Improving Quality and Equity in NZ Schools

New Zealand has a deep pool of highly talented and motivated teaching individuals, but the system is performing below potential.

Introduction: Ensuring the tide lifts all boats (OECD)

The New Zealand report from the OECD Economic Survey has been released, featuring a section on Education titled “Ensuring the tide lifts all boats; ensuring quality and equity in schools across New Zealand.”

Given that the bulk of the survey data that has been used to inform this report was gathered prior to the change of government, this makes for attention-grabbing reading, and provides some sobering insights into the economic and education environment we find ourselves now responding to.

The Education section begins with a reminder of how, despite being above the OECD average, our PISA scores have been dropping for some years now…

For the time poor, here are some of the headlines from the education section (page 82ff)that stood out for me:

• New Zealand has a deep pool of highly talented and motivated teaching individuals, but the system is performing below potential.
• Declining education performance and ongoing inequity are a serious threat to NZ’s prosperity.
• Support elements are lacking, including a sufficiently detailed curriculum and efficient assessment tools.
• National reforms have put NZ teachers under ‘above average’ stress.
• The MoE operational capacity has been pared back too far.
• The education system’s significant assets could be leveraged more.
• New principals are not receiving enough training.
• Time actually spent on teaching and learning is below OECD average.
• Centres of excellence operate too much in isolation and lack support has fostered distrust.
• NZ is the world leader for preparing teachers for a multicultural environment.

There are a lot more besides, including statements about curriculum, assessment and attendance for example, but these are the ones that stood out for me as I read the report – each is explained in more detail in the report itself, so I’m not going to do that here.

The overarching thing that stood out for me across all of the comments is the fact that we don’t operate effectively as a system. Note the comments above that reinforce this…

• system performing below potential
• support elements lacking
• operating in isolation
• assets could be leveraged more…

As I read this report I get a sense of ‘deja vu’ – of the typical response being one of signalling ‘point solutions’ as we are seeing currently. For example, the quick fix to declining literacy is to implement structured programmes; or concerns about digital distraction is to ban mobile devices; or addressing truancy by employing more truancy officers etc. While none of these things, in and of themselves are necessarily wrong, it is our inclination to pursue single, point solutions without considering the ways in which many of the these things work interdependently or as antecedents to other interventions.

When will we have the courage to admit that our system is under-performing and target resource and investment of time and energy. towards the critical elements of a system-level view of what is happening?

This is not about abolishing self-governing schools necessarily, nor about moving to a more centralised (top-down) system of education. It’s about learning how we can most effectively leverage the capability that exists in our system and refocus on creating a collective approach to how we operate – as opposed to the competitive and isolated approaches we currently have.

The OECD report, in fact, argues that our current approach to self managing schools is a strength we should be exploiting. It recommends:

• The New Zealand School System should remain devolved
• Implementation of education policy should be reformed by:
  • providing more central and regional support to help schools, school boards, principals and teachers put policy into action
  • strengthening horizontal ties between actors to help better spread best practice.

While some in the higher levels of the education bureaucracy might argue that that is what is happening currently – it patently isn’t. As the report also notes:

“Lack of central guidance and support is unnecessarily increasing workloads and inducing stress and distrust of national reforms among principals and teachers.” (page 118)

The path forward is complex. Despite what different politicians and academic advisers might promise, there are no ‘silver bullet’ solutions to many of the issues and concerns identified in this report. In my view, however, the evidence is clear – we need to become more focused on becoming ‘systems thinkers’ – at every level of our education system – as principals, teachers, board members etc. Without a clear and coherent system view, and a commitment to operating with a system mindset – including how we collaborate with others at a local, regional and national level, we’re unlikely to really address any of these issues in a meaningful or sustainable way.