New Zealand slips out of top rank for children's education

The latest OECD education statistics - the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) - show New Zealand children in the second tier for literacy, numeracy and science. Previously they had been in the top tier for numeracy.

Released this week, the 41-country PISA figures show New Zealand in the second tier along with Australia, Canada and Japan, and behind countries such as Finland, Korea and the Netherlands.

The gap between high-achieving and low-achieving New Zealand students is one of the largest in the study, as it was in the previous study in 2000.

Acting Secretary for Education Rob McIntosh said a range of initiatives was being implemented to tackle the gap but the results were not necessarily expected to show up in PISA 2003 because the strategies were not being implemented when the students involved in the study were going through school.

National Party leader Don Brash said the study showed the number of students performing at the highest levels of reading literacy had slipped from 19 percent in 2001 to 16 percent.

"The actual achievement levels of students have not improved at all since 2000, despite a 32 percent increase in the education budget and a 20 percent increase in staff at the Ministry of Education," he said.

"It is almost unbelievable that we could have an institution as large and as important as our state-funded education system, and put up with a level of failure that almost defies belief."

Joy Quigley, executive director of Independent Schools of New Zealand, said New Zealand's poor performance meant the role of the government in controlling education had to be seriously questioned.

"Parents of children in low-decile secondary schools want their children to be given more challenging and more academic work," she said.

PISA 2003 is at this OECD web page.

The Ministry of Education's New Zealand summary.