26423 (2026). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister for Tertiary Education

26423 (2026). Hon Dr Ayesha Verrall to the Minister for Tertiary Education: How many people so far have enrolled in a graduate entry master’s degree that leads to a Registered Nurse qualification in 2026 and of these how many are New Zealand citizens, permanent residents, Australian citizens or other?

Hon Penny Simmonds: I refer the member to the list below that shows the number of learners reported in April 2026 enrolled in a graduate entry Masters nursing qualification that is a pre-requisite to registration as a nurse by citizenship or residency status. Citizenship or residency status Learners New Zealand citizen 255 New Zealand permanent resident 240 Australian citizen S Other 145 Total 645 Data Caveats: Data are as at 08-June-2026 for reporting year 2026 as of the April Single Data Return (SDR) and has been sourced through administrative data held by the TEC. Note: Data for 2026 are year-to-date (up to April) and will change, care should be taken when using this data. Providers (Universities, Institutes of Technology and Polytechnics, Wānanga and Private Training Establishments) submit their SDR data three times a year (April, August, and December), and each submission reflects all known enrolments and delivery at the time. A learner will be counted in each year they are studying. Data are limited to learners reported to TEC under sources of funding: • Delivery of Qualification (DQ) • International Full-Fee Paying The list of accredited nursing qualifications was sourced from www.nursingcouncil.org.nz. The way the Data are structured, a learner can have multiple citizenship and residency combinations. For learners with multiple residency and citizenship combinations, the following hierarchy was used: 1. Any learner recorded as a New Zealand citizen is counted as a New Zealand citizen. 2. Any learner not counted as a New Zealand citizen but is recorded as a New Zealand permanent resident is counted as a New Zealand permanent resident. 3. Any learner not counted as New Zealand citizen or permanent resident but is recorded as an Australian citizen is counted as an Australian citizen. 4. All other learners are recorded as “Other”. This includes fee paying international learners. All learner numbers in this information request have been rounded to the nearest five. Where values are less than five, the actual value has not been provided for privacy reasons. These can be identified by the "S" value. Due to rounding and suppression, the underlying values may not add up exactly to total values. Results are based on information reported through the SDR for the purposes of funding tertiary education. The data does not include any reporting outside of the SDR and relies on the accuracy of data reported by TEOs. This data has been compiled specifically to respond to this question. It uses administrative data collected by the Tertiary Education Commission for the purposes of funding tertiary education and relies on the accuracy of data reported by TEOs. Care should be taken when making comparisons with data collected or compiled for other purposes.