Rethinking System Success in Education

Leading up to and over the Christmas break, my social media feeds were inundated with short video messages from government politicians, including our Minister of Education, celebrating the ‘success’ of their policy implementations – with convincing data to support these claims. It’s an extremely effective strategy: short sound bites, convincing data, emphatic claims of success.

But what if there’s more to the story?

What Are We Really Preparing Our Young People For?

Over the Christmas period I spent time with my six grandchildren. My eldest grandsons head to university this year and will be eligible to vote in the next election. They’ve been reading and asking questions – not simply about the political process, but about the issues being debated and their potential impact on their lives in 10, 20, 50 years.

Watching them navigate these conversations made me ask: What does success really mean for their generation?

My grandchildren are fortunate. They’ve benefited from supportive schooling and families where education is valued. None have yet achieved standout recognition like dux or first in class – but they inherently know they can be successful because of the foundations laid and their sense of self-worth and character that equips them to embrace opportunities and face challenges.

But here’s what struck me most: when I think about what I hope education gives them, I don’t think first about their NCEA grades or university entrance scores. I think about whether they’ll have the resilience, critical thinking, and collaborative capability to address the climate crisis, rebuild democratic institutions, and create more equitable communities. I think about whether they’ll be equipped not just to earn a living, but to participate in solving the problems our generation has left them.

And I wonder: Are our current measures of system success capturing any of that?

The Economic Argument – And Why It’s Not Enough

Let’s be clear: I’m not dismissing the importance of preparing young people for future employment and economic participation. Workforce productivity matters. Return on investment in education matters. Literacy and numeracy matter absolutely.

But we need to acknowledge something uncomfortable: the economic paradigm that has driven educational policy for the past three decades – growth at all costs, global competitiveness, individual achievement – is reaching the point of being unsustainable.

The same thinking that created our current challenges cannot solve them. Climate breakdown, rising inequality, democratic fragility, mental health crises – these aren’t problems that will be solved by slightly higher PISA scores or marginal gains in literacy benchmarks. They require young people who can think systemically, collaborate across difference, adapt to uncertainty, and maintain wellbeing under pressure.

So yes, we need to prepare young people for economic participation. AND we need to prepare them to address the existential challenges we’ve created through our narrow focus on economic growth.

This isn’t idealism. It’s pragmatism. The economic costs of mental health crises, social fragmentation, environmental damage, and democratic dysfunction far outweigh any short-term gains from optimising for traditional metrics alone.

What the Rest of the World Is Measuring

If we’re serious about redefining success, it helps to know what’s already happening internationally. A recent review by New Zealand’s Education Review Office examined how multilateral organisations and various countries measure education system change.

The findings are worth noting:

What most systems emphasise:

• Inputs and outputs (teacher qualifications, infrastructure, enrolment rates)
• Administrative efficiency
• Basic literacy and numeracy achievement
• Participation rates

What most systems largely ignore:

• Comprehensive learner outcomes beyond test scores
• Social and emotional capabilities
• Long-term wellbeing and civic engagement
• Equity of outcomes (not just gaps in test scores)

Even among developed nations, there’s enormous variation. Finland created a comprehensive map of their entire education system in 1999, evaluating it against efficiency, effectiveness, and economy (as noted in the ERO 2021 review). Scotland centres their National Improvement Framework on the child, tracking progress across six key improvement drivers. (also noted in the ERO 2021 review) But these are exceptions.

Most countries, including New Zealand, have fragmented approaches – monitoring what’s convenient rather than what’s crucial.

Four Dimensions of Success: What We Should Be Measuring

Several years ago I proposed a framework for thinking about success in education that moves beyond narrow metrics. It distinguishes four dimensions, each requiring different approaches to measurement. I’ve re-created and updated the table here to explain what each dimension is about, what measures can be used and what the limitations are or might be when we use them:

The Risk of Imbalance

Here’s the crucial point: Most schools, regions, and nations already use a combination of these approaches, but with vastly different emphases.

An over-emphasis on skills and knowledge at the expense of capabilities and social action produces young people unprepared for the challenges ahead. They may read fluently and calculate accurately, but lack resilience, struggle with ambiguity, and feel powerless to effect change.

Conversely, a focus on social action without ensuring foundational skills means students may have well-developed social consciousness but lack the capabilities to act on it effectively.

We need all four dimensions. The question is: Do our current measures of system success reflect that?

What Would Real Progress Look Like?

Here’s where I want to get provocative. We need to stop pretending that raising reading scores by two percentage points constitutes system success when the gap between our highest and lowest achieving students remains a chasm. We need to stop measuring what’s easy and start measuring what’s important.

Real progress means…

Yes, building strong foundations in literacy and numeracy – absolutely. No one is arguing otherwise.

But also:

• Actively reducing inequities rather than simply lamenting them
• Developing genuine agency in learning – students who can articulate their goals and navigate their own progress
• Building collaborative capability – the ability to work effectively with others different from themselves
• Fostering critical and creative thinking that transfers across contexts
• Cultivating resilience and wellbeing – strategies for managing pressure and seeking support when needed
• Developing civic capability – understanding how to participate in democratic processes and address community issues

When educational researcher Cathy Wylie described her hopes for her grandchildren’s education in a recent conversation, she didn’t talk about benchmark scores. She talked about learning that is “engrossing,” about students feeling “the world is expanding around them and their own sense of who they are is deepening.”

That’s not fuzzy thinking. That’s what success looks like when you’re designing for human flourishing rather than system compliance.

What Can We Measure? What Should We Track?

I’m not suggesting we abandon all traditional metrics. Literacy and numeracy proficiency remain foundational. But we need to expand our definition of system success to include the capabilities young people actually need.

Earlier this year, we brought together educators from across New Zealand at the EdRising Convening to identify the future-focused capabilities essential for thriving in an interconnected, rapidly changing world. Through extensive consultation and synthesis, we developed a framework that moves beyond traditional subject-based learning while maintaining the essential foundation of disciplinary knowledge. These six capabilities offer a practical starting point for what broader success could look like:

What we could track: Can students trace connections between natural systems, human societies, and economic structures? Do they consider systems-level impacts when solving problems? Are they developing regenerative approaches to challenges?

What we could track: Do students engage respectfully across cultural boundaries? Can they draw on diverse knowledge systems for problem-solving? Are they developing genuine partnership capabilities?

What we could track: Can students make informed decisions about technology use? Do they understand how algorithms and digital economics affect their lives? Are they creating with technology while maintaining authentic relationships?

What we could track: Can students define problems in new ways? Do they generate multiple possible solutions? Are they comfortable with uncertainty and iteration?

What we could track: Can students facilitate groups and build consensus? Do they empower others to lead? Are they developing skills for collective action and democratic participation?

What we could track: Do students have strategies for managing stress and setback? Can they adjust goals as circumstances change? Are they building strong support systems and maintaining hope in challenging times?

Importantly, these capabilities aren’t developed in a vacuum – they’re cultivated through deep engagement with rich content from diverse disciplines. Mathematics provides logical reasoning and pattern recognition. Sciences offer systematic inquiry methods. Humanities contribute critical analysis and historical perspective. The arts develop creative expression. The goal isn’t to replace content with capabilities, but to ensure content is learned and applied in ways that develop these future-focused capacities.

At the system level, we should also track:

• Equity of outcomes across all measures (not just test score gaps)
• Teacher collaboration and professional learning time
• Whānau and community partnership quality
• Resource allocation based on genuine need
• Stability and coherence of policy direction
• Infrastructure for collective improvement

Some of these can be measured through student surveys and self-assessment, portfolios of authentic work demonstrating capability development, teacher observations over time, community feedback on partnerships and outcomes, and longitudinal tracking of student pathways and wellbeing. None are as simple as a standardised test – but all are more meaningful and more aligned with what our young people actually need.

Two Questions That Matter

Whether you’re a politician, policy-maker, school board member, principal, or teacher, I want to pose two questions that cut to the heart of this:

1. If our measures of progress improved tomorrow, what would actually look and feel different for learners, whānau, and teachers?

Would students arrive at school with more curiosity and leave with more confidence? Would whānau feel genuinely welcomed as partners in learning rather than consumers of a service? Would teachers spend less time justifying their practice through paperwork and more time actually collaborating to improve it?

If your answer is “not much,” then we’re measuring the wrong things.

2. What would we stop doing if we were serious about that broader picture of success?

Would we stop ranking schools against each other? Stop fragmenting the curriculum into atomized skills divorced from meaning? Stop asking teachers to implement yet another initiative without the time and support to do it well?

These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re design questions.

Because if we can articulate what genuinely better looks like—and what we’d need to let go of to get there—we can start building the kind of system that serves all our children, not just the ones who’ve always succeeded despite the system’s limitations.

What This Means for You

The question of how we measure system success matters profoundly because it determines where we direct our energy, resources, and reform efforts.

Get the measures right, and we create conditions for genuine, equitable improvement that prepares young people for the world they’ll actually inherit.

Get them wrong, and we risk decades of well-intentioned effort that optimises for the wrong outcomes – leaving our most vulnerable students no better off, and leaving all our young people underprepared for the challenges ahead.

My grandchildren are asking questions about the future they’ll shape. The least we can do is ensure our education system is measuring whether we’re actually preparing them to answer those questions with capability, confidence, and care.

What do you believe we should be measuring? Where would you draw the line between what’s necessary and what’s sufficient?

The comment section below is open. The conversation continues.

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In my next post, I’ll tackle the harder question: What investment does this broader vision of success actually require? We can’t just add new expectations onto an already overwhelmed system – we need to be honest about what sustained investment in teacher professional learning, leadership development, learning support, and cultural responsiveness would actually look like. And we need to stop the destructive pattern of stop-start funding that undermines even our best intentions.

This post draws on a recent conversation with Cathy Wylie, one of New Zealand’s most experienced educational researchers, and on the Education Review Office’s 2021 report “Measuring Change in Education Systems.”