Summary of our report

Ministry of Education: Promoting equitable educational outcomes

Why we did this work

Image of the summaryNew Zealand invests significant public resources into primary and secondary education. In 2023/24, these stages of education received about $8.5 billion of public funding. A well-educated population has enormous personal, societal, and economic benefits. However, studies consistently highlight that there are wide variations in student achievement in New Zealand.

Improving equity means that each student’s educational outcomes reflect their abilities rather than circumstances outside their control.

We wanted to understand whether the Ministry of Education (the Ministry) uses comprehensive, current, reliable, and relevant information to promote equitable educational outcomes in Years 1-13.

What we found

  • There is no comprehensive and authoritative summary of student achievement and progress in New Zealand – and what information the Ministry does have is more detailed for some students than for others. For example, the Ministry has limited information about achievement or progress in Years 1-10, and there are gaps in what it knows about students in Māori-medium education before NCEA, the abilities of new entrants, and the achievement or progress of students with disabilities or additional learning needs.
  • The Ministry needs to work with schools and others in the education system to develop a plan for collecting more in-depth information about where inequities are occurring and what factors affect student achievement and progress. Knowing what factors influence the achievement and progress of students affected by inequities is essential for schools to be able to help students in the right ways at the right times.
  • The Ministry could more effectively analyse the information it already has to better identify what factors are having the most significant effects on student achievement and progress at different year levels. A planned and systematic approach to evaluating initiatives would help the Ministry to know how each initiative is helping address inequities in education.

What next?

We have made five recommendations to help improve the information the Ministry collects and its analysis of that information. Addressing these recommendations will help the Ministry to better support schools to meet the needs of all their students.

The Ministry has indicated that it broadly agrees with the findings and recommendations in this report.