Religious schools have again been praised in Metro magazine’s yearly feature titled “The Best Schools in Auckland”.
“Religious schools do great. Private schools do great. Girls’ schools do great. Private religious schools do the best. These schools are ranked in the top 10 in eight of the 14 subject areas in NCEA level 1, and have the top UE attainment levels over the past five years,” the magazine stated.
“Further, in English, all 10 of the top 10 schools are Christian schools, and the lowest decile Christian school was also in the top 10 for sciences.”
The magazine acknowledged that, in presenting academic results only, its analysis was limited, but added that such results are the “only fair, objective measure of the success of the schools”.
“. . . [T]here are limits to this approach, . . . there are other things that make a school good (or even great), but . . . are harder to measure.”
The results presented from Ministry of Education data from 2019 included NCEA level 1 achievement rates (the proportion of students who pass level 1 for a given subject area, rather than a reflection of how well they pass) across 13 subject areas for each school, as well as UE achievement percentage, and scholarship and/or outstanding student numbers.
The magazine acknowledged one Catholic school in particular, noting the Marist College in Mt Albert was the top performer across all 98 Auckland secondary schools in Mathematics at level 1.
Another standout result from the statistics presented by the magazine was St Paul’s College in Ponsonby, whose UE percentage achievement improved from below 20 per cent in 2015 to nearly 80 per cent in 2019.
Across the 13 subject areas analysed by Metro, Catholic schools achieved 38 subject rankings in the top 10 for NCEA level 1 achievement.
“Education is more than passing exams, and our schools are doing a great job at nurturing and developing our young people,” Metro noted.
“Measuring this is hard, and we don’t have the data to look much deeper than academic performance, and identifying schools that have won sporting and music competitions, but parents and prospective students can get a sense of this by talking to teachers and students on school visits.”
