NZ students top in the world?

The 2009 results from the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) places NZ’s 15 year olds amongst the top students in the world in reading, science and maths.

“What more does it take to realize we have a top education system producing top achievement?” asks Peter Simpson, newly elected president of the NZPF.

The PISA showed only four of the 65 participating countries achieved better reading and science results than NZ.

“This is an astonishing result given that we invest less money in education compared to our OECD competitors,” says Simpson.

However, while only 10 countries achieved better than NZ in maths, in reading the report found girls outperformed boys in every participating country. 

Even though NZ students’ overall reading performance was substantially higher than the average, the gap between the sexes was the greatest.

The PISA report also showed that NZ has a disproportionate number of lower achievers and that there had been no change in reading performance since 2000 and in maths since 2003.

Here, Maori and Pasifika students were over-presented at the low end of the reading, science and maths results.

Education minister, Anne Tolley, said the country can be proud of its top students, but acknowledged the areas of concern.

She said there was an urgent need to lift achievement levels for all and raise the bar for NZ’s young people and said that the controversial national standards debate would help.

“National standards in reading, writing and maths are helping to indentify and provide support for schools and students needing additional help.”

Simpson, on the other hand, wants to see the back of the national standards debate. “We’ve wasted enough time on a policy that has proven failure everywhere it has been tried.”

Teachers should get on with teaching, monitoring and assessing children’s learning the way they know best and continue this fantastic trend of success, he says.