I have shared a fair amount of data through these messages. I do this to support the decisions and direction we take as a school.
If you have read a number of these messages, you will know that I have linked connection to achievement, and attendance to achievement. I expect most of you would understand the effect of those two factors. If a student is attending school, they are more likely, on average, to achieve as opposed to someone who is not attending, or attending poorly.
If they are connected to co-curricular activities, our data shows that they achieve higher than those who aren’t connected and they attend by, on average, 15 percentage points better than those who aren’t ‘connected’. And the more activities they are involved in, the higher the achievement. Co-curricular opportunities provide students with connection points to a wider range of students than their classes. They build relationships with those students and they come to depend on them in a team sport situation. Those connections improve their attendance and the improved attendance leads to improved achievement.
Connection is a key ingredient to success at school and life. One of our challenges, our wero, is to encourage our students to connect with us and each other beyond the classroom, through sport, or clubs, or cultural activities, and we do this because the data tells us this is good practice.
In the wider education space, data can also be used to inform decision making and policy. One of the research areas that gets attention is PISA testing which compares education systems around the world. PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests in Reading, Mathematics and Science have been conducted with 15 year olds since 2000. They were initially conducted in 28 countries and New Zealand scored very well across the three tests in 2000, placing third with an average score of 529 ‘points’ in reading literacy (one point more than Australia which always seems to appeal, and against an OECD average of 500), famously behind Finland who topped the list with 546 points for reading literacy. The range of the top ten countries was 546 to 507 on reading. On the other tests, New Zealand scored 537 (OECD average of 500) for mathematics placing third again, and 528 (OECD ave 500) on Science, placing sixth (but ahead of Australia again).
By 2018, PISA had increased the number of countries to 80, and New Zealand had slipped in the rankings.
New Zealand scored 506 on reading (OECD ave 487), 494 on Mathematics (OECD ave 489) and 508 on Science (OECD ave 489). We ranked 12th for reading, 27th for mathematics and 12th for Science in 2018 against 80 countries. Of the 11 countries ahead of New Zealand in reading (the primary focus of PISA in 2018), five of those countries didn’t feature in the 2000 testing. Therefore, relative to the 2000 testing, New Zealand had slipped from third to seventh in Reading. There’s obviously room for improvement but hardly a crisis? Perhaps a little bit of work to do in Mathematics.
An interesting finding from the 2018 testing was the significant educational inequity in New Zealand with New Zealand ranking 33rd out of 38 developed countries. The gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students was 96 points overall, with far fewer disadvantaged students reaching top performance levels compared to advantaged peers. In other words, the top NZ students are as good as any in the world, but the bottom are close to the bottom of all countries. The government acknowledged the decline in results and the growing inequity gap by calling for a greater focus on core skills (numeracy/literacy), and the need to tackle systemic issues like poverty and cultural relevance. In other words, the improvement of the education system is tied to all of its learners, so reducing the inequity gap should lead to a higher overall average across all areas.
Since PISA 2018, there has been a greater emphasis on literacy and numeracy, particularly in the 0-8 curriculum with the current government mandating structured approaches to both across the sector. This is good and builds on work that was already in place in many schools but ensures that all schools are giving this work the required attention. However, structured approaches need appropriate support to embed – this costs money. We shouldn’t assume that all teachers are able to deliver these programmes without support, and secondly, we need to make sure that the approach(es) is/are fit for all learners.
Alongside this, programmes to reduce inequity had been put in place and it’s hard to understand why some of these have been removed. We know that Māori and Pasifika are overly represented in the lowest socio-economic groupings yet initiatives to target these groupings and target poverty have been cut or greatly reduced. PISA 2022 told us that 14% of NZ students miss a meal weekly due to lack of funds, so surely the school lunches programme is one way of tackling this and needs to be properly financed. Another finding in recent PISA testing is growing attendance problems in New Zealand. The Ministry’s own statistics in term 2 of 2023, show that only 33.7% of Māori learners attended school on a ‘regular’ basis (defined as over 90% of the time) compared with 45.9% of learners nationally. This over-representation means that we need to find ways to overcome the barriers for Māori, and others who are disengaging from the system. One initiative taken by the previous government was funding of $30 million for Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori. Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori means the future pathway of Te Reo Māori – a pathway that seeks to inspire, and aspire for improved Te Reo Māori proficiency, acquisition and use across the education sector. It also provides opportunities for Te Reo Māori to be normalised, and Māori identity and culture to be shared and embraced. This is easily the most successful Te Reo programme I have witnessed in 25 years of education in New Zealand, and it resulted in over 50 teachers at our school signing up for weekly cultural and Te Reo lessons at level 2 and level 3. We know that this helps to engage our Māori learners, and in a quote often attributed to Russell Bishop, “what’s good for Māori learners is good for all learners”. Why would we cut such a programme?
The Te Ahu o Te Reo cuts were just the start of this government’s ‘reprioritisation’ of funding. What has followed is the cutting of the Creatives in Schools programme ($3-4 million per year), the removal of Māori RTLBs (another $4 million per year), and although not a cost saving exercise directly, the changes to s127 of the Education and Training Act, removing the Board’s crown obligations to Te Tiriti and new curriculum ‘drafts’ that supposedly provide a more ‘balanced’ view of our Aotearoa Histories, but by most who have read the drafts, reinforce a Eurocentric framing of the past.
I’m sure I will be accused of being ‘political’ by highlighting these cuts and changes, but I prefer to think of myself as passionate. My staff know the weight I put on data and evidence and the evidence for these cuts and changes does not stack up. I also don’t understand why funding for literacy-numeracy initiatives and funding for equity need to be an either/or situation where one group, in this case, the disadvantaged, miss out. Perhaps the evidence and consequences of these actions will be in the next lot of PISA testing.
Returning to our own data, since 2020, all of our year 9 students have learned about Te Reo and Te Ao Māori in a 2 hour compulsory course each week. At year 10 they have studied Aotearoa Histories for the same allocation of time. In this time, the numbers of students learning Te Reo has grown considerably and we are able to offer courses in Te Ao Haka, and Toi Māori to supplement the language offerings. In this time the percentage of Māori students attaining University Entrance at Wellington High School has grown from 35.7% in 2020 to 56.7% in 2024. If you want to change the output, then you have to change the inputs. We’ve done this over time, and we can see that it is working. However, with the raft of cuts and changes, what might those statistics look like in another 5 years?
Dominic Killalea
Principal