The number of high-achieving teens who go overseas after finishing school has reached an all time high - but it is not clear why.
An Education Ministry report shows that among the 10 percent of 2023 school leavers with the highest NCEA attainment, 370 or six percent were overseas last year - up from between four and five percent over much of the pre-Covid years.
In addition, 12 percent of 2023 school-leavers with international school qualifications (110 students) and 10 percent of leavers from private schools (300 students) were overseas.
For all three groups, the percentages were the highest on record in the past 15 years.
The ministry's report was aimed at establishing if New Zealand's highest-achieving school leavers were increasingly choosing to study overseas.
The report said a total of 2120 of 2023's school-leavers were overseas in 2024, but it was not clear how many had enrolled in foreign tertiary institutions.
It said the trend broadly mirrored an overall increase in New Zealanders going overseas, but high achievers and students who went to expensive schools were more likely to be overseas than others.
"The analysis suggests that higher-performing school leavers are increasingly choosing to go overseas after finishing school, and it may be supposed that many of these are likely to be also choosing to study overseas."
The report said it was not clear why students were choosing to study at foreign tertiary institutions.
"The analysis does not identify why school leavers choose to study overseas. While this trend could reflect concerns about the quality of New Zealand universities, it could just indicate the growing normalisation of overseas study, particularly among high socio-economic households," it said.
"Whether this trend should concern policymakers depends on the reasons behind student decisions and their post-graduation choices. It would be problematic if increased overseas study signals declining confidence in New Zealand's universities or leads to a permanent loss of top-performing students. Conversely, overseas study could benefit New Zealand by providing students with valuable skills, experiences, and networks (at no cost to the New Zealand taxpayer). Even if students remain overseas, a well-connected diaspora offers economic opportunities," the report said.
OECD figures to 2022 showed the number of New Zealanders enrolled in tertiary study in OECD countries other than Australia had been increasing until 2020 when it reached about 3500 with more than half in the United States.
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Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said it had been keeping an eye on similar figures for some time.
He said its research indicated about 11 percent of New Zealand school leavers who enrolled in university did so overseas and that figure had been constant for some time.
Whelan said the recent increase was likely to be a post-pandemic spike.
"I don't think we can say whether it's good or bad. It is a reality that some families, some students will choose to go overseas. Perhaps it's partly getting an overseas experience, perhaps there's something that's being offered at an overseas university that they can't get here in New Zealand," he said.
"We do know that a good percentage come back."
Katy MacLeod said her son Jimmy McKirdy finished school in Wellington last year and moved to Melbourne this year to study fine arts at the University of Melbourne.
She said he was motivated in part by the attraction of living in another country.
"And also wanted to go to a bigger city that probably had more arts and culture in the sense of galleries and exhibitions and having access to things on a larger scale," she said.
Another Wellingtonian Lucy Stevens told RNZ she had moved to Melbourne to study at RMIT.
"From my research, RMIT is really good in fine arts and I really enjoyed that Melbourne has a great arts scene and you have a lot more access to a lot more paintings and you have access to a lot more opportunities over here," she said.
Aucklander Gabriel Shannon said her son Alexander chose to study law at an Australian university mostly because he believed the degree would be more internationally portable than a New Zealand law degree.
"His reasoning was that he could practise law anywhere in the world with this particular degree whereas a lot of lawyer friends have gone to London and had real trouble getting in to practice," she said
Shannon said her son was probably predisposed to considering overseas institutions because he was born in London, had an Irish father and attended Kings College, which had international connections.
Steve Hargreaves, the principal of Macleans College in Auckland, said about 10 percent of his leavers, nearly 50 students a year, headed overseas to foreign universities.
"Mostly they're motivated by what they perceive to be a high-quality degree offering. A lot of our students are very interested in the global ranking of the university or the ranking of the degree course that they want to do," he said.
"Some of it is around direct entry, particularly in medicine. If they can get direct entry for medical school in Australia, then they're accepted in first year and then they can follow through and do their medical degree, whereas in New Zealand they have to do that first year and then they're subject to that selection process in the second year.
Hargreaves said it was not good for New Zealand.
"It's a pity that our very top students are going overseas and I think sometimes it's more perception than reality in terms of the the quality of the course you'll get," he said.
"We have a lot of past students who did a first degree in New Zealand. They did very, very well and then they've gone on to do postgraduate at high-profile universities overseas. I think that would be preferable from a Kiwi mindset."
Hargreaves said Macleans students were more likely to enrol in foreign universities if they had studied Cambridge qualifications at school.
"The other group we have is students who are on sporting scholarships and they're playing golf or rowing in American colleges, and they've been successful that way. We have six or seven or eight of those students every year," he said.
This article was first published by RNZ
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