Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Education rating incongruities

Only recently the Legatum Institute rated NZ Number 1 in the world in education rankings.

They base their analysis on things like teacher/pupil ratio, enrolment and perceptions about the education system. Matters that governments can control. They do not appear to rate by individual achievement or performance.

The OECD measures the actual performance of students by testing 4,000 and delivers a different result. NZ is slipping in Maths, English and Science. Although the rankings could fairly be described as "plummeting" the absolute scores haven't dropped radically.

I heard one commentator talking about the worsening results being down to the "rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer." But the one trend that is 'up' is achievement by immigrant students. If immigrant students generally fall into lower income groups (I am making that assumption but could be wrong) then that doesn't stack up.

Another incongruity arises too. The OECD report apparently finds the gap between achievers and non-achievers is larger than any other country. Maori have traditionally featured disproportionately among the non-achievers.

Yet yesterday Census 2013 results found,

Over 36,000 Māori stated a bachelor’s degree or higher as their highest qualification at the 2013 Census – a more than 50 percent increase since 2006.
It's difficult to square all of this up.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It isn't hard to reconcile it.

There may be more bachelor diplomas being issued, but really many bachelor courses should be regarded as useless wastes of resources and the percentage of people with real degrees is probably falling. You don't need to be able to read and write to get some qualifications.

The real crime as far as Maori are concerned are the immersion schools that permanently separate their students from the real world.

It is only going to get worse and there isn't anything you, I or the government can do about it.

Oswald Bastable said...

BA= Bugger All

Anonymous said...

What's there to be surprised about?

This is the results of nine years of Labour government.

OK: there is something to be surprised about - that NZ wasn't far, far, further behind.