The Spin Doctors out in force at Vanguard – again!
Today’s press release from Vanguard Military School (3 February 2016) again highlights how the spin doctors love to spin
a story around high participation-based pass rates in NCEA. But do they tell the full story of student achievement at
the charter secondary school?
Late last year an excellent article published in the NZ Listener revealed that students at Vanguard and its counterpart
in Whangarei – Te Kura Hourua o Whangarei Terenga Paraoa – gained the vast majority of their NCEA credits in
internally-assessed standards. They also had far higher pass rates in internally-assessed standards than they achieved
in external assessments.
http://www.listener.co.nz/commentary/editorial/quality-not-quantity/
The full breakdown published by NZQA (and linked to in the Listener article) also revealed that no less than 25 students
at Vanguard gained 3 credits at NCEA Level 2 in 2014 for such demanding subjects as “Experience day tramps”, which is
Standard no. US 425, if you want to look it up! Readers will be pleased to know that no-one seemed to have failed that
one!
It will be interesting to examine the 2015 standards information release and see if there is any change in the makeup of
these “top academic results”, as the spin doctors have described them!
The final comment in the release also caught our eye, as it related to the school roll.
Vanguard talked about opening in 2014 “… with a roll of 104 it has grown to around 160 students in 2016 and will
continue to look to expand.”
This sounds like the school is growing steadily but in practice, Vanguard’s roll has been below its Guaranteed Minimum
Roll used for funding purposes since the day it opened.
The 2014 GMR was set as 108, but the actual roll dropped from 104 in March to 93 in July and 79 by year end.
In 2015, the GMR was set higher at 144 but the actual roll was 137 (March), 123 (July) and 84 by October.
This trend confirms that students are leaving the school well before end of year external exams take place, which is
consistent with the high proportion of internally-assessed standards achieved.
But, more significantly, the taxpayer is funding far more student places at the school than has been evident in the
school roll.
Given the school is operated by a for-profit company (Vanguard Military School Ltd, company no. 4622709) this additional
revenue has gone straight into the Sponsor’s bottom line profit.
ENDS