The Herald’s political and specialist reporters examine the big issues facing New Zealand and how the main political parties plan to deal with them. Today, Derek Cheng looks at education.
The long-term trend for education standards is falling, and more sharply for students who are Māori, Pacific, or from poor households - though the depth of the problem depends on which numbers you look at.
New Zealand students still sit above the OECD average, but have been sliding down the reading, maths and science ranks over recent decades, most sharply between 2009 and 2012.
That’s according to the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) report, which compares 15-year-olds around the world.
The most recent Pisa report, for 2018, found that reading scores have been dropping more steeply for students from richer households than for those from poorer ones. Despite that, “the gap in average scores between socio-economically advantaged and disadvantaged students remains large”.
Māori and Pacific students performed below the New Zealand average, while the gap between the top and the bottom 10 per cent in reading and science “has remained large since earlier Pisa cycles”.
Data from the National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement looks at Year 4 and Year 8 students over time, and shows “statistically significant declines in the average mathematics scores for girls, Māori learners and Pacific learners between 2018 and 2022″.
The NMSSA assessment for writing shows a “small statistically significant decrease” for Year 4 students from 2012 to 2019. For Year 8 students there was no fall in performance, though only 35 per cent were at or above curriculum expectations.
For Year 4 students in 2019, 63 per cent were at or above curriculum expectations for writing, the same proportion as for reading. For Year 8 students in reading, it was only 56 per cent. The reading scores had not changed significantly since the previous assessment, in 2014.
The 2017 average NMSSA science scores also hadn’t changed since the previous assessment - in 2012 - and while 94 per cent of Year 4 students were at or above curriculum expectations, only 20 per cent of Year 8 students were.
Overall, this shows the increasing disparities in the rates of those who are meeting curriculum expectations in maths (82 per cent in Year 4 and 42 per cent in Year 8), writing (63 per cent and 35 per cent) reading (63 per cent and 56 per cent) and science (94 per cent and 20 per cent).
The latest school leaver data shows every level of education attainment going backwards.
Of the 64,000 or so students who left school in 2022, only half attained NCEA Level 3 or above. A quarter of them left without NCEA Level 2 - considered the minimum level needed to pursue work or further study - while 15 per cent failed to even reach NCEA Level 1.
These proportions are at their worst levels for several years, while the retention rate hasn’t been so poor since 2009; more than one in five school leavers - almost 14,000 teenagers - left school before they turned 17.
“Signs of continued inequity are apparent, with leavers identifying as Māori, Pacific, male, or from lower-decile schools being less likely to leave school with NCEA Level 2 or above,” says Education Counts.
Meanwhile, the latest truancy data shows only 59.5 per cent of students regularly attended school (defined as going to 90 per cent of classes) in Term 1 this year; 8.3 per cent were chronically absent (less than 70 per cent of classes).
“International studies indicate that almost a quarter of New Zealand learners in Year 5 are not on track to become fully literate, and almost half of learners in Years 5 and 9 are not on track to become numerate,” says Government paper Preparing All Young People For Satisfying and Rewarding Working Lives.
The paper estimates that 22 per cent of the half a million young people aged between 16 and 24 are likely to spend more than half of those years in limited employment. Overrepresented in the group are Māori (35 per cent) and Pacific (15 per cent) young people.
Many issues inside the classroom have been identified, including different standards of learning across different schools, and even within the same school, and questions of teacher training.
Disruptions from severe weather events and the Covid-19 pandemic have also played - and continue to play - a role. The cost of living crisis is also pushing more students into the workforce rather than staying in school.
Education outcomes are also interrelated with early life experiences including housing and family stability, and later life courses including poverty and crime.
But there is genuine concern that the status quo will entrench the inequitable outcomes for Māori, Pacific and socio-economically disadvantaged students, and the next generation of workers will have holes in their learning that could have potentially severe downstream social consequences.
There appears to be more common ground between Labour and National than between each of them and their likely post-election governing partners. They both want greater emphasis on the essential subjects, though how much flexibility teachers would have remains to be seen.
Labour wants to legislate its Common Practice Model to ensure that from 2026, reading, writing and maths are all taught consistently across the country from primary to secondary level. It also wants to make financial literacy compulsory in schools from 2025, a policy that is part of its nine-point pledge card.
Labour’s wish to permanently pay employers for taking on apprentices and expand 20 hours a week of free early childhood education to 2-year-olds are also on its pledge card, but its Common Practice Model policy is not.
National wants the national curriculum to include what primary and intermediate schools must cover each year in reading, writing, maths and science. Students would then be required to have an hour of maths and two hours of reading and writing on average each day. Year 3 and Year 8 students would be tested twice a year.
To improve teaching, there would be an exit exam for primary and intermediate teacher graduates for reading, writing, maths and science instruction. Existing teachers would have professional development in teaching the basics.
National also wants a ban on cellphones in schools and to disestablish Te Pūkenga, rolling back changes that centralised the vocational education sector.
Act wants to completely overhaul the system by creating a government account (Lifelong Learning Account) for every child with $307,000 in it, which parents can use to apply for their child to attend any registered school, public or private. How much it will try to negotiate for this in any post-election talks remains to be seen, but the party has not made it one of its main policy platforms.
To encourage teaching excellence, Act would also establish a $250 million fund ($5000 per fulltime teacher) which school principals would allocate as they pleased based on staff performance.
Act also wants to halve the workforce at the Ministry of Education and put the $250m in savings into classrooms, take a more punitive approach to school truancy, and require standardised tests in all schools with published league tables. It also wants to be able to cut funding or licencing for early childhood education centres that are underperforming.
The Greens believe the biggest barrier in education is underlying inequality, which its minimum basic income - funded by a wealth tax which Labour has ruled out - seeks to address.
The Greens also want more teachers per student across all education levels, which teacher unions say would make one of the biggest differences in the whole sector.
It also wants to create school hubs with health and social services on-site, including mental health support - a concept that has been mooted by some education experts, including Education Hub founder Dr Nina Hood.
Like Te Pāti Māori, the Greens support “by Māori, for Māori” in schools, as well as teaching te reo Māori in schools, and more funding for kōhanga reo and wananga.
Te Pāti Māori wants to put $200m towards a new hapū-based wānanga, 25 per cent of the education budget for Māori models of delivery and pastoral care, and remove the power of schools to expel students younger than 16.
New Zealand First only has one education policy listed in its 2023 commitments beyond a generic “restore education” - reverse the introduction of diversity education in schools.
(This will be updated as parties release more policies)
Labour:
National:
Act:
Green Party:
Te Pāti Māori:
NZ First
Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
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