Resourcing the system we need for measuring success

Last week I argued that we need to rethink how we measure system success in education. Rather than fixating on narrow metrics like test scores and school rankings, we should be tracking whether our young people are developing the capabilities they actually need: ecological thinking, cultural fluency, digital wisdom, creative problem-solving, collective leadership, and adaptive resilience – alongside foundational literacy and numeracy.

I received a number of positive responses to this vision. But several also asked the harder question: “This sounds great, but what would it actually take to make it happen? We can’t just add more expectations onto an already overwhelmed system.”

You’re absolutely right. And here’s the uncomfortable truth that needs to be said clearly:

We cannot measure broader success without investing in the conditions that make it achievable.

Changing what we measure without changing what we resource is performative at best, cynical at worst. If we’re serious about developing these capabilities in our young people, then government must make sustained investment in the infrastructure that enables this work.

This isn’t about asking for more of everything. It’s about being honest about what’s required and making strategic choices about where investment matters most. Here are some specific areas for targeted investment that I believe would make the difference:

1. Teacher Professional Learning and Development

Teachers are the key lever for system performance. Yet we’ve allowed both pre-service teacher education and ongoing professional development to decline significantly. If we want teachers to develop sophisticated capabilities in their students, they need sustained, high-quality professional learning that goes far beyond compliance training or one-off workshops.

This means:

• Substantial, protected time for collaborative professional inquiry
• Access to deep disciplinary and pedagogical expertise
• Long-term professional learning programmes, not short-term projects
• Investment in teacher educators and the quality of initial teacher education

The current reality is that most professional learning is fragmented, under-resourced, and squeezed into whatever time teachers can find around their already full teaching loads. We ask teachers to transform their practice while giving them neither the time nor the support to do so. This is neither fair nor effective.

2. Leadership Development

School leadership has become an almost impossibly complex task – balancing property management, financial oversight, community engagement, staff development, and educational leadership. We need systematic investment in developing leaders who can navigate this complexity while keeping learning at the centre.

This means:

• Comprehensive leadership preparation programmes
• Ongoing leadership development throughout careers, not just at appointment
• Networks and communities of practice for peer support
• Succession planning and distributed leadership models

Currently, we promote excellent teachers into leadership roles with minimal preparation, expect them to figure it out as they go, and wonder why so many burn out or leave the profession. This is wasteful of both talent and public investment.

3. Support for Learning Diversity

Investment in supporting students with additional learning needs has been inconsistent and insufficient. Every time this funding is reduced or made more restrictive, we undermine both equity and system performance. All students deserve access to learning, regardless of their starting point or support needs.

This means:

• Adequate resourcing for learning support coordinators and specialists
• Early intervention support that prevents later difficulties
• Professional development for all teachers in differentiated instruction and Universal Design for Learning
• Wrap-around services that address barriers to learning
• Specialist expertise available when and where it’s needed

The consequence of under-resourcing learning support is not just that vulnerable students fall further behind – it’s that teachers become overwhelmed trying to meet diverse needs without adequate support, and the quality of learning for all students suffers. Worse, it seems to me, is the current ‘one size fits all’ emphasis in the design of our curriculum and pedagogical approach is further exacerbating these concerns and further disadvantaging those who need this support the most.

4. Resourcing for Cultural Diversity and Responsiveness

Our increasingly diverse student population requires intentional investment in cultural responsiveness. Te Tiriti o Waitangi establishes foundational obligations for honoring te reo Māori and mātauranga Māori, but cultural diversity extends far beyond this. We now have significant numbers of students from refugee and migrant communities, each bringing rich cultural knowledge and perspectives – and often significant challenges related to resettlement, language acquisition, and trauma.

Critically, schools cannot address these challenges alone. Cultural responsiveness and equity for diverse communities require coordinated investment across health, housing, welfare, resettlement services, and employment. When we measure school success in these areas, we must account for the presence or absence of these wider supports. A school serving a community with inadequate housing, limited health services, and poor employment prospects cannot be held to the same accountability standards as one where these systems are functioning well.

This means:

• Adequate numbers of qualified te reo Māori teachers and cultural advisors
• ESOL specialists and culturally appropriate learning support
• Professional learning for all teachers in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies
• Resources and time for genuine partnership with mana whenua and diverse communities
• Support for maintaining and strengthening heritage languages
• Coordinated, wrap-around services connecting education with health, housing, welfare, and employment support
• Recognition that cultural responsiveness isn’t an add-on but fundamental to quality teaching
• Measures of system success that account for the broader social infrastructure supporting (or failing to support) diverse communities

The Pattern of Stop-Start Investment

Perhaps most damaging is the pattern of governments treating these as discretionary investments that come and go with political priorities, rather than as essential infrastructure for system performance.

When professional learning funding is cut, teachers struggle to develop new practices. When leadership development is deprioritised, we lose experienced leaders and fail to prepare new ones. When learning support is restricted, vulnerable students fall further behind and teacher workload becomes unsustainable. When cultural responsiveness is treated as optional, we fail our Treaty obligations and lose the rich contributions diverse perspectives bring to learning.

Each cycle of reduced investment creates problems that take years to repair – and we never fully recover before the next cut comes.

This creates a particularly pernicious dynamic: governments announce new initiatives and higher expectations, but without the sustained investment needed to build capacity. Teachers and school leaders work heroically to implement changes with inadequate support. When the inevitable shortfalls emerge, the narrative becomes “schools aren’t performing” rather than “we didn’t resource the conditions for success.” This cycle erodes trust, exhausts the profession, and ultimately harms students.

What Sustained Investment Would Look Like

If we’re serious about broader measures of success, we need sustained investment that:

Is protected across electoral cycles, not subject to short-term political whim. Professional learning, leadership development, learning support, and cultural responsiveness should be treated as essential infrastructure with multi-year funding commitments that survive changes in government.

Is evaluated based on long-term impact, not immediate outputs. Building teacher expertise takes years, not months. Developing culturally responsive practice is ongoing work, not a one-off training. We need evaluation frameworks that recognize this and avoid the tyranny of annual reporting cycles that favour quick wins over sustainable change.

Recognizes that capability development in students requires capability development in teachers. You cannot expect teachers to develop ecological thinking, digital wisdom, or adaptive resilience in their students if they haven’t had opportunities to develop these capabilities themselves through well-designed professional learning.

Treats professional learning, leadership, learning support, and cultural responsiveness as essential infrastructure, not optional extras. These aren’t things we fund when budgets allow and cut when times are tight. They’re the foundation that makes everything else possible.

Coordinates across sectors to address challenges schools cannot solve alone. This particularly applies to equity and cultural diversity, where educational outcomes are deeply affected by housing, health, welfare, and employment systems. Whole-of-government approaches aren’t a luxury—they’re a necessity.

The Accountability-Investment Link

Here’s the principle that should govern all of this:

You cannot hold the system accountable for outcomes you haven’t resourced it to achieve.

If you measure cultural fluency but don’t fund professional learning for culturally responsive pedagogy, that’s not accountability – it’s blame-shifting.

If you track adaptive resilience but don’t resource pastoral care and mental health support, that’s not evaluation – setting schools up to fail.

If you hold schools accountable for equity but don’t provide adequate learning support or coordinate with other social services, that’s not system improvement – it’s punishing schools for problems they cannot solve alone.

Real accountability requires matching expectations with investment. It requires recognizing that schools cannot succeed in isolation from other social systems. It requires sustained commitment rather than stop-start funding based on political cycles.

A Direct Question for Decision-Makers

For those who hold power over budget allocations and policy priorities, I want to pose this question directly:

Are you prepared to make the sustained investments required to achieve the broader measures of success you claim to want?

Not symbolic investments. Not pilot projects that get abandoned when the political winds shift. Not initiatives announced with fanfare but under-resourced from the start.

Sustained, adequate, protected investment in:

• Teacher professional learning and initial teacher education
• Leadership development and support
• Learning support for all students who need it
• Cultural responsiveness and partnership infrastructure
• Cross-sector coordination for equity

If the answer is yes, then let’s work together to design those investments well and commit to them for the long term.

If the answer is no – if you’re not prepared to make those investments – then please have the honesty to stop announcing new expectations and adding to the accountability frameworks. The profession deserves better than being set up to fail.

What Educators Can Do

Even without government commitment, there are things educators and school leaders can do to advocate for and make better use of the investment that does exist:

Name the gaps clearly. When you lack the resources to implement expectations, say so explicitly. Don’t quietly struggle and absorb the pressure. Document what you could achieve with adequate professional learning time, with sufficient learning support, with proper cultural responsiveness resources. Make the connection between under-investment and outcomes visible.

Share the costs of under-investment. When learning support is inadequate, track the impact – not just on struggling students, but on teacher workload, on the quality of learning for all students, on staff retention. When professional learning is insufficient, document what practices you cannot implement well and why. These stories make the case for investment.

Pool resources strategically. Where you can, work with other schools to share costs for specialist expertise, professional learning, or cultural advisors. This won’t replace the need for system-level investment, but it can amplify what you do have and demonstrate what’s possible with adequate resourcing.

Advocate collectively. Individual schools asking for more resources are easily dismissed. Professional associations, Communities of Learning, regional networks speaking with one voice about investment priorities are harder to ignore. Use your collective voice to make the case for sustained investment in the infrastructure that enables the work.

An Investment Framework, Not Just a Wish List

This isn’t about asking for unlimited resources. It’s about being clear on what’s required for the success we claim to want.

If we want broader measures of success – if we want young people who are ecologically literate, culturally fluent, digitally wise, creative problem-solvers, collaborative leaders, and adaptively resilient – then we need to invest in the conditions that make this possible.

That means sustained investment in teacher capability, leadership capacity, learning support, cultural responsiveness, and cross-sector coordination.

Without this investment, broader measures of success become just another way to document failure rather than drive improvement.

With this investment, we can build the system our young people deserve.

What’s your experience with the pattern of stop-start investment? Where have you seen adequate resourcing make a genuine difference? Where has under-investment undermined even the best intentions?

The comment section is open. The conversation continues.

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In my next post, I’ll explore the question of governance and decision-making: once we’ve agreed on what to measure and committed to resourcing it adequately, who should hold which decisions to make success achievable? How do we balance local autonomy with system coherence? Stay tuned for Post 3 in this series.

This post builds on Rethinking System Success in Education, where I argued for expanding our definition of educational success beyond test scores to include the capabilities young people actually need.