ERO calls for Maori data

By REBECCA WALSH education reporter

National assessment guidelines are needed to help gauge how Maori students are performing at school, the Education Review Office says.

In the annual report, the head of the ERO, Dr Judith Aitken, said guidelines were needed to assess whether the Government's aim of closing the gaps was working.

The ERO national manager Maori, Mike Hollings, said that while comparisons could be made at the School Certificate level, national assessment guidelines were needed from primary school so that "teachers know how their students are performing relative to other students in the country and how different groups of students are performing relative to other groups of students."

This year, the ERO had developed specific evaluation criteria related to Maori.

Schools, in consultation with their Maori communities, had to develop and publicise an education plan with targets for improving the education of Maori students.

The new evaluation criteria would be used to see how the education sector was performing for Maori students around the country, Mr Hollings said.

"But we still won't be able to tell you what outcomes are being achieved because we still don't have national assessment data ... We can't say the population of Maori learners is achieving this or has improved by this much."

The report also expressed concern at the number of kohanga reo - early childhood Maori immersion centres - which received discretionary reviews.

A discretionary review is ordered when the ERO finds issues of serious concern - for example, in aspects of safety, financial management or the delivery of education. It returns six months later to check that the problem has been fixed.

The ERO ordered reviews of 15.5 per cent of early childhood centres, compared to 42 per cent of kohanga reo.

Dr Aitken said policies of improving the educational achievement of Maori children and encouraging more into early childhood education would have limited success if the quality of kohanga reo education did not improve.