"We know purpose is always key to success," he says. "It's only in the last 30 years that we have lost the sense of why we go to secondary school. Students who are heading towards university have never lost their purpose, but the thing that is missing for a lot of other students through their secondary school years is a sense of where they are going in terms of employment, of 'what am I going to be?"'
Symptoms of failure
A report by the New Zealand Institute last month crystallised the way our system is failing. At age 15, it said, Kiwi youngsters are among the best in the world at reading, maths and science. Yet many then lose interest and drop out, giving 15-to-19-year-olds a bigger share of total unemployment here than in any other developed nation.
The drop-outs are disproportionately poor and brown. Only 8 per cent of European 15-to-19-year-olds, and 4 per cent of Asians are not in employment, education, training or caregiving. But 9 per cent of young Pacific people and 15 per cent of Maori youth are apparently doing absolutely nothing constructive.
"If only Pakeha and Asian students went to school in New Zealand, we'd perform at the top of the world," says Middleton. "If only Maori and Pacific students went to school in New Zealand, then Turkey is the only country that [would] perform worse. And if you look at the demographics of New Zealand and the age profile of different ethnic groups, that's a huge wake-up call."
How it happened
Things used to be different. Until the 1970s, New Zealand's urban secondary schools were divided into colleges and grammar schools for the academically-minded and technical high schools, which led others into apprenticeships or directly into low-skilled jobs.
In the generation since then, two things have changed. First, technology and free trade have wiped out many low-skilled jobs and state agencies such as the Post Office and the Ministry of Works that used to train apprentices for industry have been dismantled and sold off. For a while apprenticeships almost disappeared.
At the same time, the old class division in secondary schools began to seem unfair and was abolished. Every technical high school became a comprehensive college and most students were channelled into academic work.
The numbers of students entering high school who stayed for a full five years rose from less than 10 per cent in 1970 to 65 per cent by the mid-2000s. Yet only 32 per cent go on to study towards a bachelor's degree by age 19.
A decade ago, NCEA was meant to fix things by giving schools a wide range of vocational and competency-based "unit standards" to choose from alongside "achievement standards" based on the core curriculum.
But the new system simply bamboozles many youngsters. Josh Williams, the Ministry of Education's manager for youth guarantee initiatives, says schools offered 5776 different unit standards and 740 achievement standards last year.
Careers advisers, who might be expected to guide students through this maze, are hard to find. Peter Kemp, a careers adviser at Marlborough Boys' College and member of the Post-Primary Teachers Association executive, estimates that fewer than 20 of the country's 300 state secondary schools have full-time careers advisers.
"Many schools regard it as a low priority and provide minimal staff time for it. The average works out at around eight hours a week for every 1000 students," he says.
The ministry's flagship study of New Zealand students, Competent Children Competent Learners, found in 2008 that 41 per cent of 16-year-olds had never talked to a teacher or careers adviser about their future options.
The result is that many students study a patchwork of subjects that are no use to anyone.
"We have too many students now who end up with a supermarket-style NCEA," says Middleton. "They wander through the aisles picking goods off the shelf. That is not the way to get a balanced diet."
New pathways
Industry training organisations, which write and approve unit standards, were the first to suggest simplifying the system. Last year they proposed grouping all unit standards into broad sectors, with common "entrances" to jobs in each sector.
Universities, they said, already had a clear entrance threshold: 42 credits at NCEA level 3 with minimum literacy and numeracy requirements. (This will rise in 2014 to 60 credits at level 3 and 20 at level 2 or higher.)
"Ideally every student and every school should know the formula for getting into and following a vocational pathway equally as well as the academic one," they said.
They suggested five pathways, each encompassing a chunk of the workforce (see graphic).
Education Minister Anne Tolley announced in April that the Government would adopt those five "initial" pathways from next year.
"We are open to more pathways," she says. "I did have someone suggest that we didn't have entrepreneurship in there. But that is the sort of broad range we are looking for."
Williams says the ministry is working with training organisations to produce "initial definitions" of the pathways for NCEA levels 1 and 2 this year and for level 3 next year.
All are likely to set an entrance threshold around what is now regarded as "passing" NCEA level 2 - 60 credits at level 2 plus 20 credits at any level.
"When we have the pathways defined, that will allow us to use that pathway definition to show a young person a road map."
The pathways will overlap, especially at level 1 of NCEA where many courses will be common. But even if everyone learns maths, students in the construction pathway may get examples from building plans while those in the primary industries pathway may do calculations around livestock numbers.
Each pathway will be of equal status. A student in the construction pathway may go on to an apprenticeship in the building industry or to a degree in architecture or engineering. Many may start on a building site and end up in management.
Tolley has also started a review of careers advice, which is due to report back to Cabinet by April.
"Some schools do it superbly. Others do it pretty ineffectually," she says.
Some schools are already anticipating the new direction. Mangere's preschool-to-year-13 Southern Cross Campus, which opened the country's first "trades academy" last year, plans vocational courses linked to the jobs around Auckland Airport - hospitality, logistics, engineering, health, and education and social services.
Its student pathways manager, Lagi Leilua, says career planning starts with "a dream period" at the intermediate level, years 7 and 8.
Brown Aea, a Year 8 Bader Intermediate student attending a careers expo on the campus this week, was captivated by museum archaeologist Ma'ara Maeva's offer to measure his brain size against the skulls of Neanderthal man and modern humans.
"I might be a brain scientist or a police officer," he says. "A brain scientist will tell you if your head is working all right. And a police officer because it's a hero - I'd like to be a hero to other people."
From Year 9, students at the campus and some other schools in South Auckland's "Aim Hi" consortium receive customised student planner books where they write their goals at the start of each year and record their progress every day. Their books are checked and signed off each week by their class tutors and their caregivers.
Year 11 student Duyen-Kim Nguyen has recorded achieving 57 level 1 credits and 25 at level 2 so far and, after attending the careers expo, filled in her options for next year: English, media and early childhood education.
Year 13 student Silivia Talosaga's book records her career goals as tourism, business or early childhood education.
Michael Makiha, a Year 12 student in the campus' hospitality academy, has had work placements two days a week at the nearby Jet Park and Holiday Inn hotels and at Rainbow's End and Sky City.
"It's fun," he says. "I've always wanted to do this."
Campus director Robin Staples says showing students the realities of employment is "highly motivating".
In a former job as head of Otara's Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, he placed all Year 12 students in workplaces every Thursday.
"I was told that because we were losing a day of teaching time, NCEA results would go down," he says. "The reverse happened. Although the students spent one day a week for a term in work placements, the results went up. It's about their motivation."
Will it work?
Making changes in education is never easy, and the new pathways raise at least three questions.
First, can university-educated teachers - who have for years geared their work towards getting their students to follow them into university - transform their teaching to inspire young people across the whole range of vocational pathways?
The teachers themselves believe they can. PPTA president Robin Duff says there is no question that the changes are desirable.
"I have very little doubt that they will be enthusiastically embraced by schools, but it's about resourcing and training," he says.
Penney Dunckley, a Southland technology teacher and PPTA's expert on the issue, says teachers already teach a wide range of practical subjects and always look for practical examples even in academic subjects.
Maggie Hames, careers adviser at Auckland Girls' Grammar and president of the Careers and Transition Education Association, says she encourages all teachers to be careers advisers.
"There is a willingness, but it takes some time and it will take some resources," she says.
Secondly, are schools physically equipped with the workshops, kitchens and farms they need to teach practical vocational subjects?
Tolley says they don't all need to be, because they can work collaboratively.
Williams says some schools will specialise in particular pathways, teaching students from surrounding schools in collaboration with polytechnics and industry.
"If a school doesn't have the capital required for whatever it is, having this framework between secondary and tertiary means they can approach the local polytech or private training provider and say, 'we are looking for a party alongside us with this pathway, is there something going on?"'
Thirdly, and most importantly, are students and their parents willing to be steered into practical vocational pathways?
Michelle Palmer, a Christchurch-based member of the NZ Parent Teacher Association executive, says anything would be better than ending up, as she has, with two sons aged 17 and 20 at home, doing nothing.
"It's absolutely driving me nuts," she says. "The system has already failed them."
Her dyslexic eldest son left school at 16 and worked at McDonald's for a year. Later he did an Employment Plus course, but "by then he was too far gone".
The Palmers took in the 17-year-old Rarotongan as a foster child when he was in a service academy at Aranui High School.
"It's known as a drop-out option, you only go there if you're a loser," she says. Work and Income found him a job in a kitchen factory, but he quit. It was a huge shock being asked to get up at 6am to get on a bus and put in a full eight, nine or 10-hour day," says Palmer. "I think if he had gone to work experience once a week from say Year 11, he would have been more prepared."
The Palmers also have an 18-year-old foster son who is working as a painter and decorator, and an 11-year-old who is doing well. But Palmer says: "Like all kids, he doesn't know what he's going to do. If they had people coming to talk to them, and if they could go and see how a bakery runs or something right from the word go, they would be more engaged."
She says her elder sons "didn't understand what NCEA was all about" but each would have fitted into one of the five vocational pathways. "That would take away the stigma of what they are asking these kids to do [in service academies]," she says. "If that was the way it was, I could see all three of them would have been employed."
Read more online
More ladders, fewer snakes, the New Zealand Institute - http://www.nzinstitute.org
Vocational pathways, Ministry of Education - http://tiny.cc/0ijvv
