Expert gives education system top marks

Photo / Dean Purcell

Leading educationist Professor John Hattie has given a more glowing assessment of the education system than the Government often gives it.

He told the Labour Party conference in Auckland on Saturday that parents often underestimated where the New Zealand system stood internationally and thought it was about average when it was among the best in the world

"We are way up there at the top. Something is going right."

Professor Hattie, an assessment specialist, has recently advised Prime Minister John Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley on the implementation of National's contentious national standards policy in primary schools, which National says will lift standards.

Professor Hattie largely avoided the subject on Saturday though he said that average standards for reading, writing and maths over the past 50 years had not changed.

While that might not sound impressive, the system was already near the top of the world.

"Each year we reinvent the problem at the start of the year. So I think it is impressive that our system and our teachers are able to take our kids and get them up to that high international status every year.

"Changing the average of the whole nation is not easy and we need to be careful about asking for it because it's not going to happen easily unless we identify the right problems, which in my opinion are those kids who are not performing up to their potential."

He said NCEA had been successful in keeping students at school and giving them qualifications. And there could be confidence that the assessment was the same throughout the country.

But Professor Hattie spelled out some of the problem areas.

Tomorrow's Schools had many benefits but had created 2700 "islands" of individual schools not co-operating or sharing answers to problems.

He said that while a lot of attention was given to the "tail" of under-achievers, not enough attention was being given to children on the other side of the scale who were not achieving their potential.

He believed the decile system of rating schools should be abolished - though the equity funding that went with it should not.

The decile system did not help anyone except real estate agents selling houses in decile 10 areas.

He said the Ministry of Education did not listen to teachers because they had no organisation dedicated to professional standards as that surgeons, doctors and other professionals had.

New Zealand schools rated poorly in the way students felt about them as a safe and inviting learning environment. In an international comparison, they rated second to last, he said.