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School Qualifications: NCEA Level 3

A formal school qualification is a measure of the extent to which young adults have completed a basic prerequisite for higher education and training, and many entry-level jobs.

School leavers are identified from the Ministry of Education's ENROL system, while highest school qualification is obtained from schools and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. Data presented here is for school leavers with NCEA Level 1 and above, level 2 and above and level 3 and above (including a UE Award).

Identical information is available by school (Find Your Nearest School), as well as regional council and territorial authority (Know Your Region).

Alternatively a large amount of school leaver data is available from our statistical pages. See School Leavers.

School leavers with at least NCEA level 3 or equivalent by gender and ethnic group (2018-2020)
Group Below NCEA level 3 NCEA level 3 or above Percentage with NCEA level 3 or above
2018 2019 2020 2018 2019 2020 2018 2019 2020
Female 43 54 35 161 168 159 78.9 75.7 82.0
Male 57 55 35 78 87 105 57.8 61.3 75.0
Māori 30 36 18 36 33 43 54.5 47.8 70.5
Pacific 35 44 25 41 35 49 53.9 44.3 66.2
Asian 16 7 12 52 49 39 76.5 87.5 76.5
MELAA x x x x x x x x x
Other x x x x x x x x x
European/Pākehā 36 45 32 138 179 180 79.3 79.9 84.9
CoL Total 100 109 70 239 255 264 70.5 70.1 79.0
New Zealand Total 27,463 26,975 24,697 33,574 33,028 35,632 55.0 55.0 59.1

Notes:

  1. ‘x’ = data has been suppressed where there are between 0 and 5 students in the denominator for a specific group, for example Asian students. Where one gender has been suppressed the corresponding gender has also been suppressed. 'na' = not applicable.
  2. Ethnicity is multiple response, that is, students who affiliated in more than one ethnic group have been counted in each ethnic group. Students are only counted once in the total, therefore, the ethnic groups may not sum to the total.
  3. International fee-paying students and adult students (age 19+) are excluded.

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