Low-decile labels difficult for students, MPs told

Labelling schools as low-decile meant "unfortunate" assumptions were being made from the outside about the students who attended them, a senior Ministry of Education official told MPs yesterday.

Parliament's education and science select committee has launched an inquiry into "making the schooling system work for every child" and yesterday education officials fronted up to the committee.

The inquiry was launched after an Education Review Office report last year said as many as 20 per cent of students were underachieving.

Committee member and National MP Colin King asked ministry group manager Rob McIntosh what assumptions were being made about schools on the basis of decile ratings.

Mr McIntosh said the ministry acknowledged that there were external factors that could have an impact on children's performance at school but no assumption was made that "because a student attends a decile one school or comes from a low socio-economic background that they can't learn".

The decile system did have some pitfalls. It was originally designed as a way to allocate extra money where needed, but had become "a bit of a label, which is unfortunate".

As well as socio-economic factors, teachers' performance and the support they received were equally critical to students' success.

National education spokesman Bill English said the 10th anniversary of New Zealand's literacy strategy had passed.

"I'm a bit concerned about the extent to which this strategy goes at the pace which suits the teaching work first and not the students.

"Ten years is a long time in the lives of young New Zealanders."

Mr English asked why some teachers did not know how to teach something as basic as literacy.

"When does it become a normal expectation that a teacher already knows how to do this stuff and doesn't need a $100 million programme to do it?"

Mr McIntosh said there had been gains in literacy teaching performance and countries such as the United States and Great Britain were looking at adopting similar literacy teaching models to New Zealand's.

Mr McIntosh rejected a suggestion by National MP Jacqui Dean that teachers were becoming fatigued with additional workload from constantly changing requirements.

He said it was believed teacher fatigue would drop as improvements were made in the system.

- NZPA