new knowledge, technologies and innovation and emerge as an important contributor to economic growth and social development. Data from PISA provides information on the characteristics of top performing students in science. New Zealand features prominently in these results as we have one of the largest proportions of top performing students in science.

The PISA science assessment is scored on a scale which has an OECD mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100. This scale can be divided into bands reflecting the types of tasks students attaining a particular score can typically do. Top achieving students are defined as those who achieved at levels 5 or 6. These students attained a score of at least 633 score points on the PISA science scale.

In New Zealand, 18 percent of students reached levels 5 or 6 on the science scale. The proportion of top achieving students is only exceeded by Finland (21 percent), and it is significantly above the OECD average of nine percent. New Zealand is also among the best performing countries for both reading and mathematics.

Figure 16 shows the percentage of top performers on the science scale in PISA 2006.

Figure 19. Mean score and percentage of top performers on the science scale in PISA 2006 for selected countries

Note: Not all PISA participating countries are shown in the above figure.

Source: OECD (2009), Education at a Glance, Table A4.1a

Across all OECD countries, an average of four percent of students are top performers in all three assessment areas. In New Zealand this proportion is 8.9 percent, a proportion similar to Finland (9.5 percent).

Unlike most OECD countries, New Zealand girls are as likely to be among the top performers in science as New Zealand boys.

Top performing students tend to come from a relatively advantaged socio-economic background (as measured by PISA). However, as noted in Education at a Glance, this is not an insurmountable barrier; about one quarter of New Zealand top performing science students come from a socio-economic background lower than the national average. This proportion is similar to the OECD average.

In New Zealand, immigrant students are as likely to be top performers as students born in New Zealand to New Zealand-born parents. This is unlike many other OECD countries where immigrant students are less likely to be among the top performers in science.

Students’ attitudes and motivations tend to be related to their performance. If a country can successfully convey scientific knowledge and competencies and engage students in science-related issues and foster students’ career aspirations in science then that country is better placed to have a talent pool able to take up a career in science. Thus, fostering interest and motivation in science seems to be an important policy goal in its own right.

The indices of attitude and motivation used in PISA are relative measures. This means that we need to compare top performing students at levels 5 and 6 in science relative to another group. In the analyses in Education at a Glance, top performers are compared on these indices relative to performers at level 4 (hereto referred to as strong performers) on the PISA science scale.

Top performers in science report enjoying learning science more than strong performers do. For New Zealand, the difference in science learning enjoyment between top and strong performers is the same as the average difference for OECD countries. Similarly, the difference between New Zealand top performers and strong performers on their reported motivation to learn science because of their belief it will help in the future is the same as the average difference for OECD countries. However, the difference between top performers and strong performers on the extent to which they engage in science-related activities is larger for New Zealand than it is in many other OECD countries.

New Zealand’s top performers receive about half an hour per week more in regular school lessons on science than New Zealand strong performers. This difference is the same as the OECD average. However, New Zealand’s top performers overall receive more instruction time per week than their top performing counterparts in other OECD countries.

Across the OECD, top performers agree that the subjects they study, their teachers and the subjects available to them in school provide them with the basic knowledge and skills for a science-related career. In New Zealand (along with their counterparts in Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom), top performers, when compared to strong performers, are more likely to agree with this statement than in other OECD countries.

In summary, the difference between New Zealand’s top performers and strong performers on most of the measures regarding attitude and motivation is comparable to the average difference for OECD countries. For some measures (science-related activities, and the provision of knowledge and skills towards a science-related career, in particular), the difference between New Zealand’s top performers relative to strong performers is greater than for their OECD counterparts.

5.2 Graduation rates in tertiary education (2007).

The graduation rate is the percentage of the population completing a qualification for the first time. As with the entry rate, it is computed by summing graduation percentages for each age group. Graduation rates are calculated in Education at a Glance for tertiary-type B, tertiary-type A and advanced research programmes.

As with entry rates, this indicator tends to overestimate for countries with a higher proportion of international students and older students. Education at a Glance includes rates adjusted to exclude international students. Figure 20 illustrates the graduation rates from tertiary-type A programmes for New Zealand and selected OECD countries.

New Zealand’s overall graduation rate for tertiary-type A is slightly lower than Australia’s and higher than the OECD average. Adjusting for international students reduces the rates for both Australia and New Zealand. Rates for females are higher than the rates for males.

Figure 20: Graduation rates from tertiary-type A programmes for selected countries (2007)

Source: OECD (2009), Education at a Glance, Table A3.1

In tertiary-type B, New Zealand has a fairly high graduation rate of 20.4 percent, compared the OECD average of 9.4 percent. The New Zealand rate for females is 23.9 percent and males is 16.7 percent. After adjusting for international students, the rate for New Zealand is 16.6 percent. This high rate reflects the large numbers of adult students in New Zealand completing qualifications at this level for the first time.

New Zealand’s graduation rate for advanced research programmes is 1.3 percent. This is slightly above the OECD average of 1.5 and lower than Australia’s of 1.9. Excluding international students reduces New Zealand’s rate considerably to 0.8 percent, due the high proportion of international students at this level.