There are state schools so bad they do not deserve to be called schools.
Educator Alwyn Poole has gathered data on the country’s 460 high schools. Inequality in education is growing.
In 2022:
- At 15 high schools no pupil achieved UE (University Entrance).
- 30 state schools average fewer than three pupils a year achieving UE.
- Just 14 per cent of the pupils at eight well-known provincial high schools stay until they are 17 and 62 per cent of the Māori pupils do not attend regularly.
- In contrast, 87 per cent of pupils achieve UE at the best 30 schools and that includes two schools for Māori, St Joseph’s Māori Girls’ College and Manukura.
- International testing shows overall educational achievement is in freefall.
New Zealand did have 12 secondary schools teaching predominately Māori and Pasifika pupils where the attendance was good and the pupils’ performance in NCEA exceeded the national average. They were charter schools set up under the previous National/Act Government.
The union claims: “Charter schools were a hugely expensive and unproven experiment when they were last introduced back in 2014″.
The Ministry of Education commissioned an independent review into charter schools by the well-known consultants MartinJenkins and in response to the teachers’ union’s claims found:
- The pupils when at state schools were failing NCEA. A fifth had been suspended or stood down.
- At the charter schools the pupils’ NCEA results exceed the national average.
- Attendance bettered the Government’s performance target.
- The funding per pupil was the same as for state schools.
The report does list specific limitations to the data obtained in research, including that the student’s year level in each reporting year was not provided by the Ministry of Education and the data provided was for a group of students who were in a group of year levels (years 11-13) for a group of reporting years (2013-13). The school which provided the achievement records was also not identified in the data.
The report gave several reasons for the success of charter schools. Perhaps the reason that concerns the union is that teachers were held accountable for their performance. At the worst-performing state schools has any teacher been held to account?
The teachers’ union fears charter schools will prove the union’s claim is false that parents and income inequality are the sole reason pupils fail. Schools make a huge difference.
Labour when abolishing charter schools, pledged to Māori and Pasifika parents that the Government would lift their childrens’ education achievement. Labour has no solutions. Achievement fell.
Labour’s education spokeswoman is Jan Tinetti. It was on her watch as associate and then Minister of Education that we have schools that do not have a single pupil achieve UE. Teacher training was so poor that 60 per cent of school principals said last week that new teachers have not been prepared to teach content or to manage a classroom.
Now Tinetti says charter schools are an “ideological experiment”. Tinetti cannot have read the MartinJenkins report, nor can she have read the latest academic research.
Charter schools in America have been teaching pupils for over 30 years. In 2022 around 3.7 million students in America were enrolled in charter schools. Charters are so popular that schools hold lotteries to decide enrollment.
Last year researchers at Stanford University’s Centre for Research on Education Outcomes issued a benchmark study of charter schools. It found black and Hispanic charter school students are ahead of their counterparts in traditional public schools “by large margins” in math and reading. There are hundreds of charter schools where disadvantaged pupils, black, Hispanic, poor pupils, or English learners, performed similarly to or better than their more advantaged peers.
The study found that the performance of charter schools continues to improve.
Over 30 years’ experience, nearly four million pupils and hundreds of successful charters including 12 charter schools in New Zealand cannot be called an “experiment”.
The Economist magazine observed “Charter schools do all the things Democrats say they support”. Ditto Labour.
Charter schools far from being right-wing ideology were started by progressives in Massachusetts. Supporters include President Obama.
Charter schools are championed by the Act Party.
It cannot be for votes. The Epsom electorate has some of the country’s top schools. Could it be David Seymour has empathy for Māori and Pasifika children whose only option is a state school where failure is almost certain?
Tinetti, who seems a nice person, displays no empathy for her supporters’ children whose state education will leave them functionally illiterate and innumerate. Only an ideological belief in state education can explain support for schools so bad that they destroy lives.
The Labour Party I joined believed that every child was entitled to a quality education. A Labour party that supports practical workable solutions would support charter schools.
- This column has been amended to include specific limitations to the research cited in the Martin Jenkins report. Richard Prebble responds: “It is correct that there are limitations to the use of NCEA data. But there is strong evidence that the pupils were failing at state schools and were succeeding at Charter schools.”
