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Why is NZ shedding talented teachers?
• New Zealand has a high quality but unequal education system.
• It fails too many Māori and Pasifika students, with wide gaps in performance.
• Policies to attract, retain and develop talent are needed to tackle the problem.
Wellington (7 October): While national standards, charter schools, and class sizes have dominated the education debate, research by The New
Zealand Initiative shows teacher quality is the most important in-school factor influencing student achievement.
But as the World Class Education? Why New Zealand Must Strengthen its Teaching Profession report shows, many educators are demoralised by the structures in which they work, the low social status of the job,
and the lack of talent recognition within the system.
“New Zealand has a very good education system, but by failing to recognise the value teachers bring, we’ve ended up with
a very lopsided profile of student performance,” said Dr Oliver Hartwich, executive director of the Initiative.
“On one hand we have very high performing students who rank among the best in the world. But on the other, there are
pockets of students who are being left behind not only in the core areas of reading, science and maths, but in every
other measure as well.”
In brief, the research found:
- NZ has one of the largest gaps in the world between high- and low-performing students, with Māori and Pasifika
students consistently less successful than Pakeha and Asian students
- the quality of teacher education is variable – only 57% of schools are satisfied with the quality of teacher
graduates
- teacher morale in secondary schools slipped from 70% in 2009 to 57% in 2012.
Dr Hartwich said the need to attract quality graduates into the profession is increasingly pressing as the aging
teaching workforce nears retirement age.
“We need to give the profession the recognition it deserves if we want to attract the best and brightest graduates and
hold onto our position at the top of the education rankings,” he said.
World Class Education? Why New Zealand Must Strengthen its Teaching Profession is written by the former headmaster of Auckland Grammar School John Morris and The New Zealand Initiative research
fellow Rose Patterson.
It will be followed later this year by a report on how the top education systems in the world are tackling similar
challenges.
The third report, expected in early 2014, will draw on these international policies to explore how New Zealand’s
teaching profession can be strengthened.
The event will be launched at a fully booked event in Auckland, but a limited number of spaces are available for media.
KEY MESSAGES
Why is NZ shedding talented teachers?
• NZ has a high quality but unequal education system
• It fails too many Māori and Pasifika students, with wide gaps in performance
• Policies to attract, retain and develop talent are needed to tackle the problem
This report, written by John Morris and Rose Patterson, identifies the critical junctures where teaching quality can be
influenced, and the organisations that have the power to strengthen the teaching profession.
This is the first in a series of three reports, which will use comparative research to explore how leading jurisdictions
attract and retain world class teaching talent, and how these policies can be applied to
New Zealand.
NZ is a top-performing system
• NZ’s 15-year-olds rank among the top performing countries in reading (7th), science (7th) and mathematics (13th)
• NZ (along with Shanghai and Singapore) has the highest proportion of top readers (one in six)
But the system is not reaching everyone
• NZ has one of the largest gaps in the world between high- and low-performing students
• The 2009 PISA study of 15-year-olds showed NZ has one of the widest ranges of reading scores in the OECD
• Māori and Pasifika students are consistently less successful than Pakeha and Asian students at all three levels of
NCEA and they do not perform as well in international tests of achievement
Teachers are the education system’s most valuable asset
• A meta-analysis of half a million studies found teachers were the most important in-school factor for student
achievement
• Teacher salaries make up 61% of the education budget
NZ has good quality teachers, but we can improve in key areas
• Our teachers are highly qualified - 86% hold a bachelor’s degree
• But one-third of year nine mathematics teachers do not have a mathematics qualification
• 18% of schools say a lack of mathematics teachers hinders the ability to teach the subject
• The quality of teacher education is variable - only 57% of schools are satisfied with the quality of teacher graduates
• Low expectations of Māori and Pasifika students are partly to blame for low achievement
We struggle to attract and retain talent
• Despite the importance of teachers, their status in NZ is low, and has been eroded by top-down changes
• Teacher morale in secondary schools slipped from 70% in 2009 to 57% in 2012
• Teacher appraisal is a ‘tick the box’ exercise. It is rarely used as a tool for development and only 5% of teacher
goals are related to student outcomes
• There is a lack of career structure and recognition of excellence. The pay scale sends a signal that teachers have
reached their maximum capability after eight years
Why this matters
• As the ageing teaching workforce moves into retirement, we will need to refresh the teaching pool
• Furthermore, we need to attract the best and brightest into the profession if we are to lift student achievement from
its current level
• Much of the problem lies with the system, not teachers, and this where the focus should fall
• All stakeholders, including the unions and government, have an important role to play in lifting the quality of our
most important education resource
Report: TNZI_World_Class_Ed_Low_res.pdf
ENDS