Metro Names The Best Schools In Auckland
The best high schools in Auckland are Marist College in Mt Albert and Macleans College in Botany, according to the
annual list just published by Metro magazine.
Metro has split its analysis in two, producing separate rankings for schools that rely on NCEA and the Cambridge exam system.
Marist tops the NCEA list, followed by Epsom Girls Grammar and Mt Roskill Grammar (second equal), Carmel College and
McAuley High School.
In the Cambridge list, Macleans is followed by Westlake Boys High School and Auckland Grammar.
Metro editor Simon Wilson says the rankings are unique. “We’ve gone much further with our analysis than you will usually
find,” he says.
“We’ve looked at the last three years’ worth of results. We’ve compared all schools against the others in their deciles,
which allows us to work out which ones add the most value to their student intake. We looked at top academic achievement
and general competence, to see how well schools serve all their students. And this is the first time that Cambridge
results across the schools have been released publicly.”
Schools that use the International Baccalaureate (IB) system are also included. “IB is a two-year exam system,” says
Wilson, “and most of the schools that use it have just started on that approach. So their NCEA results are still
relevant and we have included them in our NCEA analysis.”
Wilson says it’s notable that many of the top schools are Catholic. “There’s obviously something many of them are doing
that the other schools could learn from,” he says.
But, he adds, “our Top 20 schools cover the range There are single sex and co-ed, high decile and low, large and small,
conservative and more liberal, and state, integrated and private. The results suggest there are many kinds of
high-performing schools.”
Metro also indentified the worst schools in Auckland. They are Mangere College, Henderson High School, Tangaroa College,
James Cook High School and Al-Madinah School.
“All these schools are low-decile or close to it,” says Wilson “But several of the top schools were also low decile. Our
results show that some schools in that range are performing way better than others Why the gap? That’s something the
Ministry of Education and the government definitely need to focus on.”
The July issue of Metro also contains:
• An investigation of King’s College by Donna Chisholm.
• An exclusive interview with songster Chris Knox, with photos by Jane Ussher.
• The work of 14 new contributors
• Previously unseen writing by Frank Sargeson
• And the death of fabled gossip writer Felicity Ferret!
ENDS