Stuart Middleton: Playing the race card won't help to improve education

The National Party's education spokesman, Bill English, thinks he is on to something with his ferreting around after what he calls "race-based" funding in education.

Schools rated as low-decile are given a small amount of additional funding to allow them to compensate for the pressures caused by having a student body that comes predominantly from disadvantaged circumstances.

"Disadvantaged" is no mystery term in this calculation. It means that the homes of the students have the lowest income in the country, have high levels of unemployment or employment in low census occupation groups, are crowded, have low levels of education qualifications and high levels of income support. And, yes, ethnicity is a factor.

But race is not the only or the dominant criterion on which targeted funding is given to the schools.

How many of Mr English's supporters would volunteer to be in homes characterised as "low decile"? Not many. In describing this funding as race-based he blatantly ignores the other factors which affect educational achievement to a much greater extent.

Like a lot of these discussions there is a grain of truth in what Mr English says. Low-decile has a close identification with Maori and Pasifika students. If you are Maori, there is a 50 per cent chance you will go to a low-decile school. If you are Pasifika, the chances are greater.

But the issue is not that funding for low-achievement students is going in large measure to Maori and Pasifika students but why there are so many Maori and Pasifika students in low-decile schools and represented in the bottom end of achievement statistics. The issues go far beyond the walls of the classroom.

The publicised high international ranking of 15-year-old New Zealand students reflected the high quality of our education system. But that publicity ignored the fact that the same statistics showed that the gap between high-achievers and low-achievers was greater than in other comparable countries.

That gap is getting bigger. And there is a demographic timebomb ticking away. The proportion of students coming from backgrounds that lead to high achievement is shrinking while the number of students coming from backgrounds classed as low-decile continues to grow.

If New Zealand does not address the achievement of those at the bottom of the pile, its international standing will not survive at a high level.

The spirit of Christmas should encourage Mr English to think of others less privileged than himself and to come up with something more constructive than criticism of a flawed system that is at least attempting to deal with the question of under-achievement.

Here are some suggestions to help shape National's education policy:

* Make tertiary and post-secondary education absolutely free for school leavers from low-decile schools. Getting that first member of a family into tertiary education (or further education and training) has a profound effect on entire families. There might even develop a trend of other students seeking to attend low-decile schools to qualify for free tertiary education. This would be good for communities, for all students and for the schools.

* Commit National to a relentless policy of total access to early childhood education in areas of low-decile schools. We know that young ones who experience quality early childhood education are advantaged throughout all their subsequent schooling. Start with disadvantaged areas and work out from there. Providing early childhood opportunities for disadvantaged communities must have a higher priority than the provision of childcare for those who are already advantaged and in employment.

* Really attack the levels of literacy in disadvantaged areas. This will include the strengthening of first and community language provision, resourcing schools to levels that advantage the students, flooding schools with books and all the paraphernalia of literacy.

* Attend to levels of access and skill in technology in disadvantaged areas. The so-called digital divide is, in fact, an enormous chasm. Sort out the housing and health issues in disadvantaged areas - they are all part of the complex aggregation of factors that produce educational underachievement.

National has an opportunity to demonstrate that it understands the issues and has an array of constructive and targeted policies that will address educational underachievement.

Wasting this opportunity by incessantly trying to play the race card not only misses the point but contributes to a continuation of patterns of educational achievement.

* Dr Stuart Middleton is the Manukau Institute of Technology's executive director for student affairs.