‘Investing in education’ must show returns

‘Investing in education’ must show returns

Wellington (21 October) – The government must incorporate a rigorous evaluation framework into Investing in Education Success (IES) programme, to ensure that the $359 million is indeed a good investment, says The New Zealand Initiative.

That is one of the recommendations from No School is an Island: Fostering Collaboration in a Competitive System, which analysed the performance of Learning Change Networks (LCN), a similar model to the IES where networks of schools voluntarily come together to share the best ways of lifting student achievement.

The government’s analysis of the LCN programme showed promising results, with a 17 percentage point increase in the proportion of children achieving National Standards, compared with 9 percentage point increase for a matched control sample. However, the Initiative was concerned with potential self-selection bias, as only schools that opted to provide data were included in the analysis.

The Initiative’s more conservative analysis found only one decile with a statistically significant lift in student achievement.

“LCN is still in its infancy with only a small number of schools involved per decile in our analysis, so while there are early signs of promise, it is too early to draw strong conclusions about its success,” said Oliver Hartwich, Executive Director at the Initiative.

“The IES policy is aligned with our earlier recommendations, but we still need to proceed cautiously with it. The Ministry of Education must develop a robust evaluation framework into the roll out of the policy to see if it is delivering on the stated outcomes. This is a huge investment aimed at boosting the performance of our education system, and we need ensure that it does actually lift achievement.”

The report makes a series of recommendations for IES, learning from the LCN programme:
The Ministry should provide each Community of Schools with operational funding first, to enable them to take time to establish trust, relationships, and a common shared purpose, before providing funding for the career path roles. The Initiative encourages Communities to use their funding to bring in facilitation support.

Communities should learn from the LCN methods of working with students and families/whānau to uncover what needs to change to lift learning and achievement.

Initiative Research Fellow Rose Patterson, who wrote the report, said: “The IES policy is a massive system change. It’s a once in a generation opportunity to make a real difference for students. But it is crucial that the IES policy builds on the work already happening in New Zealand’s schools.”

ends

© Scoop Media