Factors linked to a 90 per cent likelihood of not achieving University Entrance have been identified by the Ministry of Education.

It says the study could form the basis for an early warning system to help schools identify students at risk of failure.

A briefing for Education Minister Erica Stanford said the ministry used anonymised data for 44,000 young people born in New Zealand in 2003 to identify factors linked to not achieving NCEA level 1 and University Entrance.

It said 90 per cent of the young people whose parents had a custodial sentence, mothers who had their first child aged 17 or younger, mothers received $30,000 or more from benefits, or who had Oranga Tamariki family group conferences or placements did not have UE.

The briefing said between 26 and 39 per cent of young people with one of those factors also failed to achieve any NCEA qualification at all.

Other factors with a big effect on achievement included having four or more elder siblings (85 per cent no UE, 26 per cent no NCEA), and experiencing nine or more home changes (84 per cent no UE, 26 per cent no NCEA).

The report said the results were provisional but "we are confident we have landed on some of the essential issues limiting students' potential".

"Our results show that four factors which have the highest influence on NCEA attainment are:

• Oranga Tamariki interactions
• Ethnicity
• Parental income
• Parental education levels"

It said parental education and mother's age had more influence on non-achievement of UE than on not achieving any qualification, while number of home changes, parental income and number of siblings had less influence.

The report said students from poor backgrounds who did well at school were less likely to enrol in degree study than their peers from better-off families.

"Students who achieved UE, despite facing socio-economic barriers to attainment, were less likely to enter degree-level study than their peers (29 per cent vs 55 per cent). They instead were more likely to enter full-time employment (53 per cent vs 37 per cent)," the report said.

"Overall, this evidence suggests that socio-economic circumstances impact post-school outcomes, above and beyond the relationship with NCEA achievement."

It also found that 46 per cent of the students who left school without NCEA level 1 did not go into further education or employment, compared to 26 per cent of those who had the qualification.

The document said the findings had many potential applications, including development of an early warning system that schools could use to spot students at risk of failure.

"Ultimately we will create a predictive model whose results and products can be used in policy and operational contexts," it said.

The paper said Texas schools used an "early warning indicator" to spot potential high school dropouts using research that had identified indicators including low grades in core classes, poor attendance, and disengagement in the classroom.

It said the data could also be used to: "Identify groups of at-risk students, or schools or clusters of schools where there is a high incidence of the identified risk factors, to support effective targeting and design of future interventions".

The document said the government's Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI) could already be used to identify at-risk students, but legally that was not possible.

"Whilst we can within the IDI identify individual students at risk, the release of individual-level data is strictly prohibited to protect individual privacy and the value of the IDI," it said.

The ministry told RNZ the individualised data was anonymised to protect it from disclosure and its study only provided a research basis for the possibility of creating an early warning system.

It said it was not working on creating such a system.

"The next steps are to examine improvements to the model, as discussed in the document, such as extending the model to include factors such as attendance and stand-downs or suspensions; continue to share the insights and respond to questions from others; and continue to share the insights with other Government Ministers in the labour market sector," it said.

The ministry said the findings would not be used to alter the Equity Index which was used to calculate the barriers to education in each school's population and their eligibility for extra funding.

Aorere College principal Leanne Webb said schools knew which students were at risk of underachievement because they tracked their attendance and academic progress.

She said using other data to flag students might be counterproductive.

"It's a bit dangerous having data like that. If they said 'these are the students that are unlikely to succeed' you're predetermining expectations around that student. It's probably better not to know," she said.

Webb said the data was probably most useful for focusing the work of government agencies on the children who needed it most.

"It's not just about schools. It's about Work and Income, it's about MSD, it's about the Police and the justice system all working together to wrap around students who are at risk of falling through the cracks in terms of their achievement," she said.

Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said the findings reinforced that a lot of the factors affecting educational achievement were out of schools' control.

"Some of the factors that we can't control, which are those socio-economic factors, are the things that cause us to stay awake at night trying to create a solution," he said.

"It sort of reinforces what the teaching profession has been saying for quite some time, 'Yep we're all about improving our practice, we're all about being better pedagogues, but there are some things we find just too hard to push back against'."

Couillault said schools worked hard to overcome barriers to learning but many of the answers sat with other government agencies.

"Schools have been doing a lot to try and fix all sorts of things that society hasn't quite right yet and that's part of our role, social engineering, absolutely. But where there's massive dysfunction in a home that doesn't create an environment where learning is prioritised, that's very challenging to push back against that."

Otahuhu College principal Neil Watson said there was no magic solution to under-achievement.

"It's about quality teaching, it's about having a rigorous curriculum that enables every student to achieve UE which is the highest level you can achieve at a secondary school, it's about having great facilities for the students," he said.

Watson said the government should consider that some schools in poorer neighbourhoods did not have facilities that were comparable to those in richer neighbourhoods.

He said the report was probably most useful for developing education policy, including the equity funding for schools facing the biggest barriers.

"One of the key things would be that in terms of the support and equity payments, the New Zealand equity payment is half the OECD average so I think the government does need to look at that," he said.

Watson said schools should encourage all students to get UE because it gave them more choices when they leave school.

-RNZ