The Education Review Office has investigated how well New Zealand's alternative education system is working, and found that it's not doing well enough.

Alternative education is a funded pathway for students aged 12 to 15 who have struggled in mainstream school and are at risk of dropping out entirely. Entry usually happens when a student's normal schooling breaks down. Students are legally required to keep attending until they're 16; before that, parents have to get special permission to pull their child out, according to the Ministry of Education. Alternative education is run by a mix of community organisations, Māori schools (kura), and specialist units. The system is meant to help students get back into mainstream school, into work, or into further training.

The review looked at how well providers were meeting that goal. The findings were not good. Some providers don't have decent buildings or enough qualified teachers. Planning for how students move on after alternative education is weak. These are criticisms that have been made before — research published in 2023 said the system works more as a last resort than as a proper pathway, and that it simply doesn't get enough funding to do what it's supposed to do.

Who This Affects Most

The alternative education sector has far more Māori students than mainstream schools do. Between 2015 and 2019, attendance among Māori students was already dropping significantly, and then COVID-19 made that worse, according to the Ministry of Education's data on Māori education. Students who fall behind in primary or intermediate school are more likely to end up in alternative education. That means the quality problems in alternative education hit hardest on young people who are already facing other challenges.

The Education Gazette has documented what good alternative education looks like: strong relationships between students and teachers, teaching that fits with young people's culture and background, and clear pathways forward. Some providers do achieve this. The review doesn't say the whole sector has failed. But because quality varies so much, where a student ends up matters hugely for what happens to them next.

Three Main Problems

The review found the same problems showing up again and again. First: some buildings are not fit for teaching. Second: many teachers in alternative education don't have formal teaching qualifications, and there's nothing stopping unqualified people from leading classes. Third: the sector has rarely tracked what happens to students once they leave, so it's hard to know whether providers are actually helping their students succeed.

These issues aren't new. They've come up in other reviews before. The real concern is that a system serving students with the greatest need has known about these problems for years and nothing much has changed.

The Education Review Office's job is to report on how schools are doing, not to fix them. The Ministry of Education and the Education Minister have to act on those findings. What the system needs is more money per student, a proper training pathway for alternative education teachers, rules that require planning for when students leave, and standards for school buildings that actually get enforced. Those are political and funding decisions that a review body can't make.

The question now is what happens next. The report shows what's wrong, but it doesn't spell out a solution. Some alternative education providers are doing well; others aren't. The young people with the least ability to cope with a bad situation are the ones paying the price. That's the gap the Ministry and the government have to close.