Most teachers effective in helping struggling learners

12 June 2013

Immediate Release

ERO report shows majority of teachers effective in helping struggling learners

NZEI Te Riu Roa says an Education Review Office report just released shows 85 percent of teachers are effective at improving learning outcomes for Pasifika, Maori, low-income and special needs students in spite of under-resourcing of specialist support for schools, the impacts of child poverty and a lack of professional development for teachers.

An ERO report, “Accelerating the Progress of Priority Learners in Primary Schools”, shows 62 percent of 176 schools had some effective practices and nearly a quarter had highly effective processes.

It says students would only increase their progress if they were in classes or small group programmes that provided tailored teaching for each individual student.

NZEI Te Riu Roa President Judith Nowotarski says smaller class sizes, more funding for professional development for teachers and resources to up-skill teacher aides to support the delivery of high quality teaching programmes to individual students is needed.

“Schools tell us all the time that they face difficulties getting specialist support for children with challenging behaviour, training for teachers in terms of children’s special physical and intellectual needs and funding for support staff.

“Instead, the Government is spending millions imposing National Standards on schools which just tells us what we already know: that educational achievement is strongly correlated to a child’s socio-economic status.

Mrs Nowotarski says the report identified collaboration and planning between teachers as critical to supporting struggling learners.

“This is exactly what teachers have been trying to tell the Government for a long time. It is important that teachers collaborate and work together. Unfortunately the Government’s National Standards policy is about using data to increase competition between teachers and create winner and loser schools. This does not help children and their learning.”

Sheiss critical of the tone of ERO’s report that created a picture of schools failing struggling students when in fact their own review shows most teachers and most schools are effective in spite of the constraints and challenges they face.

“ERO and the Government should be focussing on lifting the quality of teaching and the quality of school processes rather than their current obsession with generating ever more data about student outcomes.”

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