New statistics reveal charter schools underachieving

<h2>New statistics released by the Ministry of Education &lpar;MoE&rpar; reveal that the number of charter school leavers attaining NCEA level two or above is considerably lower than those from other schools&period; <&sol;h2>&NewLine;<p>During 2016&comma; only 59&period;7 per cent of students from charter schools left left with NCEA level two or above compared with a system-wide figure of 80&period;3 per cent across all schools&period; Looking more closely at specific groups&comma; the system-level result for decile three schools was 74&period;3 per cent and for M&amacr;ori students&comma; across all deciles&comma; it was 66&period;5 per cent&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The school leavers&&num;8217&semi; metric is used as the performance standard in the charter school contracts&period; In 2013&comma; then minister of education&comma; Hekia Parata&comma;  said there was to be &&num;8220&semi;<em>no <i>compromise on the system level benchmarks”&period; <&sol;i><&sol;em><&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The decile three system-level result for 2012 had been used as the baseline for the charter schools in their first year&comma; i&period;e&period; 66&period;9 per cent for the 2014 year&period; The contracts then set out a series of performance standards for subsequent years&comma; culminating in the target of 85 per cent of school leavers attaining NCEA level two or above by 2017&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;&lbrack;There were no contract performance standards set above NCEA level two&period; The contracts for primary and middle schools are based on performance standards using National Standards for years one to eight&rsqb;&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>There were 124 school leavers from charter schools in 2016 and this is the breakdown of the highest qualification they left school with&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Below level one&colon; 25 &lpar;20&period;2 per cent&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Level one&colon; 25 &lpar;20&period;2 per cent&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Level two 45 &lpar;36&period;3 per cent&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Level three &lpar;14 11&period;3 per cent0<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>UE 15 &lpar;12&period;1 per cent&rpar;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>And at the top end&comma; numbers above level two fall away quite markedly&period; The proportion of school leavers attaining NCEA level three or above&comma; for example&comma; was 23&period;4 per cent compared to 53&period;9 per cent for the system as a whole&period; Only 12&period;1 per cent of school leavers attained UE compared with a system-wide figure of 40&period;7 per cent&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;