KEY POINTS:
First, the good news. Overall, most of our kids are getting Cs to As by international standards in three core subjects: maths (numeracy), science and English (literacy).
In maths, our averagely performing 15-year-olds rank fourth out of 30 OECD countries and boys on average outperform girls.
In science, our average 15-year-olds rank sixth, well above the OECD mean. Average science scores are rising and girls are now level with boys, though boys still tend to do better at earth science and environmental science.
We fall down in literacy. Out of 46 countries, our average-scoring 10-year-olds come in the middle at 24th, below the United States and the United Kingdom.
But average scores hide the real problem: the gap between our best and worst readers and writers is among the widest in the world, and it's growing.
Overall, girls do better than boys, again by one of the biggest margins internationally, and especially among low achievers.
There's broad agreement schools are failing the bottom 20 per cent of students, who are disproportionately Maori or Pacific Island children and/or from poorer families.
The bad news is this failure hurts not only the one in five students directly affected, but the whole of society. Poor literacy undermines personal fulfilment and acts as a brake on economic growth, productivity and innovation.
Struggling students are more likely to be disruptive, interfering with the learning of the whole class. They're more likely to play truant and leave school early, with no qualifications. Research shows the longer you stay in school, the better your long-term prospects, from health to career to staying out of jail.
Compared to degree-holders, unqualified school-leavers have more than double the unemployment rate and earn less than half as much.
Currently, almost half of adults have below-par literacy skills, and half of the prison population has learning difficulties.
The best way to lift under-achievers is hotly debated. A common theme is the idea of tailoring teaching to students' personal needs, rather than relying on one-size-fits-all models.
Parents can foster their children's literacy by reading to them, and by getting their children to read to them. Limiting "screen time" - time in front of the TV or computer screens - will help make time for reading.
Notes on NCEA
NCEA has confused and divided parents and educators since its introduction in 2002. Under NCEA, achievement is based on demonstrating a certain level of learning rather than on how grades compare between students. It involves internal (classroom-based, marked by teachers) as well as external (national exams, marked by external examiners) assessments.
NCEA has suffered serious credibility issues, not least the marking inconsistencies within and across subjects. Questions have been raised about the qualification's international currency, whether it rewards and motivates high achievement enough, and whether it's meaningful to employers.
This year, a secret report by the Qualifications Authority released to a newspaper revealed many teachers were giving better grades than examiners. Out of the sample of 63 schools, the gap between internal grades and exam results was higher among lower-decile schools. But discrepancies showed up in high-decile schools too, including prestigious Auckland school St Cuthbert's College, which has consistently had the highest NCEA pass rates in the country.
Dunedin English teacher and author Tania Roxborogh is an NCEA-supporter, but she sees some problems. "I like that kids know what's expected, that it's all transparent. But they're quite anxious about their credits. It seems the kids are a lot more stressed, and there's constant assessment."
Roxborogh's daughter Mackenna is doing six subjects at NCEA level one. Over the year, she will do about 23 internal assessments, 10 mock exams and five real ones.
Despite its flaws, John Hattie, a prominent University of Auckland education professor, has argued the evidence says NCEA is the best system to work from to prepare students for university.
Teachers rule
Parents agonise over which school to send their children, but the research suggests instead of checking a school's grades and computers, they should be scrutinising the teachers. The single biggest influence on achievement at school is the student's ability, accounting for 50 per cent.
The next biggest influence is the teacher, who contributes 30 per cent. The difference schools make can be as little as 4 per cent; peers account for 5-10 per cent; and home life about the same (although home life will have influenced students' prior learning).
Hattie argues one of the most powerful ways of lifting achievement would be to cultivate and reward excellence in teaching. He and other experts say overall our teachers are good, and some excellent, but excellence isn't fostered enough.
A select committee report this year found more than one quarter of teachers weren't meeting professional standards in some subjects.
Auckland, especially Manukau, is suffering from a worsening shortage of experienced teachers, leaving fewer to mentor new, inexperienced teachers. Frances Nelson, head of the Education Institute, the biggest teachers' union, says there's no easy answer.
"We would not say that every beginning teacher who comes out [of training] is that strong, or even employable, but the majority are capable and ready."
Lifting the lowest achievers
In the 1830s, some reports suggest Maori were more literate than Europeans. But for the past few decades, Maori have featured disproportionately in the least literate and lowest achieving 20 per cent of students, regardless of their socio-economic background.
More than one in five Maori students left school with no formal qualifications in 2006, double the figure for all other ethnic groups.
The search for reasons has ranged from the student to the home and, most recently, to the teacher and teaching styles. One argument says teachers' implicit lower expectations of Maori students sometimes become self-fulfilling, for example by guiding academically able students into vocational subjects.
Another focus is the lack of "social capital" - and books - in underprivileged Maori kids' homes. Some experts argue the favoured method for teaching reading - known as "whole language" - disadvantages underprivileged students of all ethnicities, who respond better to the phonics method used before the 1980s.
Summer schools seem to help keep a struggling child reading over the holidays; better reporting to parents from lower decile schools could involve whanau more.
One thing is clear: better tracking of individual students' progress is needed to target those who need help. This is the rationale behind the National Party's proposed testing of primary school students against national standards or benchmarks.
Nelson says you can't lay everything on teachers and schools; the whanau, hapu and wider community will necessarily be part of the solution. But some experts argue what happens in the classroom has to transcend problems at home.
Waikato professor Stephen May is mildly spoken but unequivocal. He argues it's the monolingualism of our classrooms that's failing children from non-English linguistic (and cultural) homes because it starts them off on the back foot.
In almost all learning, teachers build from what's already known, he says, "except for language education, where, for some perverse reason, their language background is entirely ignored, they have to start from scratch, and then we wonder why they don't do so well."
Beyond differences between languages, subtle differences in conversation styles and unspoken rules of engagement tend to make children from white, middle-class families much more at home at school than other children.
His solution is radical: make all schools at least bilingual, and where the students call for it, multilingual. In much of Europe, bilingualism is the norm, and recognised as a strength. "Kids will succeed if their bilingualism is fostered," he says.
Safe to learn
Kids learn best in a safe environment. Cyber-bullying and schoolyard violence seem to be on the rise. In 2000, 31 per cent of students reported disruption in classes by students in one study. Three years later, the figure had increased to 41 per cent. Reports of bullying increased by 5 per cent.
Violent, disruptive or misbehaving pupils were suspended, stood down or kicked out of school more than 27,000 times last year, with 14-year-olds the likeliest culprits.
The Children's Commissioner is now investigating violence in schools. In July, the Ministry of Education launched a new, zero-tolerance, anti-bullying approach, which involves families and the wider community.
Parents should ask schools about their anti-bullying policy.
GIVING KIDS THE BEST
Auclander Kate Tolmie Bowden has spent hours - and thousands of dollars - trying to get the best education for her five children.
Between them, the children, aged 5 to 17, now go to a public primary school, a private secondary school and a public secondary school. All except the youngest twins have tasted state and private education.
Tolmie Bowden, who is on the board of trustees for the public primary school, doesn't see private schools as necessarily offering superior education.
"I don't agree that every private school is better than every public school, or that every private school is going to be better for every child," she says. "There are huge social advantages in going to your neighbourhood school, being with everyone from your neighbourhood. The most important thing is the fit for the child."
She's not convinced private schools always attract the teaching cream. Private schools vary enormously, she says, but in her experience they tend to be more responsive to the parent body, which is generally more homogenous than state schools'. They also tend to report to parents on children's progress more.
Mac Tolmie, the eldest son, prefers public Auckland Grammar School to private King's School. "Grammar is a good school academically and I've learned more about life there than I would have in any other school because of the diversity of people there."
But his brother Hamish, 13, thinks he works better at private ACG Parnell College than he did at public Parnell District School. "If you don't bring in your homework you can get into trouble. It's probably better for me than otherwise."
Mac is looking at becoming a teacher. Says his mother, "I'm proud of him for wanting to do that but I hope that he'll get enough from it to overcome the fact he probably won't have the same financial resources as many of his friends."
The research is inconclusive on whether private schools take kids further than state schools, or whether higher grade averages in private schools reflect wealthier students' backgrounds.
Going to a state school in a wealthy neighbourhood, however, doesn't guarantee better marks. An analysis of Auckland schools' average NCEA grades by Metro magazine this year found a big variation across schools within the same decile. Decile 5 Auckland Girls Grammar and decile 4 Mt Roskill Grammar performed better than many decile 8-10 schools.
University students from state schools are slightly more likely to pass all of their first-year papers than their privately schooled peers, according to a report by analyst David Scott. The report, made for the Ministry of Education this year, also found a school's decile and roll size, and whether it is single-sex or co-ed, makes virtually no difference to the first-year pass-rate.
One expert suggested state schools may be better at teaching self-regulation and study skills than hothouse private schools. Another theory is only the most able of state school students go to university, while private school students, once let loose in the less-structured university setting, tend to slack off or get distracted by the opposite sex.
