Attainment of 18-year-olds

This measure includes all New Zealand secondary students who attended a New Zealand school after their 15th birthday. The measure reports on the number of 18-year-olds who have attained a qualification at Level 2 or above by age 18, it includes attainment of NCEA Level 2 or higher and attainment of other Level 2 qualifications from tertiary institutions and attainment from alternative assessments such as Cambridge International Assessment, and International Baccalaureate.

Summary

This index page provides data on the number of 18-Year olds with a Level 2 Qualification or above from 2011 to 2019.

Cohort numbers are identified through the Ministry's ENROL database, and based on New Zealand Domestic Students who turned 18 within a calendar year.  Attainment details are sourced from the Ministry of Education School Leaver dataset, New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and Tertiary Single Data Returns (SDRs).

Pivot Table

This spreadsheet allows you to create your tables by any combination of variables.  It has the option of displaying number of 18-Year olds by Student Gender, Ethnicity, Leaving Age, the pathway through which they first attained a Level 2 Qualification or above, and by school type variables (such as decile or affiliation) and regional type variables.

Please note: use of this spreadsheet requires MS Excel version 2007 or later.

Time Series Data

This spreadsheet provides numbers and percentages of 18-year-olds with NCEA Level 2 or above across time in a simple, easy to use format.

School Data Dimension Notes

The dimensions are:

Year:

The calendar year in which students turned 18 - for example, the '2019' cohort are all students identified in Enrol who turned 18 in 2019, or born in 2001. Information is not available for cohort years prior to 2011.

Student Gender:

The gender of the students as recorded in ENROL.

Student Ethnicity:

The ethnic group the student belongs to, for example, Māori, Asian. The ethnic group data is presented at level 1 and total response. That is, leavers are counted for each level 1 ethnic group they have indicated they belong to. While a student may be represented in more than one ethnic group, they are only counted once in the ethnic group "Total".

Leaving Age:

The age (in years) on the last day of attendance at a New Zealand school before student's entry in tertiary study or the workplace.

School Type:

The type of the school the student was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school the student attended before entry in tertiary study or the workplace, for example Composite (Year 1-15).

School Authority:

The ownership of the school the student was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school the student attended before entry in tertiary study or the workplace, for example State, State-Integrated and Private.

Decile:

The decile assigned to the school the student was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school the student attended before entry in tertiary study or the workplace.  Decile 1 schools draw the greatest proportion of their students from low socio-economic areas. Schools are assigned a socio-economic score based on five census derived socio-economic factors. The 10 percent of schools with the lowest scores are considered decile 1 schools; the next 10 percent of schools are considered decile 2 schools, etc.

Education Region:

The Education Region of the school the student was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school student attended before entry tertiary study or the workplace. These four administrative regions are created by the Ministry of Education and are aligned with the Ministry’s four regional offices. This may not correspond to where the qualifications were gained or the location of the student in year of cohort.

Regional Council:

The Regional Council of the school the students was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school the student attended before entry into tertiary study or the workplace.  Regional council boundaries are defined by Statistics New Zealand. This may not correspond to where the qualifications were gained or the location of the student in year of cohort.

Territorial Authority:

The Territorial Authority of the school the student was attending at 18-years-old, or the last school student attended before entry in tertiary study or the workplace. Territorial authority boundaries are defined by Statistics New Zealand. Auckland super city has been subdivided into local board. For more information on Auckland city local boards visit the  Auckland Council website.