How does New Zealand’s education attainment compare internationally?
New Zealand is about average.
Eighty-one percent of 25 to 64-year-olds have at least a level 2 school qualification, same as the OECD average. Thirty-six percent have a degree or higher also similar to the OECD average. However, New Zealanders are less likely to hold a master’s degree and more likely to hold a bachelor’s or one-year postgraduate qualification. The share of New Zealanders with a doctorate is about the same as the OECD average.
The share of younger adults with a vocational qualification below degree level is also the same as the OECD average, but when looking at level 4 or above, our share is amongst the highest. We’re one of a handful of mainly English-speaking countries where school students aren’t split into general and vocational tracks, and most vocational training starts after you’ve left school.
Younger adults are higher-qualified than older ones, but the difference in New Zealand is a little smaller than the OECD average. Younger New Zealand adults are more likely to be in employment than is the case in many other OECD countries, and more likely to engage in further education at older ages.
New Zealand women are higher qualified on average than New Zealand men. This is the same in all OECD countries, and our level is about the OECD average. After two decades of catching up and overtaking male levels of educational attainment, the gap in recent years in many OECD countries, including New Zealand, has been relatively unchanged. In 2000, the share of men and women with a tertiary diploma was 22%. By 2022, it was 43% for women and 36% for men, similar to the average across the OECD.
Educational attainment has grown rapidly in New Zealand over the last 20 years. The share with a tertiary diploma or higher has doubled, while those with less than NCEA Level 2 or equivalent has halved. While growth in tertiary attainment has largely mirrored that seen across the OECD, the growth in secondary attainment has been ahead of that across other OECD countries. In 2000, 32% of 25 to 34-year-olds had not achieved the equivalent of NCEA Level 2 well above the OECD average of 26%. By 2022, it was 13%, similar to the OECD average of 14%.
Graph 1: How educational attainment compares across countries
Graph 2: How educational attainment has changed over time
Graph 3: Latest year in more detail
Technical info
Source
The international comparisons used here come from the OECD, as part of their annual Indicators of Education Systems (or INES) programme. The latest comparisons can be found in Chapter A1 of the annual Education at a Glance report or in the OECD's Data Explorer database.
These comparisons relate mostly to OECD countries only but do also include a number of partner countries. Information on educational attainment more globally can be found here: Educational Attainment | UNESCO UIS
Comparing education in an internationally standard way
The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) provides internationally agreed concepts, definitions, and classifications for comparing education. But it is a little different to the way New Zealand talks about education, so here’s a guide for translating the international terms used here to New Zealand ones.
| Attainment terms used in international comparisons | ISCED levels | How it relates to attainment in New Zealand | NZQCF1 levels |
|---|---|---|---|
| Below upper secondary | 0-2 | Less than NCEA2 Level 2 or equivalent. | None or level 1 |
| Upper secondary | 3 | Row 2 column 3 | 2-3 |
| Post-secondary non-tertiary | 4 | Level 4 Certificates. These are “tertiary” in New Zealand’s usage of this term but labelled “non-tertiary” under ISCED usage of the term “tertiary”. | 4 |
| Short-cycle tertiary | 5 | Tertiary diplomas | 5-6 |
| Bachelor’s or equivalent | 6 | Levels 7 and 8 on the NZQCF. This also includes all one-year postgraduate certificates and diplomas. | 7-8 |
| Master’s or equivalent | 7 | Level 9 on the NZQCF | 9 |
| Doctoral or equivalent | 8 | Level 10 on the NZQCF | 10 |
| Vocationally or generally oriented | ISCED further defines programmes into two types. Vocational, for those geared towards occupations or trades, and General for those geared towards general knowledge, skills and competencies. | ||
Notes:
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Some things to note especially...
NCEA Level 1 (or school certificate for older people) is not considered “upper secondary” attainment under ISCED. New Zealand is one of a handful of countries that provide a credential after one year of upper secondary study. In international comparisons, however they are classified as having “below upper secondary” attainment. The term “tertiary” in international terms relates to diploma level or higher, whereas in New Zealand the term is used to refer to anything done in a post school setting, regardless of educational level.
In particular, “upper secondary” attainment refers to anything at NCEA Level 2 or equivalent, including all level 2 and 3 tertiary certificates, while tertiary qualifications at level 4 in New Zealand are referred to as “post-secondary non-tertiary”.
The full ISCED classification can be found here.
About the New Zealand data
New Zealand data comes from Stats NZ’s Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS). A representative sample of around 15,000 households are surveyed every quarter. Everyone aged 15 or over is asked about their highest school and highest tertiary qualification. From these questions, a highest attainment is derived. The data for the international comparisons relates to just those aged 25 to 64 and is an annual average of the four surveyed quarters per year (around 75,000 people). It excludes long-term residents of homes for older people, hospitals, and psychiatric institutions, inmates of penal institutions, and overseas visitors who expect to be a resident in New Zealand for less than 12 months.
They’re estimates ...
The data is based on a sample of households. Most official surveys are designed to produce representative national estimates. Where estimates are made for sub-populations, sampling errors get larger, and in some cases may seriously limit the use of that information. The estimates for the age and gender groups used in this report have been assessed as generally reliable for the purposes of this report.
…and it’s not always known for certain which ISCED level someone belongs to.
A few of the education categories in the HLFS relate to more than one level of educational attainment. For example, the smaller residual categories, such as “other New Zealand post-school qualification” or “other overseas post-school qualification” or “post-school certificate/ diploma level unknown”. Working out which ISCED level to map these to isn’t perfect. As a result, it’s likely that those with a tertiary diploma are under-represented while those with a tertiary certificate below diploma level are over-represented. And because having a diploma or higher is what’s used as ‘tertiary attainment’ in international comparisons, it’s likely that New Zealand is slightly under-represented in international comparisons of tertiary attainment. Similarly, some categories could belong to ISCED levels considered below “upper secondary” in comparisons (i.e. the equivalent of Year 11 quals or level 1 certificates) or as “upper secondary” Year 12 or 13 or level 2 or 3 or equivalent.
The education question in the HLFS was significantly improved in 2013. Before this, more categories spanned multiple levels. The change meant, however, that the educational attainment statistics prior to 2013 are not completely comparable with those from 2013 onwards. In some cases, they were no longer comparable at all. In particular, at the tertiary diploma level. Since, having a diploma or higher is what’s used at “tertiary attainment:” in international comparisons, this also meant this historical data could no longer be used in the international comparisons.
Longer-term trends for those with less upper secondary attainment were less impacted by the change in 2013. For data prior to 2009, ‘no qualification’ also included a small percentage of survey respondents who did not state their qualification. Some of these would have had a qualification.
Several other OECD countries have their own data issues affecting international comparisons. In addition, the changes of a 2011 major revision of ISCED were incorporated into the OECD comparisons from 2013. This did not have a significant impact for New Zealand data but did impact the time series for some OECD countries.
In order to provide a broad indicator of longer-term attainment trends and how these compare internationally, the data here has been aggregated to three high-level groupings:
- 'below upper secondary’ (i.e. less than NCEA 2 or equivalent)
- ‘upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary’ (i.e. between NCEA 2 or equivalent and below diploma) and
- ‘tertiary and above’ (diploma and above).
The New Zealand data before 2013 is indicative only. They have been created just for the purposes of this indicator, and are not official estimates. They are based on a frequency trend analysis of individual HLFS response categories before and after 2013. Population Census data and Ministry of Education qualification completion data have also been used to calibrate the estimates. The true value likely to be within five percentage points of this. While this data provides indicative estimates only, they are still likely to reflect trends in attainment reasonably well.
Readers are encouraged to check out any notes about comparability of country data by hovering the cursor over that country in the graphs.