The fine print: how we did this

We have drawn on data from the Ministry of Education (data on the schools, 2017 data on academic performance, and 2018 data on school roll), the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (University Entrance achievement in 2018) and some schools themselves (numbers of students who gained a New Zealand Scholarship in 2018).

In collating data and performing our analyses, we quickly found that the definition of percentage pass rate being used in various sources was far from consistent, leading to spurious variations in the figures available. The UE pass rates can change dramatically depending on whether every Year 13 student at a school in a given year is treated as being a UE candidate (the NZQA and Ministry of Education approach) or if only students who are eligible to receive UE going into Year 13 are counted (the preferred approach of many schools).