Mark Potter: New Zealand Education Institute President on the Auditor-General report, funding

The primary teachers’ union says there are other matters which should come before improvements to the measuring of student performance.  

An Auditor-General report says there's a gap in the Ministry of Education's information on student performance before NCEA level.  

It recommends better collection of progress reports on primary and intermediate students. 

New Zealand Education Institute President Mark Potter told Ryan Bridge that there needs to be more investment in education across the board. 

He says it’ll require new money to be invested, not just clip and cut funding from one part of education, and moved to another. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now, the Order to General has a report out. It's
fifty four pages long, and I just bear with me
just while I read one little part of it. It
essentially says that we don't the Ministry of Education doesn't
have enough information about student achievement, which I think is
something we know. It's interesting they also talk about inequities
in education, so the Ministry knows there wide variations in

(00:23):
student achievement between some broadly defined groups. For example, there
are long standing disparities between girls and boys in different
subjects for students in lower socioeconomic areas, for Mali and
Pacific students. We know that right. However, it is also clear,
says the report, that some students that belong to these
broadly defined student groups are reaching their potential. There are

(00:46):
girls who are high achievers in maths and boys who
are high achievers in reading. Nine percent of students with
the lowest socioeconomic backgrounds achieved excellence in maths nine percent.
Why is that happening? Why do some disadvantaged kids achieve
and others not. Mark Potter is the president of the NZI.

(01:08):
He's with us this morning. Good morning, Mark, Good morning.
The report says that the Ministry can't answer that question,
do you have an answer?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
Well, yeah, it's actually Alfhae Cohin in America said that
standardized testing is a very good way of setting out
how big the houses are near the schools where the
tests are delivered. So the idea of standized testing giving
you in depth information about the complex question the Auditor
General is asking. Standardized testing is never going to give

(01:41):
it to us. All it's going to test is so
receive knowledge, which is only part of the learning of children.
The disparity even within socio economic groups, will have answers
that we won't find just by testing the children.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Are we wasting time and money then throwing millions of
dollars at bat programs that are designed to level the
playing field. If we can't answer that question, that basic
question about it, because that will inform what works right.

Speaker 2 (02:10):
Well, it's a very good question. And the teaching profession
has been quite clear for quite some time that we
need significant investments in the things that we know will
make a difference. We have a waiting lists for specialist
support that are too long. We have teachers outnumbered by
the number of children with increasing demands in the classrooms.

(02:31):
We need more support teacher aids and so on. We
need more time for teachers to prepare for an increasingly
high expectation that society has of the learning of children.
This is where we need investments. We don't need more
measurements because we already know these issues that have already
been identified. New Zealand, OECD has said, has had the

(02:54):
fastest growing social economic gap in the world. And go
figure that we have been struggling to maintain the same
achievement neals we used to enjoy once upon a time.
In fact, as a country, we're an outlier in OECD
data because they say we perform much higher in education
than our social economic factors indicate we should.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Can you say, I mean, you're obviously asking, as you
have done previously, asking for more money for teacher aides
and all these kinds of things. Can we say that
if we put all that money in, because we're spending
well eight and a half billion dollars on education at
the moment, if we put all that money in, will
we get outcomes? Will we get results?

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Well, yes, we can say that because if you's look
into the evidence research around those very factors, they do
make significant difference to how children can learn. There are
a lot of factors outside the schools that schools cannot
deal with, so our teachers face inequity on a daily basis.
But the things that can be done that can be
changed within the schools means our minister who does want

(03:54):
to make a difference needs to have a government background
by given a genuine new money to invest, not to
clip and cut suddenly from one part of education and
move it to another. We've been doing that for decades
and it's not working for our children.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
All right, Mark, thank you very much for your time
this morning. That's Mark Potter, President of the NZEI. Great
to have you on. The program is always eight minutes
away from six. The Minister will be on with Mike
later on this morning for those who are interested. The
audis general support. As I said, it is quite long,
but it is quite interesting. The fact that they cannot

(04:29):
pinpoint why some do better than others. And if you
can't pinpoint that, are you not, excuse my French, when
you're putting money into programs, just kind of pissing in
the wind. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
listen live to news talks. It'd be from five am
weekdays or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio,