The adult Tokelauan population includes all those aged 15 years and over.
- In 2001, 60 percent of Tokelauan adults held a formal educational qualification – 4 percentage points below the equivalent figure of 64 percent for the Pacific population.
- Forty-three percent of the adult Tokelauan population listed a school qualification as their highest qualification in 2001, while a further 17 percent held a post-school qualification. By contrast, 32 percent of the New Zealand population held a post-school qualification in 2001.
- Young Tokelauan adults are more likely to hold a post-school qualification than their older counterparts, as figure 5.1 illustrates. In 2001, 23 percent of Tokelauan people aged 20–24 years held a post-school qualification, while the equivalent figure for those aged 45–65 years was 10 percent.
- Tokelauan females were more likely than Tokelauan males to have a school qualification as their highest qualification (45 percent and 41 percent respectively). Tokelauan females were also more likely than their male counterparts to have post-school qualifications (19 percent and 16 percent respectively).
- Forty-nine percent of New Zealand-born Tokelauan people reported a school qualification as their highest qualification, while a further 18 percent held a post-school qualification. The equivalent figures for Tokelauan people born overseas were 38 percent and 16 percent respectively.
- The overseas-born Tokelauan population (46 percent) was more likely to be without any formal qualifications than New Zealand-born Tokelauans (33 percent).
- Young Tokelauan adults are less likely to be without a formal qualification than their older counterparts. In 2001, 26 percent of Tokelauans aged 20–24 years and 31 percent of those aged 25–34 years were without any formal qualifications, compared with 36 percent of those aged 35–44 years and 61 percent of those aged 45–64 years.