Discussion

The analysis suggests that higher-performing school leavers are increasingly choosing to go overseas after finishing school, and it may be supposed that many of these are likely to be also choosing to study overseas.

The analysis does not identify why school leavers choose to study overseas. While this trend could reflect concerns about the quality of New Zealand universities, it could just indicate the growing normalisation of overseas study, particularly among high socio-economic households. This aligns with the greater increase in students from private schools compared to high-performing NCEA graduates.

The higher proportion of school leavers with international qualifications leaving New Zealand likely reflects the fact that these qualifications are often promoted on the basis that they are better recognised by overseas universities, although this does not explain the recent increase. Other contributing factors may include greater availability of scholarships and enhanced marketing of overseas study as a viable option.

Whether this trend should concern policymakers depends on the reasons behind student decisions and their post-graduation choices. It would be problematic if increased overseas study signals declining confidence in New Zealand’s universities or leads to a permanent loss of top-performing students. Conversely, overseas study could benefit New Zealand by providing students with valuable skills, experiences, and networks (at no cost to the New Zealand taxpayer). Even if students remain overseas, a well-connected diaspora offers economic opportunities.

Specific policy responses to address this trend are unclear, given that domestic study is already heavily subsidised. Concerns would seem to best be addressed more generally through funding, quality assurance and governance settings that ensure that New Zealand’s tertiary system delivers relevant and high quality qualifications.

Further research would be valuable, particularly qualitative analysis of the reasoning behind why school leavers choose to study overseas and analysis of what these students do following graduation.

More detail

The available data allows us to look at how many school leavers left New Zealand in the year after leaving school. We examine this question, reviewing trends from 2010 to the end of 2024. The data doesn’t allow us to see if they were studying overseas, or which country they went to.

For this paper, we look at the proportion of school leavers going overseas, rather than total numbers. The total number of school leavers has been increasing in recent years, and so increasing numbers going overseas may not be reflecting an increasing propensity. If the proportion of school leavers going overseas in the year after leaving school is increasing, then this can suggest that those going overseas for tertiary study is also increasing. Comparing the rate at which top-achieving school leavers left New Zealand with the rate for other school leavers or for the wider population, can also suggest whether educational achievement is a factor as opposed to wider non-education related factors, such as better economic or labour market prospects.

For the purposes of this paper, the educational achievement of school leavers within each year is divided into three groups: top, middle, and bottom. The top group contains the top 10% of NCEA achievement in that year, the middle group contains the next 60%, and the bottom group contains the bottom 30% of those with any NCEA achievement standard credits. This covered over 90% of school leavers in 2023. Those with no NCEA achievement standards are grouped into two further groups: those who attained international school qualifications (e.g. Cambridge International or International Baccalaureate), and a final group with no school attainment, or attainment of NCEA unit standards only. There were around 66,000 students who left school in 2023.

Figure 2: School leavers in 2023

Figure 3 shows that the trend in school leavers going overseas broadly mirrors the trend in the wider population going overseas. While there have been high levels of migrant arrivals in the last two years, the number of New Zealanders departing New Zealand is also at an historical high.² Recent data from Statistics New Zealand suggests that the level of New Zealand migrant arrivals into Australia is also at its highest level.³

Figure 3: Wider trends in New Zealanders leaving New Zealand

Another source is OECD data on the country of origin of foreign students studying in member countries at diploma level or higher. Figure 4 shows the trend in the number of New Zealanders in tertiary study in OECD countries between 2010 and 2022, the latest year available.

Figure 4: New Zealanders in tertiary study in OECD countries in 2022 – and top four destinations excluding Australia

_{Note: Data for Australia is not shown due to a data reporting issue.}

Traditionally, Australia has been the most common destination, with over 50% of New Zealand tertiary students in overseas OECD countries. However, the published data for Australia shows a noticeably declining trend. Subsequent investigation confirms this to reflect a data reporting issue rather than a real trend.⁴ After Australia, the next most popular destinations for New Zealanders doing tertiary study overseas are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Canada.⁵

The OECD data does provide us with a picture of New Zealanders in OECD countries other than Australia, at least up to 2022. However, the issue with Australian data and the unavailability yet of data beyond 2022 limits how much we can usefully infer from this data in relation to our question of interest.

Figure 5 shows that there was a strong increase in 2023 in the number of first-year students of New Zealand nationality in higher education in Australia, up 20% on 2022 to 6,700, according to Australian Department of Education data. This data is unable to distinguish how many were first-year recent school leavers from New Zealand. However, the increase in New Zealanders in first-year study in Australia in 2023 will likely, in some part at least, reflect the recent increase in New Zealanders who left school in 2021 or 2022.⁶

Figure 5: New Zealand school leavers and first-year New Zealand students in higher education in Australia

Figure 6 below contrasts the rates for the top-achieving 10% of NCEA students against the rate for students who attained an international school qualification such as Cambridge International or International Baccalaureate. This latter non-NCEA group makes up around 2% of school leavers. The graph shows that the rate at which this group leaves New Zealand after school has always been higher than for other school leaver groups, and furthermore has increased more rapidly than other groups since 2022.

Figure 6 also shows a noticeable increase in 2019. It’s unclear whether the increase in 2019 was the beginning of a trend that was interrupted by COVID and is now resuming, or something else. Growth slowed in 2024, and it’s unclear yet whether this is the start of a levelling off or whether rates will continue to increase. Similarly, the rate at which school leavers from private schools go overseas is noticeably higher than for those from public schools.

Figure 6: Top NCEA students v students with non-NCEA qualifications

Figure 7 shows the rates for the top 10% of NCEA achievers across all schools, and contrasts those in public schools with those in private schools. Leavers from private schools make up 5% of all school leavers but are three times more likely to go overseas, and the increase since 2022 has been stronger than for other groups. The top students in private schools have typically had higher rates than all leavers from private schools, which has not always been the case for public schools.

Figure 7: Public v private schools

Figure 8 below shows an interesting exception to the pattern of higher rates for those with international school exams and those from private schools. Those with international school qualifications from a public school had higher rates than those with international school qualifications from private schools. The former group made up 0.8% of school leavers, the latter group 1.5%.

Figure 8: Public, Private, NCEA and non-NCEA

Of the nearly 50 private schools that school leavers came from in 2023, around 40% had more than 10% of their school leavers heading overseas in the following year. By contrast, just 7% of public schools had departure rates over 10%. Around half of the private schools were in the Auckland region, and their rates were on average higher than rates for private schools in other regions, and noticeably higher than rates from public schools.

Technical notes

Data sources

The main data source used for this paper comes from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure (or IDI). The IDI links administrative and survey data on individuals in an anonymised and secure way that can provide researchers and policy makers a rich resource for answering questions such as this one. For this analysis, we use Ministry of Education data on school leavers linked to customs data on border movements.

Release of data sourced from the IDI is subject to the following Statistics New Zealand disclaimer:

These results are not official statistics. They have been created for research purposes from the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) which is carefully managed by Stats NZ. For more information about the IDI please visit https://www.stats.govt.nz/integrated-data/

See the references section below for additional data sources used.

School leavers

For technical information on how someone is classified as a school leaver, see here: School leaver attainment | Education Counts

How is top achievement measured

For this paper, we have used a measure of school achievement known as expected percentile. This measure was first developed at the New Zealand Qualifications Authority for use in analysing National Qualifications Framework results, and later adapted for analytical use by the Ministry of Education.

The expected percentile measure is calculated for each achievement standard based on the distribution of students' results in that standard. The percentage, and cumulative percentage of students in each of the four possible results, ‘excellence’, ‘merit’, ‘achieved’ and ‘not achieved’ is first determined. From this an individual's expected percentile is the mean of the percentiles represented by the upper and lower bounds of the result range. This gives everyone a score from 0 to 100 based on how many students that year had better results than them. The higher the score, the higher performing they were relative to other students that year. The distinguishing feature of expected percentile is that it provides a relative measure, one that is referenced against the performance of all the other students who did that standard in that year. Students with the same result for particular standards can have different expected percentiles depending on how they did relative to their peers in the same year.

However, this measure only applies to those who did NCEA achievement standards. This covers around 90% of school leavers. Unit standards are not included since only one result, 'achieved' is collected. Similarly, NCEA achievement will not adequately reflect students’ performance in non-NCEA examinations, such as Cambridge International Examinations. Many of these students also do some NCEA achievement standards but their performance in these standards may not reflect their overall performance.

For the purposes of this paper, those with NCEA achievement standards, who didn’t attain international qualifications, were grouped into three groups: top, middle, and bottom. The top group contained the top 10% of NCEA achievement, the middle group contained the next 60%, and the bottom group contained the bottom 30% of those with any NCEA achievement standard credit. The choice for the top group is arbitrary. But analysis of results looking at, for example, just the top 5% of achievers shows similar trends and messages.

Those who attained international qualifications (eg Cambridge International, International Baccalaureate etc.), with or without NCEA credit achievement, formed a further group, while the remainder with no school attainment, or attainment of NCEA unit standards only, formed a final group.

The reader is referred to Ussher (2008) or Scott (2008)⁷ for more detail on how expected percentile is defined.

What counts as leaving New Zealand

For the purposes of this analysis, someone who is away at least 70% of the year is counted as being overseas that year. This level was arbitrarily chosen to broadly align with the length of an academic year. Additional analysis exploring different thresholds did not seem to change the messages too much. For example, choosing a threshold of 75% reduces rates by 5%-10% (less than 0.2 percentage points in the case of all leavers) but does not alter broad trends.

For this paper we look at those who went overseas in the year immediately following leaving school, regardless of whether they stayed away in the second or subsequent years. There are other options that could be explored including those who went overseas in the second or a later year after leaving school, or only looking at those who stayed away at least two, three or more years. Analysis of some of these different options suggests that while the numbers were different, the broad trends and messages were similar.

Notes and references

1. This group is not explored further in this paper. But it would be interesting to explore the extent to which labour market prospects may be influencing this group differently from other school leaver groups.
2. Statistics New Zealand https://www.stats.govt.nz/information-releases/international-migration-september-2024
3. Statistics New Zealand, Infoshare, International Travel and Migration Group, Estimated migrant arrivals to Australia by CLPR, citizenship and birthplace table
4. Email exchanges between author and Australian Department of Education, March 2025. The OECD defines international students as those that travel to another country for study. Mutual residency arrangements between New Zealand and Australia students mean that New Zealanders are considered residents rather than international students in Australian data. OECD reporting for earlier years, based on citizenship, is likely to have overcounted the true level of international New Zealand students in Australia. Changes subsequently made to better distinguish true international New Zealand students (i.e. those that have travelled to Australia for study purposes) from New Zealanders who are otherwise permanent resident in Australia, are however now suspected to be under-reporting the true level.
5. OECD. Data for 2013 to 2022 is sourced from OECD’s Data Explorer, link to data here. Data for 2010 to 2012 is sourced from online Education at a Glance editions for 2012 to 2014, indicator C4. This data is a measure of students enrolled in tertiary education in OECD countries who are identified by these countries as ‘mobile’. Mobile students are defined as those who cross international borders in order to study. Some countries proxy this measure using the country of usual residence or citizenship. It includes students of all ages enrolled in diploma level or higher study regardless of level or whether they are a new or continuing student. Some care may be needed in interpreting trends due to the uncertainty around the extent to which countries have been consistent in how they have been able to collect and report this against the OECD definition over the years.
   Education at a Glance 2021, web only table B6.4 Data relates to 2019. There is equivalent data for earlier years in earlier editions of this annual report, and for the COVID-affected years of 2020 and 2021, but not for later than this at the time of writing this paper.
6. Australian Government Department of Education – Selected Higher Education Statistics links for 2010 to 2023. Under full-year data for commencing students. https://www.education.gov.au/higher-education-statistics/student-data
7. Ussher (2008) see Appendix C in Post-school choices: How well does academic achievement predict the tertiary education choices of school leavers?
   or Scott (2008) How does achievement at school affect achievement in tertiary education?   Page 25.