Editorial Tuesday February 4, 2014.

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

MANY years ago the writer spent an evening with a school teacher, newly returned from Fiji. His pupils, he said, routinely turned up early in the morning, long before school started, and had to be told to go home at the end of the day, long after it finished. Why such enthusiasm? Their parents were paying for their education.

There was almost certainly more to it than that, unless the kids feared being punished for failure. Children who grow up in non-welfare states tend to have a much more positive attitude to learning in general; they know how limited their options will be without an education, and seem to regard the chance to get one as a privilege.

Charging parents to send their kids to school in this country would likely result only in empty schools, which could perhaps be converted into the prisons their offspring will need by the time they reach adulthood. It is time, however, that politicians stopped insulting our intelligence and accepted the fact that poverty is not, never has been and never will be the fundamental reason for children failing to learn.

Professor Lord Robert Winston, who probably knows more about child development than the average New Zealand politician, and the average teacher union president for that matter, stated some years ago that research in Britain had revealed beyond all question that the single most important determinant in terms of educational success was the educational achievement of the child's mother. That factor was more important than income, social status, teacher quality and anything else that is routinely held up as a reason for failure. It is unlikely that the story here is any different.

It makes sense. For all the changes that have taken place in society over the last generation or two, it is still Mum who has the greatest influence over young children. A child who is raised by a mother who has achieved academically, and presumably values education, is more likely to succeed than one raised by a mother who does not see that value, and does not encourage her child to make the most of what is offered.

It seems to be accepted that some New Zealand children get as good an education as any on the planet. The problem is the length of the tail, the numbers who do not achieve to any reasonable level, who may in fact complete their 12 years of compulsory schooling effectively illiterate and innumerate. We were told some years ago that there was a swathe of adult New Zealanders whose reading skills were insufficient to understand the label on a can of baked beans. There is no doubt that more are being added to those ranks at the end of every school year, but nothing is going to change while politicians and education leaders continue to look for answers in all the wrong places.

The problem now, apparently, is inequality. And it's not hard to find evidence of that, from teaching resources to lunch boxes. The important thing is how we respond to the fact that while some parents agonise over which laptop to buy their child, others can't be bothered investing in a $2 lunch box. Some don't send their kids to school at all.

We have to accept that unless this country's financial fortunes undergo a massive transformation for the better there is always going to be a degree of inequality in terms of resourcing. It is difficult to imagine the government ever being in a position to level the laptop field, for example (although one has yet to be convinced that modern technology makes much of a contribution to the basics of educational achievement that some kids are obviously missing out on). It's even struggling to level the full stomach field. But the real need is something that the taxpayer can't buy, and that is a burning desire to learn. That has to come from home.

Yes, kids who go to school hungry, sick, fearful, inappropriately clothed, are always likely to struggle. The first thing we have to do to change that though is not borrow more money to bolster Vote: Social Welfare, but accept the glaringly obvious fact that poverty, or in our case relative poverty, need not be a barrier to gaining an education.

The Far North has been and still is home to any number of people who have not only gained a sound education but have done great things in all sorts of fields, despite having grown up in grinding poverty of a kind that today's parents would struggle to imagine. And every time a politician claims that poverty is the problem they make the situation worse, by giving parents who aren't giving their kids what they need and deserve the excuse they've been looking for - My kids aren't doing well at school because we're poor. (That'd make a good flag, white letters - It's not my fault - on a black background).

There is no reason why any child in this country who wants an education can't have one. And while there might be exceptions to the rule, chances are that if they miss out they will have their parents to thank for that.

Once again the writer is reminded of a wise man, one who spent most of his working life employed by the World Bank, if memory serves, building infrastructure in the Third World, and who retired in the Far North. He insisted that New Zealand children had more opportunities than any others in the world. In this country, he said, any child could be anything they wanted to be, providing they had the intellectual capacity to achieve their dreams, and the support of their parents. A child born at Te Hapua had exactly the same opportunities in life as a child born in Remuera.

In every country in which he had lived and/or worked, including Britain, children were categorised by their financial, social or ethnic origins. For many their lot in life was effectively decided at conception. New Zealand was a glorious, unique exception to that sad reality.

What's changed in New Zealand in the last 20-odd years? Tertiary education is not always as accessible as it used to be, but nor is it out of reach. And the primary and secondary curricula have perhaps lost some of their focus on the basics, but kids who go to school every day, pay attention and are encouraged and supported at home will generally do well, or at least realise their potential, wherever their household income originates and its quantum.

Some schools know that. One low-decile school in South Auckland was lauded last year for revolutionising the quality and regularity of pupils' meals, not by usurping parents' fundamental obligation to feed their children but by talking to them and encouraging them to lift their game. That school remains a solitary outpost of common sense, to the disgrace of every politician in the country who can't see past breakfasts in schools as the answer to the nutrition problem.

Money could be spent more wisely than it has in the past, and may be in the future though. If the Labour Party really believes that more social welfare is the answer, why, instead of handing over $60 a week in the first year of a child's life - the cheapest year of them all - doesn't it give them $20, to be accumulated by their parents until schooling costs begin to pinch the household budget?