Dumbing down a generation

International tests reveal the performance of our schoolchildren is plummeting despite years of education reform designed to create brighter futures for the next generation. Simon Collins asks the experts where it all went wrong.

Dumbing down E meritus Professor Warwick Elley worries that New Zealand's education system is failing an entire generation. “I worry that it's a dumbing down of a whole population of students,” he says.

When Elley chaired the international steering committee for one of the first world literacy surveys, in 1990, Kiwi students came fourth.

A decade later, when the Programme for International Students Assessment ( Pisa) started testing 15- year- olds, NZ students came second only to Finland in reading, third in maths, and sixth- equal in science.

But it has been downhill ever since. In six three- yearly Pisa surveys, the most recent ( 2015) reported last December, each group of NZ students has scored lower than the group that went before them in both reading and maths.

Over Pisa's 15- year history New Zealand's average score for maths has dropped by more than any other country ( down 42 points), closely followed by Australia ( down 39 points).

Our average for reading has dropped by 20 points, a steeper fall than in all except three countries ( Britain, Australia and Iceland).

Even in science, where we have had ups as well as downs, our average is down 15 points since 2000, although eight other countries including Australia declined more.

These scores are based on tests in which about half the questions are repeated in every survey ( and kept a closely guarded secret) so that each new group of 15- year- olds can be compared with those who came before.

Professor John Hattie, formerly of the University of Auckland and now director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute, says both New Zealand and Australia have been too complacent.

“We have sat back on our laurels,'' he says.

NEW ZEALAND

is still in the top half of the rich- nations' club, the Organisation for Economic Co- operation and Development ( OECD), on all three subjects: sixth out of 35 nations in science, eighth in reading, 16th in maths. It's the trend, not the level, that is the main concern.

Marks in the Pisa tests were scaled to an OECD average of 500 when they started in 2000. Since then we have dropped from 528 to 513 in science, from 529 to 509 in reading, and from 537 to 495 in maths — staying above the OECD maths average only because it has slipped from 500 to 491.

Four other points may help to understand the trends.

First, Asian countries have consistently been the top scorers in maths and science and, since 2012, even in reading despite the disadvantage of more complex scripts. In 2015, Singapore became the first nation to top all three subjects.

This is not just because Singapore’s 15- year- olds study for an average 22 hours a week doing homework and private tuition outside school, compared with 17 hours in New Zealand. Japan also beats us in all three subjects, but their 15- yearolds study outside school for only 14 hours a week.

Second, the three nations that have fallen furthest since Pisa began are all Anglo- Saxon: in order, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The almost identical tracks of Australia and NZ suggest that there may be common factors driving us both down.

The biggest gains, among those who have been in Pisa since it started, have all been in Europe: Luxembourg, Portugal, Poland and Germany.

Third, New Zealand's graphs were fairly flat or ( in science) rising between 2003 and 2009, then dropped heavily across all three subjects in 2012. The Education Mini stry believes they may now have levelled out, with much smaller declines in 2015.

“My reading of it is that the decline has halted,'' says the ministry's deputy secretary Dr Craig Jones.

And fourth, New Zealand has consistently had some of the widest gaps between top and bottom students. The gap between our top and bottom 10ths of students in 2015 was the OECD's second- widest in science, fourth- widest in reading and 15th- widest in maths.

Our gap in science has grown even wider over time.

But our gaps in reading and maths have narrowed because our top students have slipped more than our bottom students. Our bottom 10th actually scored higher in maths in 2015 than in 2012, while our top 10th's scores dropped.

Our gaps between low and high socio- economic groups, and between Maori and Pacific students and the national average, have narrowed across all three subjects.

ONE POSSIBLE

factor in our decline is that our two lowest- performing ethnic groups have grown — Maori from 18 per cent of 15- year- old students in 2000 to 24 per cent in 2015, and Pasifika from 7 per cent to 10 per cent.

Although our ethnic gaps have narrowed, they are still huge. For example in reading, where our national average is 509, Maori ( 465) and Pasifika students ( 450) score below all OECD nations except Slovakia, Chile, Mexico and Turkey. Our wide gaps are dragging us down.

But the fact that Australia's scores have declined almost identically to ours suggests that the biggest drivers are broader. The main candidates are education policy changes in the Anglo- Saxon nations.

In our case, the t wo biggest changes since Pisa started have been the introduction of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement ( NCEA) in secondary schools from 2002, and of National Standards in primary schools from 2010. scores Elley in pointsall five OECDto declining nations Pisathat have standards- based assessments with “high stakes”, with results publi shed in league tables: New Zealand, Australia, Britain, the United States and Sweden. “The majority of OECD countries don't allow league tables,” he says.

Both NCEA and national standards were born with good intentions — to close our shamefully wide gaps by focusing schools on ensuring that every child achieves the standards. But Elley believes they have actually dragged most students down. They have: Focusedteaching what teachersis tested narrowly( only read-on ing, writing and maths in the case of national standards), so students are flummoxed when faced with Pisa's tests of broader knowledge and skills; Encouraged schools to steer weaker students into easier NCEA subjects that they can pass, such as statistics instead of algebra, so they can't cope with Pisa's harder questions; Broken up subjects into small chunks for NCEA credits, rather than helping students achieve the deep understanding that comes from seeing the big picture;

Allowed our top students to relax as soon as they reach the standards or gain 80 NCEA credits, instead of stretching them to achieve their full potential; and Intensified competition between schools, so the best schools attract the best teachers and students at the cost of declining quality in other schools.

The think- business-tank points fundedto anotherNZ Initiativeset of changes that have combined to weaken teachers' effectiveness, especially in maths where a 2010 study found that a third of new primary teachers could not add 7/ 18 and 1/ 9.

Teacher training, which was confined to six teachers' colleges until the 1990s, was deregulated and by 2005 teaching courses were offered at 27 institutions. The six original colleges were taken over by universities. deputyLisa Rodgers, secretary, a formerwho now ministry heads the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, says the universities have expanded their teaching courses because they are “a cheap course to run”. “Bums on seats equals dollars, and they are not as costly as medical or engineering students,” she says. Massey University Institute of Education head Professor John O'Neill says graduate teachers have become casualised with only 15 to 30 per cent going into permanent teaching jobs, and too often with academic rather than practical training “Over the years, teacher education moving to the universities means that very few teacher educators have any recent experience of being in a classroom,” he says. that Although teachers' the salariesNZ Initiativehave more found or less kept their historical ratios to other professions since 2000, it says teachers are often lured into other sectors once they reach the top of the teaching pay scale — especially if they have skills in maths and technology, which are in high demand elsewhere. Finally, the Initiative and Hattie blame a specific teaching change called the Numeracy Project for our uniquely sharp decline in Pisa maths scores. The project, launched in 2000, trained primary teachers to

Teacher education moving to the universities means that very few teacher educators have any recent experience of being in a classroom. Professor John O’Neill