Schools continue to fail

The report is a damning picture of Government interventions, which it says are failing to turn schools around. Photo: Getty Images
The report is a damning picture of Government interventions, which it says are failing to turn schools around. Photo: Getty Images

Thousands of children are spending most or all their years of education in a poorly performing school, a new report has found.

A third of New Zealand's underperforming schools are persistent low achievers and some have been that way for up to 10 years, a report released this morning by think-tank New Zealand Initiative says.

The report, "Signal Loss: What we know about school performance''- the first of three reports on the issue - provides a damning picture of Government interventions, which it says are failing to turn our schools around, and failing to properly assess student achievement.

"Thousands'' of schools are failing to meet Education Review Office (ERO) quality measures, the report said.

It also warns that "some schools, despite intervention, perform poorly for as long as, and in some cases, longer than, the entire school career of their students - with possibly serious implications for the students in them and the state of our nation''.

About 70% (1765) of all New Zealand schools were performing well, as of June last year, the report said from an analysis of ERO data, and 20% (475) demonstrated consistent high-quality performance.

However, of the 786 schools reviewed by ERO in the 2014-15 year, 33 out of 103 already poorly performing schools had not improved enough to move up a category, despite receiving interventions.

In a separate stock-take of school performance last year, ERO classified almost 8% of state schools as poor performers.

That equated to 35,500 pupils in 58 secondary and 127 primary schools.

There was "evidence of chronic poor performance by schools despite having had external intervention and an external evaluator telling them they were underperforming'', the report said.

It found:

• More than one-third (65 out of 185 schools) of poor performers had failed to meet expectations for at least two consecutive reviews.

• A smaller number (20 out of 65 schools) had poorly performed for at least three consecutive reviews (an average of eight to nine years), and a few had been in the bottom tier for more than 10 years. This was "a clear sign that neither formal nor informal interventions have worked for these schools''.

The report said: "The history of school non-improvement suggests New Zealand needs to seriously reconsider alternatives to identifying and managing failing schools, before failure becomes persistent.''

The report slammed Government monitoring of interventions, saying neither the ERO nor the Ministry of Education were properly assessing which interventions worked, in which situations, and why.

"Persistent underperformance in some schools may indicate that current methods are ineffective,'' it said, describing the lack of Government analysis as "a major limitation in efforts to mitigate school underperformance''.

It was not for a lack of data either. The report said the Government held "rich data sets'' on schools and their pupils, and agencies were "missing a prime opportunity to learn what works and what does not''.

The report concluded that the opportunities of thousands of pupils were being "undermined''.

"The Government needs innovative solutions to address this history of non-improvement. Knowing which are the weakest schools in the country is not enough.''

ERO chief review officer Iona Holsted said "some success'' had been made by working alongside schools that were struggling.

"We know what makes a difference,'' she said, but acknowledged "while most schools are performing well, most isn't good enough''.

"That's why we have changed our approach from asking about general performance to asking how primary schools are making sure that every single student is achieving at the level they need to. What do they know about their kids and what are they doing to make a difference? We want to know how schools are using data and what they know about their students.''

Ministry of Education early learning and student achievement deputy secretary Lisa Rodgers accepted the report's conclusion that "more needs to be done to help poorly performing schools as well as Maori, Pasifika and students from low socioeconomic backgrounds''.

"We are working on multiple initiatives to address these problems,'' she said, pointing to schemes such as Investing in Educational Success and the Education Review Act.

Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said the Government had to step in where schools were failing.

"To not do so is to write off the educational chances of a whole cohort of students, and that's not right.''

Green Party education spokeswoman Catherine Delahunty said it was unfair to draw the conclusion that underperforming schools were "terrible'', when inequality in New Zealand was rife.

 

 

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