A new white paper released by Skills Group has urged secondary schools, tertiary providers, and employers to work more closely together to build and deliver pathways from school to employment and further education.
Titled Multiple Pathways to Success, the white paper argued that while university remained a clear and well-supported route, too many young people are not being provided with clear or structured pathways to other post-school destinations.
“Despite every student needing to make a successful transition to further education and employment, the system is still overly focused on university entrance as a goal. At the same time, structured tertiary-based opportunities or work experience programmes are only offered to a small minority,” said Skills Group Chief Executive Officer Rosanne Graham.
“Work experience programmes like Gateway, and tertiary experience programmes like Trades Academies are proven to work. Evidence shows that they improve employment outcomes and earnings. However, they have limited student places and are treated as add-ons, rather than as a normal part of senior secondary education. As a result, most students never gain access to them.”
Each year, more than 60,000 young people leave school. While around 30 percent move directly into degree-level study, the majority take other directions, including employment and vocational training, often without a clear or structured transition.
The white paper highlights the scale of the challenge:
- 69 percent of school leavers do not pursue degree-level study and have no equivalently structured pathway.
- 84 percent of senior students have no access to structured vocational pathway programmes such as Gateway and Trades Academies
- New Zealand produces twice as many young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) as it does apprentices directly from school
At the same time, evidence has shown that students who participate in Gateway or Trades Academies are more likely to be employed after leaving school, highlighting the impact of early exposure to real-world and tertiary learning opportunities.
The white paper highlights that:
- Work-integrated and vocational learning opportunities are fragmented across multiple schemes, each with different rules and limited capacity.
- Schools face financial and operational barriers to expanding these options.
- There are pockets of strong practice, but they are not consistent or well-supported by existing funding and operational policy.
“At the moment, funding is largely tied to the time young people are inside the school gate. This can lead to too many disengaged students making it harder for schools to support real-world or tertiary learning at scale," added Graham.
“Supporting young people on a productive and successful pathway to their next step beyond school is the core purpose of the final years of schooling. However, schools cannot do that alone and we shouldn’t expect them to. Tertiary providers and employers need to join with secondary educators at the curriculum design table, working in partnership to build and deliver the multiple pathways system that our young people and our economy need.”
The white paper also highlighted broader economic and social impacts of the current system, including high levels of skills mismatch, inefficient pathways and transitions into work, and persistent inequities in outcomes for Māori and Pasifika learners. It called for a fundamental shift in how senior secondary education operates, including:
- Moving from the ‘scheme-based’ model of alternative pathways to a universal dual enrolment entitlement, allowing any student over the age of 16 to combine their school learning with tertiary or workplace-based education and training.
- Ensuring funding enables learners to achieve across school, tertiary, and employment settings, without penalising schools for achievement occurring outside the school.
- Embedding partnerships between schools, employers, and tertiary providers into both the design and delivery of senior secondary education.
The release of Multiple Pathways to Success comes as the Government progresses reforms to the secondary school curriculum and replaces the NCEA qualifications. Recent sector work, including the Working Knowledge research report by the New Zealand Initiative, highlights the opportunity to strengthen how curriculum and qualifications support a wider range of post-school options.
“The introduction of new industry-led subjects could be a key vehicle for more proactively delivering vocational options and pathways through partnerships between secondary schools, tertiary providers and employers.”
Skills Group believed this is a critical opportunity, but only if system design is addressed alongside those changes.
“These are young people on the cusp of the rest of their lives. That means achieving University Entrance cannot be the only goal of 13 years of school – the new senior curriculum needs to genuinely recognise and deliver multiple pathways," added Graham.
“If we focus only on changing subjects and qualifications, without fixing how the system supports students to access real-world learning and experience, we risk repeating the mistakes of the past. This is about making all post-school options visible, accessible, and achievable for every student.”
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