NEW ZEALAND CHILDREN AMONGST HIGHEST ACHIEVERS IN OECD - 9 December 2010

A report released yesterday shows New Zealand children’s achievement is amongst the highest in the OECD, ahead of Australia and the UK and well ahead of the US, demonstrating that the government’s determination to pour endless resources into the introduction of a ‘national standards’ system is completely misguided, says Ernie Buutveld, President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF).

The OECD Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) examines achievement levels of 15 year old students across 65 countries in literacy, science and maths. New Zealand students rank in the top four countries in reading and science and in the top ten in maths.

“The concept of national standards or national testing is a failed concept”, says Buutveld. “In the US, the UK and in Australia, the introduction of the concept has been a complete flop to the point that all three countries have slipped in their OECD rankings”.

There has been strong reaction to the report’s results, especially in the US where critics have pointed directly to the country’s obsession with high stakes standardised tests resulting from the ‘No Child Left Behind’ (NCLB) policy to explain the serious decline in performance.  It is now acknowledged that NCLB did not work.

“It beggars belief that when our children are achieving at the highest levels in the OECD, that we would want to introduce a system that leads to decline in performance”, says Buutveld.  

“The New Zealand Curriculum is clearly working well. We are getting fantastic results with very limited resources compared to the OECD countries achieving at similar high levels to us. What we need to focus on is continuing the good work with our achieving children and making further improvements for the 14% who are not achieving so well”, said Buutveld. “That means more resources for the many excellent learning support programmes we already have and a government committed to addressing the unacceptable level of child poverty in our country”.    

For more information:

NZPF Spokesperson: NZPF President,  Ernie Buutveld (04) 471 2338 or 027 448 4789