No Surprise PISA Results Show Drop Says NZPF President

The President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation (NZPF), Leanne Otene, said "I am not at all surprised that our reading, writing and mathematics PISA results have dipped this year."

"We have just come through three years of the Covid-19 pandemic," she said. "This is a global issue and it’s not just New Zealand results that have dropped."

"What is also significant for New Zealand this year is that a number of schools did not participate in the PISA assessments, and that skewed the results," she said.

"Our main concern should be on the gap between our highest and lowest achievers," said Otene, "because growing inequities are our biggest problem."

"What we most need are stable education policies that do not change with every electoral cycle and we must address the equity gap before it balloons any further," she said.

"to achieve equity we need to expand the free lunches in schools programme, reduce class sizes, increase learning support resources, engage tamariki Māori and our Pacific Island students in school, by actively demonstrating the value of Māori and Pacific Island cultures and languages, and provide ongoing high quality professional development for the teaching profession," she said.

"New Zealand’s GDP contribution to education is one of the lowest in the OECD. If we want to see increased performance, then we must commit to increasing education funding," she said. "Anything less is just tinkering around the edges."

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