It should encourage schools and teachers to work together to share their best ideas, not compete with each other.
It should support kids to be all they can be, no matter what background they’re from.
And it should encourage creativity, not conformism.
We agree. We would have liked the opportunity to explain to Bryan Bruce how schools and teachers around the country are working towards these goals.
We would have made him aware of the biggest system change schooling in New Zealand has seen in 25 years. That’s the Investing in Educational Success initiative, introduced in 2014, and which 40% of schools have now joined.
There’s a lot to learn from Finnish schools, but there’s also a lot to learn from local schools who are at the cutting edge of these new Communities of Learning.
Such as the schools that are forming the Waitakere Community of Learning, who talk about “a huge groundswell of goodwill and optimism” in their work.
More than 1,000 schools with more than 320,000 students are forming 117 Communities of Learning around the country. These groups of schools are working together to share their best teaching ideas, and they’re getting sizeable resourcing to help them do that.
One thing about the documentary that just didn’t ring true was that our education system crushes creativity and encourages conformity. This isn’t a cookie cutter education system – far from it. The New Zealand Curriculum is designed specifically to encourage students to be curious and inquiring. Parents see that every day. Ask the parent of a child at a kura, where the children learn Te Reo and the history of local iwi as part of the social studies strand of the curriculum. Ask the parent of a teenager at a big city co-ed, where students studying English for NCEA are encouraged to vigorously debate their views on a film or a novel, based on their own research and thinking. Or students at an Auckland co-ed, who are working in teams to identify local social issues and ways of resolving them.
The strength of our education system is that creativity is also blended with some objective measures so that we all can see what children and young people are learning. Yes, we want teachers and parents to have a clear idea of how each child at primary school is progressing. That’s why we have National Standards. And yes, teenagers want to be able to leave school with qualifications that equip them for work or further learning. That’s why we have NCEA.
There is still more work to do. Our biggest challenge is to ensure that our education system succeeds for every child.
All around the world, students from less advantaged socio-economic backgrounds have more challenges at school. That’s the same in New Zealand. That’s why we provide more funding to schools serving students from less well off backgrounds.
But at the same time it’s important not to stereotype low decile schools. There is a great deal of variation amongst schools within each decile, with some schools in the lowest deciles outperforming some schools in the highest deciles. You can see some examples of inspiring schools on the Prime Minister's Awards website.
We are encouraged by the progress that lower decile students and Maori and Pasifika students are making. Over the last 5 years, students from lower decile schools have been narrowing the gap with higher decile schools on achievement in NCEA Levels 2 and above. The gap between Decile 1-3 has narrowed by 6 percentage points between 2009 and 2014.
We’re also seeing a narrowing of the achievement gap in terms of Māori and Pasifika.
From 2011 – 2014, the NCEA Level 2 achievement for Māori rose 10.6 percentage points, and for Pasifika by 9.5 percentage points. These rates compare with an increase of 5.8 percentage points for NZ European/Pākehā over the same period.
Our education system isn’t perfect, but we think it certainly is world class.