Post Primary Teachers Association president Jack Boyle believes the reason students are achieving Level 3 (requiring 60 Level 3 credits: 20 at Level 2 or above, plus Level 1 literacy and numeracy) but not University Entrance (requiring another 10 literacy credits from Level 2 or above) - is a preoccupation with raising the bar at Level 2.
Plus a focus on so-called unit standards that make it hard to attain Level 3's more academic prerequisites.
Executive director of Universities New Zealand (UNZ) Chris Whelan sees it in terms of "demotivating factors". Plus living outside a major city, attending a "less academically-oriented school", being first in their family potentially to access higher education and/or coming from a lower socioeconomic background. His solution: the 85 per cent target for Level 2 should be applied also to Year 13.
But for others, higher pass rates are only attainable because the bar has been lowered "so that everyone is a winner", as a teacher "of many years" suggested in an HBT text (2/5/17).
If five years of secondary education plus increased literacy standards are now required even for more vocational careers, are there programmes to meet those senior students with marked learning deficits. Also, is there any other evidence that could account for these two seemingly contradictory results?
Targets plus streaming and non-inclusion of those unlikely to pass, are already a feature of some schools practice. As Hawke's Bay teacher Catherine Blomkamp noted in a recent letter to the Auckland newspaper, the practice of publishing only participation rates in NCEA, rather than roll rates, can have the result of making greater than 90 per cent NCEA rates both enviable and less than honest.
"Culling at the gate" is usually limited by school zoning. However the politics of school choice can mean that removing students pre-Externals - that is, before end-of-year state examinations - or of channelling them into unit standards, has leagues tables advantages. And can still go unrecorded, except on advertising billboards.
Also, senior school choice can also be limited by in-school factors other than students' future careers. Subjects are always subject to relevance and popularity. However there is increasing evidence that a drop in choice for "the liberal arts" (citizenship, philosophy, comparative religions and even languages) can have social consequences, even in established democracies.
Of no use except in producing thoughtful, tolerant and morally responsible persons, these subjects are vulnerable to choice politics. Many countries counter this problem by making compulsory a core of liberal subjects from which students choose. Or by making compulsory specific socially beneficial subjects.
According to a recent New Zealand Herald editorial our "heavy" streaming policies also "predetermine children's performance, remove challenges they might have faced in a class of mixed ability, foreclose the possibility they might be late improvers, and can permanently lower - or raise - their confidence in themselves".
Contrary to their neighbours' competitive approach, Finland's success story since the 1980s was made possible by non-streaming, a 1:20 student ratio and opting for professional support over relentless targets.
If Finnish ratios are not presently possible, perhaps deficits at Level 1 and 3 can get the attention they need with designated a Learning Centre in every school - open also to adults - where students can do catch-ups within the school and year.
Recently reported success stories in Auckland's MacAuley and Glenfield colleges are testament to a New Zealand-style student mentoring system - including volunteer parents speaking students' languages and teachers in workable ratios. In Glenfield's case this happened despite a roll drop as many parents chose the area's higher decile schools.
All this takes not just finer data, but also adequate resourcing to ensure teachers are sufficiently trained, timetabled and rewarded.
Competition is not the only way to Excellence. If we are now in an age of psychology and big data, we are also in one of collaboration. Perhaps it is time not for self-congratulation but a summit about intended and unintended consequences based on complete evidence - and realisable goals.
Steve Liddle is a teacher and researcher from Napier.
