New Zealand Schools

Amongst the Worst In the OECD

The propaganda machines have been busy for the past twenty-five years assuring New Zealand that our education system amongst the best in the world.  If the criteria for determining "best" included pass rates in our parochial secondary school qualification (NCEA) or conformity with the latest post-modern pedagogical theories the propaganda may have verisimilitude.  But when objective tests about what students actually know are completed, the Potemkin Village collapses. 

The OECD runs a research programme testing the knowledge levels of fifteen year old students across its membership [OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 (PISA)].  The research is conducted every three years.  In our most recent examination New Zealand fell from 13th to 22nd in the OECD maths ratings.  This, after decades of being told by the propagandists that our education system was right up there with the best in the world. 

The Ministry of Education is producing some diagnostic reports looking for causes and explanations for our systemic educational failure.  Amongst the causes of failure were:

• 60 per cent of students indicated they had never heard of mathematical concepts such as congruent figures, radicals and divisors.

• Kiwi students were less exposed to formal maths - such as algebra and geometry - than students in the comparable nations of Australia, Canada, Britain and Singapore.

• 40 per cent of students reported that noise and disorder and students not listening to the teacher occurred in most maths classes.  [NZ Herald]

The justifications and explanations for these failings were predictable and included:

Explanation I: A Failure of Capitalist Free Markets

Maths teachers with degree-level qualifications are more likely to be teaching in urban, high socio-economic schools, and students at these schools have higher exposure to complex concepts and formal maths.  Secondary Principals Association president Tom Parsons said the results stemmed from a national shortage of teachers with adequate mathematics training.  "There is such a demand for teachers who come out of university with maths qualifications that they can go wherever they like," he said. "Usually this is high socio-economic urban areas."

Explanation II: We Don't Know (But We Do Know It's Not Teacher Incompetence)

New Zealand Association of Mathematics Teachers president Gillian Frankcom said the reason for the decline was not clear cut. She said that since 2009, all secondary school teacher graduates had completed a comprehensive maths component and teacher incompetence could not be singled out for student failure.

No justifications were offered to explain disorderly classrooms and bad pupil behaviour.

We cynically expect that nothing will be done to address the erosion of government schooling until New Zealand slips to the bottom quartile in the OECD rankings.  But, hold on.  The OECD membership currently stands at 34 countries.  We are only about three or four places away from being in the fourth quartile.   Meanwhile no-one in the Parliament, and certainly no-one in the Ministry of Education seems remotely alarmed.  The teacher unions, meanwhile, are on another planet. 

If we were asked to suggest a manifesto that would revolutionise our failing government schooling system and change it for the better, it would be this:

1. Empower the consumers of education services--that is, the parents--by introducing a national voucher system allowing parents to purchase whatever the education services they believe best from the schools of their choice.

2. Abolish the school zoning system.

3. Re-introduce bulk funding.

All three have been proposed or introduced or applied to one extent or another.  All have been rejected (and subsequently rejected) by vested sector interests: teacher unions (and their lackeys, the Labour Party), the educrats in the Ministry of Education, and the media.  This opposition has been buoyed by what must be recognized as the biggest irony imaginable: the unions have vociferously rejected each and every one of these measures because (they say) they would destroy a world-class education system.  The chutzpah, the self-delusion, and the state of deep denial are staggering. 

Successive governments have not proven to be effective guardians nor good stewards of government schools.  Teacher unions certainly have not.  Governments have talked a big game, but spent most of the time on the sidelines playing tiddlywinks with the unions. 

The only real guardian of the quality of education left is the parents who (in general) care far more about the welfare of their children (educational and otherwise) than bureaucrats, politicians, and unionists ever have or will be able to do.  Is it not ironic that parents are the one stakeholder--in fact the only real stakeholder--in securing an adequate education for their children that the state implacably distrusts and successively disenfranchises?

The question which the supererogatory powers absolutely refuse to face, let alone answer is this: if parents can be trusted to shop at supermarkets and put appropriate food on the table; if they can be trusted to clothe their children with the appropriate clothing; if they can be trusted to choose the most appropriate doctor for their children, why can't they be trusted to select the most appropriate school? 

Ah, say the vested interests, education is "special".  It is so special it can only be run by an illuminated high caste.  It is a mystical service unlike any other.  So pass the witchdoctors, the alchemists, the gnostics, the wilfully ignorant educational bureaucrats and their teacher-union dance partners, along with their cherished and coseted world-leading education system straight to the bottom quartile of the OECD.  It is the stuff of legend. 

"It's education, Jim, but not as we know it."