10 Aug 2020

Students at state integrated schools more likely to gain University Entrance, research shows

11:58 am on 10 August 2020

State integrated schools have the best results for the best price compared with private or state alternatives, new research shows.

High school students on their way home, teenagers.

(File image). Photo: 123RF

State integrated schools have a special character like religion or specialist teaching method, like Steiner or Montessori.

The fees are usually about $1500 rather than the $20,000 price-tag for private education.

New research by The New Zealand Initiative showed a state integrated school option might be better for parents to consider sending their children to, for a fraction of the price.

Policy analyst Joel Hernandez used data from Statistics New Zealand combined with an internal school performance tool to collate the information.

It removed confounding factors like a parents' education and income.

Hernandez used University Entrance (UE) as a metric to see if the school was successful.

Through that he found, on average, students at state-integrated schools were more likely to gain UE, he said.

"For instance, while the average student at a state school has a 30.5 percent chance of gaining UE, those at state-integrated schools had a 38.8 percent chance. Private schools were almost as good at 37.4 percent."

But of the high performing schools in New Zealand 66.7 percent of them are private, 45.2 are state-integrated and 15.5 percent state schools.

"If parents are saving up to get their child into a private school, this report shows state-integrated schools might be the best bang for their buck," Hernandez said.

"In an ideal world, students should be getting a world class education at any school.

"Yet state schools are much worse off."

Get the RNZ app

for ad-free news and current affairs