School Sport New Zealand in partnership with Sport New Zealand, are pleased to release the National Census Data for secondary school sport participation for 2023.   We start the school sport year with some great news and are delighted to report that secondary school participation had a 2% increase from 47% in 2022 to 49% in 2023. Both boys and girls had increases of 3% and 2.5% bringing the totals to 53% and 46% respectively.  This equates to 144,862 students representing their school in at least one sport in 2023.   Your hard work, perseverance, and innovation allowed students across the country to enjoy the many social, physical, and mental benefits that we know exist through participation in sport.  Thank you also to the Regional Sports Directors across the motu who have been instrumental in gathering these insights and all the schools who submitted their data.  

The number of teaching staff coaching saw a slight decrease from 17% in 2022 to 16% in 2023.  This still represents nearly 7300 teachers giving their time voluntarily to students.  Staff involved in sport increased slightly from 28% to 29%.  Thank you to everyone who played a part in keeping rangatahi engaged in sport.  

Netball remains the most popular sport in our secondary schools with 26,950 students involved, followed by Basketball (26,572), Volleyball (24,970), Rugby (24,930), and Football (22,350). As in other years, Netball was the most popular for girls followed by Volleyball and, Rugby was the most popular for boys followed by Basketball. Sports that have shown significant increases nationally over the last two years include Volleyball – 11%, Futsal – 10%, Rugby 7’s – 100%, Touch – 13% and Badminton 7%.   

If you would like to find out more about what is happening in your region or school, contact your Regional Sports Director.   

We will post the 2023 national summary data to our website soon.

Article added: Tuesday 13 February 2024