11 February 2016

Education Minister proven wrong

The Education Minister’s repeated denial that a family’s income and background have the biggest impact on a child’s education has been demolished by a major international education study, the Green Party says.

New findings by the OECD today found that children from more deprived backgrounds are six times as likely to do badly in maths as children from the least deprived. The impact that deprived backgrounds had on a child’s learning was even greater in New Zealand, than in most other developed nations.

“Kids from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to fall further behind unless Hekia Parata and the National Government stop denying that poverty and family circumstances have the biggest impact on a child’s education,” Green Party education spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said.

“The findings should cause Hekia Parata to immediately abandon her plans to threaten underperforming schools with funding cuts and closure, and instead pump resources into better supporting them.

“It suits the National Government to pretend that its policies that keep families poor have nothing to do with educational underachievement.

“Just last year Hekia Parata was still claiming that in school factors - such as the quality of teaching - accounted for 82 percent of the impact on a child’s education, which this latest report proves is patently wrong. No one but the Minister believes that the huge difference between achievement in low and high decile schools is because low decile schools are staffed by incompetent teachers.

“The truth is some of the best most dedicated teachers want to teach in low decile schools, but those schools and their families are not given the support they need by the National Government,” Ms Delahunty said.

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