The Education Review Office (ERO) says the education system is failing thousands of at-risk and challenging students and has called for an urgent overhaul.
By John Gerritsen of RNZ
In a report published on Tuesday morning it recommended major changes to keep more at-risk teens in school and a new model of alternative education for those who leave.
The report, 'Bridging the gap: How well do we support students learning in alternative settings?' said the number of students leaving the mainstream for alternative settings doubled in the past decade to more than 8000, and more of them were in their early teens.
It said about 6000 were enrolled with the Correspondence School and 2000 with alternative education providers and their academic results were often very poor.
ERO senior manager Rebecca Bjarnesen told RNZ it was worried by the increase in enrolments and the growing proportion of younger students.
"Some children are going in at Year 9," she said.
"We are failing the students who most need a quality education and missing an opportunity to change the lives of these young people. A step change is needed to reverse the trend of students disengaging from school."
The report recommended making schools more accountable for retaining their students and giving more support to those with the highest concentrations of at-risk students.
It also called for more funding for alternative education providers.
"We're recommending strengthened support for attendance, learning and behaviour and really targeted support where it's needed most to keep as many students in mainstream education as we can," Bjarnesen said.
"Then having a system of alternate provision that recognises the needs that these young people have so they've got higher, more complex needs they need better support to achieve."
The report recommended "a new model of quality alternative provision so that all students in New Zealand receive a high-quality education, no matter where they study", including the use of qualified teachers.
It's not the first time officials have called for an overhaul of the system.
In 2023 ERO said alternative education providers needed more funding and in 2012 the Education Ministry said at-risk students were being dumped on Te Kura, the Correspondence School.
Teachers and parents interviewed for the report described failures in the system and complex needs among the students they worked with.
"Schools lack what is necessary to properly look after and teach neurodivergent children… My children were punished for their neurodivergent behaviours, and the school was always calling me to come deal with them or just pick them up," said a parent with a child at Te Kura.
"A student that we moved [to Alternative Education] used very poor behaviour to mask anyone finding out about her extremely low literacy and numeracy levels, due to learning problems connected with auditory processing and some phonics issues," an alternative education leader told ERO.
The report said students in poor communities and students who spent time not enrolled in any school were five times more likely to go into an alternative education setting than other students.
Suspension from school and referral to a specialist for learning difficulties were also high risk factors.
The report said most students in alternative settings were Māori.
More referrals but a lower bar?
The report said staff in alternative settings worried schools were making more referrals because they had less tolerance or capacity to manage student behaviour.
"Previously, we had cases where kids are being abused, missing big gaps of school, quite high risks, high needs. Now we are getting kids that just have an attitude. I feel like teachers are becoming less tolerant in mainstream," an alternative education teacher told reviewers.
Asked if schools' bar for referring students to alternative education settings was too low, Bjarnesen said 12% of schools referred 60% of the students in those settings.
"There are some that are referring a disproportionate amount of young people into these settings," she said.
"When schools were retaining their students they were doing a lot of work to build their students' sense of belonging, strengthen teaching curriculum, filling the gaps in learning that they've had."
More than half the students in alternative education or Te Kura said their family wanted to enrol them there.
School leaders told ERO they were most likely to refer students for bad attendance or behaviour, learning needs and mental health reasons.
"Over half (51%) of Activity Centre students and a third (34%) of Alternative Education students, say they were referred because they were disruptive in mainstream classrooms. In addition, almost four in ten Activity Centre students (39%) and Alternative Education students (36%) say they are learning there because of violent behaviour," the report said.
But among students enrolled in Te Kura's Engagement and Wellbeing Gateway, 40% said they had enrolled in part because they were themselves the victims of bullying.
"Overall, a quarter (25%) of students report they are learning in their setting because of learning needs that were not supported at their old school, and four in ten (41%) are because of mental health challenges that made school hard. These figures are highest in Te Kura's Engagement and Wellbeing gateway, where over half of students say they are learning there because of mental health challenges," the report said.
The report said the government could save a lot of money if it improved alternative education.
"By age 25, these students cost between $170,000 and $770,000 more, compared with the general population - 18 times higher for students in Te Kura's Engagement and Wellbeing gateway, 27 times higher for Activity Centre students, 28 times higher for Alternative Education students, and 80 times higher for those in Residential Care. Not providing the support these students need early in life leads to escalating needs and costs later," it said.
The report said students in alternative settings were 10 to 30 percent less likely to be wage earners and up to 1.5 times more likely to rely on a benefit.
"These students, except for those from Te Kura, also have up to three times the rate of offending. More than three in ten (31%) of Alternative Education and Activity Centre students, and over half (54%) of Residential Care students, had a court charge by age 24."
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