Dialogue: Time to get h-word out of the too-hard basket

MARTIN HANSON* says changing the way achievement is assessed won't address the real problems behind Maori failure in education.

The news that secondary school teachers are to be balloted to determine the level of support for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement will be taken by many as signalling a possible end to a decade of uncertainty in education.

The official rationale for NCEA is that it will end the underachievement of a significant proportion of school pupils, especially Maori children. It is the education system, and in particular the method of assessment of achievement, that has been responsible. Change this, the argument goes, and all will be well.

To those looking for opportunities for advancement in a field not especially known for its whiz-kid careerists, the NCEA has provided fertile soil. The amount of assessment material that has had to be written and trialled has been so large that to be involved in it is a sort of badge of professional virility, and a powerful embellishment of one's curriculum vitae.

Small wonder, then, that there has been no shortage of applicants to go over the top. The only trouble is that whatever the merits and demerits of NCEA, it is a false prescription because it is based on a wrong diagnosis. The real cause of Maori failure in education has nothing to do with the classroom, but lies in a more politically sensitive domain.

Until very recently, the H-word has been completely off-limits in all discussion of Maori underachievement. Only a few courageous Maori, such as Alan Duff, could specifically invoke shortcomings in the home as the prime cause, without incurring the charge of racism.

But a few weeks ago a tiny crack appeared in the wall of silence. It was officially revealed that Maori children are five times more likely to be abused by their families than are non-Maori children. So what teachers have always known is now official: a significantly higher proportion of Maori than non-Maori pupils are failing to reach their potential for reasons that have nothing to do with the education system at all.

The contrast between the educational failure of Maori and the success of Asian immigrants could not be more stark. Many Asians have entered the New Zealand secondary school system barely able to speak English, but have gone on to become duxes of their schools.

There is no need to resort to a genetic explanation, for it is well-known that education is highly valued in most Asian families, and indeed is an important part of their cultural inheritance.

A situation in which incontrovertible facts are nevertheless considered controversial is an outward manifestation of a deep social taboo. By this, I mean a topic that is so deeply repugnant that it is put into the too-hard basket and is simply not discussed.

It is not even a case of politicians bolting for cover whenever the question of the home environment comes up, the matter is never even raised. As long as this denial of the true nature of the problem exists, a solution is impossible.

In the face of such a malaise, politicians have to be seen to be doing something, even if it means spending large amounts of taxpayers' money. In a society that places more value on sport than it does on education, and moreover isn't too comfortable with the notion of personal responsibility, selling the NCEA to the average parent has not been too difficult. Add to it a liberal dose of rhetorical froth about the knowledge economy, and it can be made to sound almost seductive.

New Zealand school pupils have been treated to a decade of educational experiments, each gift-wrapped in glossier packaging and heralded with more rhetorical blather than its predecessor.

Achievement-based assessment, unit standards and the NCEA have been successively promoted as solutions to Maori underachievement.

With such a faulty diagnosis, the NCEA is at best an expensive and irrelevant diversion, and can be no more effective in raising Maori achievement than if the Prime Minister and Minister of Education were to douse themselves with a mixture of weasel's vomit and bat's blood by the light of the full moon.

*Martin Hanson teaches at a South Auckland secondary school.