Last week the OECD released the report, Low-Performing Students - Why They Fall Behind and How To Help Them Succeed. It showed New Zealand children from poor families are over six times more likely to do badly at maths than children from well-off families. Among OECD countries, only Israel, Poland and Ireland performed worse - see John Gerritsen's Poverty holding NZ school kids back at maths.
The report has reignited debate about what appears to be a deepening socio-economic divide in education. Today socialist John Braddock published a strong condemnation of our education system - see: Rising school costs deepen class divide in New Zealand education.
Braddock says social inequality is being translated into the schooling system by David Lange's "Tomorrow's Schools" reforms, implemented in 1989. These effectively resulted in a system of competition between schools based on neighbourhood socio-economic status.
Likewise, the Herald's education reporter Kirsty Johnston says "New Zealand has known about the achievement gap between rich and poor for 25 years. And yet it persists" - see her must-read report from late last year: Search continues for schools silver bullet.
That piece forms part of an excellent three-part series by Johnston about the effects of hardship on student achievement. You can also read Education investigation: The great divide, and Our school divide: Simple project lets kids take lead on learning.
John Clark of Massey University's Institute of Education responded to this series with an excellent examination of The inequality of school achievement. He argues that to make any meaningful changes to the education system, the government needs to also focus on "non-educational policies such as employment, taxation, family support, health, welfare and so on and so forth which are the primary causes of the inequalities which children bring to school and impact the most on school achievement."
Unsurprisingly the National Government thinks otherwise, and the Minister of Education has argued that we need to look elsewhere for understanding success: "What makes the biggest difference to a kid's education is something every kid and parent knows - the quality of the teaching in the classroom. Other critical variables are the quality of school leadership, parental engagement and community expectations" - see Hekia Parata's Socio-economic factors are often overstated.
And on the issue of teacher quality, the Minister has cause for celebration, with a newly released international survey ranking New Zealand teachers "fourth out of 35 countries" - see RNZ's NZ teachers rank high in professionalism.
But in terms of economics and inequality, you only have to look at its influence on where parents are choosing to send their kids to see that it has a major impact on the education system - see Michelle Duff's excellent report from last year: White flight: why middle-class parents are snubbing local schools. In this, the "educational apartheid" that has started to feature in the system since the introduction of Tomorrow's Schools is made clear.
The cost of "free" state education
The cost of so-called "free" state education was highlighted last month by the publication of a survey which added up all the various costs for parents of putting their kids through school - see Kirsty Johnston's Free education: Parents of 2016 babies will be shelling out $37,000.
This item also reports on a soon-to-be published University of Otago study on the stress parents face over the increasing cost of modern state education, and parents concerns to spare their kids any embarrassment and bullying for not being able to join in with their peers in paid school activities.
It is clear that even many middle class families find the cost of state education burdensome. The crucial difference is that they can, and do, stump up. This can be seen in the voluntary donation data released by the Ministry of Education last month, which is covered in Andy Fyers and Katie Kenny's Decile 10 schools take lion's share of school donations. According to this data, "More than half of voluntary donations paid to state and state-integrated schools in 2014 went to decile 9 and 10 schools". Decile 1 schools received about $56 in donations per student, while for decile 10 schools the average was about $324.
This inequity can be illustrated with examples of schools within a region - see Amy Jackman's Schools rely on $1b donations during 15 years of 'free' education system. In this she contrasts "Wellington Girls' College ($542,000) and Wellington College ($502,000)" with fellow Wellington school Wainuiomata High, which "received $13,500 in 2014 - or about $18 a student."
What are the donations being spent on? Jo Moir reports that Schools rely on parents paying donations to cover the cost of education: "According to many principals, the money is essential to providing the sort of education parents expect... the Education Ministry says they generally contribute to education costs - the same costs the ministry claims to cover through its operational funding to all schools."
A Dominion Post editorial argues that the real problem is Education is not free but nobody ever does anything about it. It holds out little hope that the current review of the funding system will do anything about the reliance on parental donations, with the Minister saying they are here to stay as she "congratulates herself" over her "choice" to fundraise for her own childrens' schools.
A Press editorial states that the reliance on donations makes it clear that the government is underfunding schools - see: When you're told education is free, they don't really mean free... The editorial declares "activities that are largely supported by parent donations at high-decile schools should not be denied children from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If anything, it is even more important those pupils have the extra learning opportunities they might not otherwise get."
That's certainly Duncan Garner's conclusion and he comes straight out and asks "Why don't we just fund our schools properly?" - see his heartfelt column, Do the maths - education isn't free and schools need more help.
Garner believes that it's simply wrong for concerns about money and fundraising to "get in the way of a decent and a full education for the next generation" and he's willing to pay more tax to help make that happen. For a similarly passionate declaration of the need to pay more taxes in order for the state to adequately fund social provision, see also Polly Gillespie's Go on, tax me.
So, is the education system being underfunded in New Zealand? A mixed answer to this comes via another OECD report, Education At A Glance 2015 - covered by Kirsty Johnston in New Zealand still lags behind on per-student education spending. She sums up the mixed findings saying "while New Zealand spent a high proportion of both its GDP and total public expenditure on schools and universities, our students still get about US$1000 less each than the OECD average."
