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, both equal second, 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 said the rankings are unique. "We've gone much further with our analysis than you will usually find," he said.
"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," Wilson said, "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 said 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 said.
But, he also said Metro's 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 as 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," Wilson said. "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."
Do you agree with Metro's rankings? Which schools do you think are Auckland’s best and worst? Have your say below
Pick up the July issue of Metro magazine to read more about Auckland schools.
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