Something doesn't add up

Once upon a time students had to prove they had learned enough to be declared academically successful. Photo / file

ACT leader David Seymour asked an interesting question last week. He wanted to know how it is that children's academic achievement in this country continues the decline, by international comparisons, that began 20 years or more ago, yet NCEA achievement rates continue to rise. Something didn't add up, he said, and nothing that has been said or done over the last generation gives any reason for hope that anything is going to change.

Not only are we not fixing the problem, we're not even acknowledging it.

We were told last week that our kids are the worst-performing in the world when it comes to maths, one of what used to be the three Rs. We've always had those, the writer included, for whom the likes of calculus and algebra were and will forever remain a mystery, but it is difficult to thrive in adulthood without a working knowledge of arithmetic, and that seems to be where the current generation is struggling.

The only possible conclusion when it comes to declining levels of achievement by a global standard and rising rates of NCEA achievement is that the bar is continuing to be lowered. That wouldn't surprise anyone who has marvelled over recent years at how students are able to amass the credits they need to show they have made good use of their years of compulsory education. One suspects that it is now somewhere near ankle level.

Half a century ago schools were broadly populated by two types of student, those who were academically inclined and those who were not. Anyone who has a cogent argument supporting the premise that that has changed is very welcome to share it. The undoubted fact is that it has not, but the days when schools could defend rates of achievement that reflected that have gone. Every student is now expected to achieve to a level that qualifies them for tertiary education.

The results of that have long been evident, and are becoming more so. It would once have been inconceivable that teenagers who were effectively illiterate would qualify to attend university, but that is what is happening.

There were stories a generation ago of primary teacher trainees with a lower reading age than those of the children they planned to teach. Of university students who were incapable of reading their course content. Of RNZAF recruits who were in need of remedial reading lessons.

Fifty years ago academic success officially relied upon the ability to pass exams that began in the 5th form and finished in the 7th. The great bulk of youngsters left school at 15, or shortly thereafter, with or without School Certificate (NCEA Level 1), a few going on to University Entrance (Level 2) and a very few to bursary/scholarship (Level 3). That began to change in the late 1960s, with many more going on to the 6th and 7th forms.

From there, perhaps, sprang the notion that everyone should go to university, a theory that has now reached the ridiculous stage. Many of those who go to university these days are clearly unsuited for that level of study, many pursuing qualifications that might, if successful, prove personally fulfilling, but will never lead to any sort of employment.

The other thing that has changed is that the demand for labour has all but evaporated. Even a town like Kaitaia once offered a host of well-paid jobs for kids who did not shine at school. Those jobs have gone, but the kids who need them have not. Pretending that every child has the ability to achieve at a level that would once have been unimagined is not the answer, especially when even the non-academic are not getting the education that their parents and grandparents did. It also seems blindingly obvious that any number of experiments in education haven't worked, and never will.

Someone who seemed to know what they were talking about said last week that teaching innovative ways of solving mathematical equations, over and above the tried and true, was brilliant - for those who were gifted at maths. Those techniques would extend and challenge those kids. Those who were not mathematically gifted, however, wouldn't have a clue. They would do worse than struggle. They wouldn't learn at all. He didn't quantify the problem, but one suspects that for every youngster who is mathematically gifted there are hundreds who are not.

His suggestion was that the non-gifted would be much better off if they were simply taught the times tables.

Ah, the times tables. Once taught in the first two years of primary school, by rote. The teacher would point at numbers above the blackboard and children would chant the answers. Never a great way to spend a hot summer afternoon, sitting cross-legged on the floor, but it worked. It would still work today.

David Seymour reckons we now have an education crisis on our hands, and it's hard to argue with that. And if we are to do something effective about that, perhaps we need to go back to unfashionable ways of teaching that worked for generations, and resist the temptation to adopt new techniques that might work for some but not for others. And perhaps we need to get the politics out of education.

Many parents welcomed national standards, for example, a process designed to identify kids who weren't progressing as they should have been in the basics, so they could get the extra help they needed to catch up, before it was too late. The teacher unions saw it as the thin end of a dangerous wedge, however, which would be used to identify schools that were doing a good job and those that weren't. We couldn't have that!

Parents, many of whom persisted in judging a school by its decile rating (also on the scrap heap), possibly the worst conceivable method of choosing a school for their children, had no right to know which school was going to give their child the best shot at achieving to their potential.

In 2017 the newly-elected Labour-led government scrapped charter schools, not because they didn't work, but because the teachers did not need to be union members. This from a government that continues to profess that children are at the heart of every policy. Replace the word children with unions and you'll be getting closer to reality.

If some kids were still getting a world-class education and others weren't, we would have an education crisis. The fear now must be that very few - there will be some - are getting the world-leading education that this country once made available to every child, and the great majority are not. Strong parental support will be making up the shortfall for some, but how many kids miss out on that too?

It seems that our decline in terms of academic achievement in comparison with other countries will halt only when we have reached the bottom. We've done that now with maths, and the other core subjects of reading and science won't be far behind. Our decline is not a blip. It is a slow, steady process that began years ago, and anyone who takes heart from rising NCEA achievement levels is deluding themselves. Mediocrity has become the norm, and we are all going to pay very dearly for that for many years to come.