KEY POINTS:
First the good news. New Zealand 15-year-olds are among the top performers in the world in science, mathematics and reading. In science we came seventh, in reading fifth and mathematics 11th out of 57 countries.
Actually it's better than that. In science we are really third equal. Only two countries (Finland and Hong Kong-China) had mean scores significantly better than New Zealand. With a score of 530, we were just ahead of Australia and in the middle of eight countries, which had statistically similar averages (ranging from 522-534).
In reading we're fourth equal. Only three countries (Korea, Finland and Hong Kong-China) scored higher than us. We were between Canada and Ireland with a score of 521. Australia was in the following group on 513.
In maths we were sixth equal behind Chinese Taipei, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Korea and Netherlands. With a score of 522 we were towards the bottom of a group of eight countries with similar scores, but still ahead of Australia (520).
Go New Zealand. Or "Woo hoo!", as Mary Chamberlain, group manager curriculum for the Ministry of Education, puts it. Isn't it nice to finally beat Australia at something this year?
Chamberlain is referring to the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa). It's an international standardised study that assesses reading, mathematical and scientific literacy among 400,000 15-year-olds - representing some 20 million students from 57 countries, including 30 OECD members. In New Zealand 4824 students from 170 schools were randomly selected from schools of different sizes, deciles, and urban and rural areas.
"This study measures not only what kids know in reading maths and science, but how they can apply it to real world issues and problems," says Chamberlain. That's important, she says, for countries that want to be knowledge economies - having a supply of prospective workers who can apply their knowledge, not just know and reproduce it.
"We think this study shows our kids are up there with the world's best - that they are more ready than most of their international counterparts to take part in the knowledge economy and contribute to it."
Excellent. Now if only we could just figure out how to create a knowledge economy here, we will go far. But whether or not we have an economy to exploit our 15-year-old brains, the results are pleasing sign for a beleaguered education system.
"I am a little disappointed on one aspect - the relative silence of the critics of our education system who forecast doom and gloom on how standards have deteriorated and how ghastly the whole situation is, including NCEA, only to find the international results are quite impressive. Clearly education and teachers are doing something very well," says Post Primary Teachers Association president Robin Duff.
Indeed they are. But quite what is being done to get these results remains elusive. Those who rush to say the survey is vindication for NCEA, which was introduced in 2000, are on less than solid ground. The Pisa is administered every three years - on each occasion with a main focus on a particular subject. It began in 2000, when reading was the focus. In 2003 mathematical literacy was centre stage. In 2006 it was science's turn. In 2009 it will be reading literacy again.
What the Pisa shows in New Zealand's case is that no matter what changes are made to the system, we still do well. Our results have been more or less the same since the Pisa began. We did as well in 2000 as in 2003 as in 2006. In other words, pre-NCEA teaching produces the same results as post-NCEA. What's keeping standards up is far from clear. The Ministry refused to supply a list of what schools participated in the Pisa. Nor could it tell us how many schools that offer Cambridge examinations as well as NCEA were in the survey.
Oddly, how much countries spend on education also seems to have little measurable effect on results. The United States, for example, scores below the OECD average. A quarter of American 15-year-olds do not even reach basic levels of scientific competence (against an OECD average of a fifth). Britain is also way down the league in all three subjects.
Which begs the question - why do New Zealand and other regular top performers like Finland and Korea do so well? Some of the answers are found in report by management consultancy McKinsey, which analysed the 2003 Pisa results. Schools, it says need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind.
If that sounds like stating the bleeding obvious, it is. But there are some twists. Yes, the best-performing education systems manage to attract the best teachers - in Finland new teachers need a master's degree, South Korea recruits teachers from the top 5 per cent of graduates, Hong Kong from the top 30 per cent. But how they get those teachers is unusual. It's not by offering big salaries, attracting vast numbers of applicants into teacher training and then picking the best. If money were so important, then countries with the highest teacher salaries - Germany, Spain and Switzerland - would probably be among the best. They aren't.
As it turns out, the top performers pay no more than average salaries. Neither do they try to encourage a big pool of trainees. Finland limits its supply of teacher-training places to demand. It's a country where teaching is a high-status profession and it offers generous funds for each trainee teacher. New Zealand's teacher training may not be quite as generous but it, too, is organised on similar grounds. Teacher training, it seems, should be hard, not easy to get into.
McKinsey also highlights how ongoing teacher training is critical to getting good results. In Finland, groups of teachers visit each other's classrooms and get an afternoon off a week to plan lessons together.
There is also a pattern in what countries do once pupils and schools start to fail. The top performers intervene early and often. Finland has more special-education teachers devoted to under-achievers than anyone else. In any given year, a third of pupils get one-on-one remedial lessons.
The latter is important to New Zealand because, despite our good results, there is some bad news. While many New Zealand 15-year-olds can foot it with the best, we also have a large group not doing well at all. In Science, 4 per cent didn't get to Level 1 and 14 per cent got no further than Level 1. In that group, Maori (25 per cent) and Pasifika (33 per cent) are over-represented. It's a similar story in reading - 5 per cent unable to reach Level 1 and 15 per cent unable to go beyond. In maths it's 14 per cent at the lowest mathematical literacy levels. In both maths and reading Maori and Pasifika students are over-represented at the low levels by about a quarter and a third respectively.
"That's nothing we don't know and it's certainly something we're attempting to do something about," says Duff.
"It is a real issue because, for a knowledge economy, we actually need all our kids to have really good reading, maths and science skills," says Chamberlain. She points to various programmes around the country to lift literacy and numeracy skills - the challenge being to translate those individual efforts nationwide. "If every school focused on their bottom 20 per cent and if every teacher focused on doing something differently for their bottom 20 per cent we are actually going to see a system shift."
The Pisa results also show New Zealand's high performance levels are strongly related to socio-economic background. The Pisa figures out the socio-economic status of students through questionnaires completed by students and parents. It includes an index of the highest educational level and occupational status of parents. There are questions, too, about household possessions indicating family wealth, including whether students had a room of their own, a link to the internet, a dishwasher and a DVD or VCR. Plus how many of certain items - cellular phones, televisions, computers and cars.
Across OECD countries, the average variation in student performance in science associated with socio-economic status is 14.4 per cent. In New Zealand the figure is significantly higher. Here and in other countries including France, the Czech Republic, the United States, Britain, Belgium and Germany, one unit of the Pisa socio-economic index is associated with a performance difference of between 45 and 54 score points on the science scale. Here, wealth does buy better marks.
The finding matches another - private school students outperform students in public schools in 21 countries, while public schools outperform private ones in four countries. On average across OECD countries the performance advantage of private schools is 25 score points. In New Zealand the private school advantage is between 76 and 96 score points, as is also the case in Greece and Britain. The figure drops to between 16 and 48 score points in New Zealand when adjusted for differences in the socio-economic background of students and schools.
While an explanation of why New Zealand remains in the top ranks is difficult to pin down, the Pisa confirms that socio-economic factors are key. And that to improve, more needs to be done with our long tail of under-achievers. It's also hard to ignore what every parent knows - good teachers really do make a difference. The point is not lost on Duff, who says education is under increasing stress because of staff shortages - particularly in subjects like science and technology.
