Deborah Coddington: Nanny keeps nation supplied with dummies

Every year the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) - Nanny State's Plunket Nurse - releases the Social Report - Indicators of Social Wellbeing in New Zealand.

Collectively we're all put in a nappy, held aloft by a giant safety pin, our milestones are recorded and we're compared with our siblings in the OECD.

Then the Government uses the report to tell us how well we're doing, while the Opposition says it proves Nanny is failing us.

This year was no exception, and the report was a one-day wonder. But it's worth reading for what it doesn't say, in particular whether or not New Zealand's standards in "knowledge and skills" are improving.

The "desired outcomes", according to the ministry, are that "everybody has the knowledge and skills needed to participate fully in society".

Is that happening? We do not know if any improvements have been made since 1996, when New Zealanders' literacy was measured in the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS). What is especially interesting, however, is that the MSD saw fit to cite this survey in last week's report but avoided any direct comparisons of then with now.

In 1996, the situation was pretty grim. Only about half of those surveyed, aged 16 to 65, had literacy skills above the level deemed a "suitable minimum for coping with the demands of everyday life and work in a complex, advanced society" and which "denotes roughly the skill level required for successful secondary school completion and college entry".

And don't think the test relates solely to those with time to read the latest novels. Literacy was measured across three areas: prose literacy - the ability to understand and use information from texts, including editorials, news stories, brochures and instruction materials; document literacy - "the ability to locate and use information contained in formats, including maps, tables and job application forms"; and quantitative literacy - the ability to "apply arithmetic operations to numbers embedded in printed materials, such as balancing a cheque book or completing an order form". Roughly half the adult population couldn't read, write or add well enough to cope with everyday life. Furthermore, what the MSD didn't tell us last week was that in 1996, some 18 per cent of those who fell into this dire category were aged between 16 and 25, in other words, had recently finished secondary school.

But the ministry has avoided re-measuring our literacy skills in 2006. Instead, it has used "five indicators" to provide a "snapshot" of how New Zealanders are doing in terms of "acquisition of knowledge and skills at a particular stage of their lives".

They haven't compared like with like but have only looked at "participation" in formal education, such as early childhood and tertiary, plus the number of school leavers with "higher qualifications".

In other words, never mind the quality, feel the width.

Participation per se in early childhood education is meaningless. If pre-schoolers are taken for a walk through a motorway tunnel by two early childhood teachers, both too dumb to acknowledge the danger, does that count as acquiring skills and knowledge?

If 5000, 10,000 or even 30,000 school leavers are "participating" in tertiary education by learning twilight golf or by doing Cool IT courses or degrees in nail sculpture, hairdressing or retailing, does that improve the nation's literacy levels?

And we all know that NCEA results are meaningless when it comes to measuring the quality of reading, writing and 'rithmetic. Students only have to complete 12 years of school to "achieve". Certainly the failure word must not be mentioned, lest someone's self-esteem is damaged.

But what would parents know, anyway? If they're poor, they must put up with the school down the road, even if it doesn't suit their children. Silly parents; don't they know their children are needed to keep crap schools from closing down? Goodness me, if all parents, not just the affluent, had choices, they might abandon the schools that send 18 per cent of illiterate and innumerate children out into the world, and then where would those teachers be?

Anyway, parents aren't allowed to know if their neighbourhood school is good or bad. SchoolSmart, a website run by the Ministry of Education which collects and compares up to 20 indicators (including NCEA results) from schools, bans access to parents, despite the fact their taxes fund it.

Education Minister Steve Maharey just last week blocked National's attempt to make SchoolSmart publicly available, a move Bill English suspects is a "political deal with the teacher unions to keep this information secret".

Perhaps the minister thinks parents are happier in their ignorance. Maybe he figures, based on 1996 statistics, that half of them couldn't read it anyway. But what would Nanny State care? The IALS also showed (surprise, surprise) that those with high incomes also scored highest in the literacy and numeracy stakes. Better to keep us ignorant, dependent on welfare or Working for Families, and less likely to spit our dummies and vote Nanny out of office.