Dialogue: Schools build exam results on educationally crippling tactics

By JOHN MINTO*

A few weeks ago, we met several parents and students to discuss problems they were having with education at their local Auckland schools.

One of the students is a fifthformer who is being prevented from sitting School Certificate. No, he's not a high-flyer academically but he is capable enough, determined to work hard and give it his best shot.

However, he has been placed in a non-School Certificate class and relegated to a homeroom situation. He is taught most subjects by the same teacher in the same classroom and, despite being in form five, has yet to see the inside of a school science laboratory.

His teachers have told him that the only failure is in not trying but, as he said, he is being denied the chance to try. His mother has made representations to have him moved to another class, but to no avail. The dean is adamant he will not be shifted. The principal will not see her.

This student could well now never have the opportunity to sit School Certificate because, in reality, the school prefers that the less academically able do not damage its academic reputation.

Sadly, situations like this have become much more common over the past decade.

In the market environment, schools are rewarded for high academic pass rates, getting rid of "troublesome" students and marketing themselves well. And so it is that academic league tables such as those published by the Herald are sometimes seen as more important than a school's determination to do the best by every child.

The outcome is a decrease in opportunities for many students and a lowering of academic expectations as some schools filter out the less academically able from exam classes and set more difficult criteria for students to enter School Certificate and Bursary courses.

One Auckland secondary school, for example, takes more than 10 per cent of the students from its home zone and removes them from the mainstream in form three. From that point, it effectively excludes them from external exam courses.

On the other hand, the principal of one large Auckland school which appears to do poorly in the academic league tables told me that he could increase his pass rates overnight if he made entry to exam classes more difficult.

He has resisted pressure to do so for several years despite the matter coming up at meetings of the school's board of trustees every year.

And so it is that rigorous examination of these league tables shows them to be, at best, misleading. Good pass rates do not represent the setting of high academic standards or a school having high expectations of every student.

Often they reflect the exact opposite. However, this does not stop some schools using and abusing the information in ways which are designed to fool parents rather than inform them.

Student enrolments are another factor which influences academic results in many schools. Schools with enrolment schemes are in the box seat to increase their pass rates simply by being highly selective about the students they accept from outside their school zone. Needless to say, they want the brightest students. There is no competition from such schools for the less academically able or for children with special education needs.

One Auckland secondary school surrounded by decile 2 primary and intermediate schools has even managed to increase its decile rating to 5 by implementing a selective enrolment policy which favours high achievers from wealthier areas outside its local community.

One might think that the Education Review Office would provide a critique of school enrolment policies, exam entry practices or blatant misuse of exam statistics, but this is not the case.

The ERO has refused to comment on some of these educationally crippling practices. Instead, it often praises schools for improving exam percentage passes when these have been achieved simply by more selective enrolment policies or by excluding the less able from sitting exams or entering exam courses.

The ERO appears more interested in promoting a market model in education than acting as a parent watchdog or aiming to lift student achievement. It has been only too willing to name and shame weak, under-performing schools in poorer communities but has fallen well short of the same public treatment for stronger, more assertive schools which carry out practices such as those listed above.

I hope the new Government makes revamping the ERO a priority to deliver quality information for parents, and is prepared to deliver an active critique of school practices.

Parents deserve better-quality information from many schools, the ERO and the news media than the titillating presentation of misleading information.

Just as important, they need a parent advocacy service to deal with the situation described at the start of this article.

* John Minto is the chairman of the Quality Public Education Coalition.