50% failure rate signals a slow-moving catastrophe in literacy and numeracy

PLUS: Council rates rises smaller than they appear, research shows

Summary:

• Compulsory literacy and numeracy tests in high schools are identifying major educational deficits and could lead to needed change

• However, by recreating the old pass-fail dynamic, they could also do immense damage

• The ultimate solution lies likely not with tests but with upstream investment in poorer families and schools

• Elsewhere, new research suggests council rates rises look more reasonable when adjusted for inflation and population growth

Troubling test results

News that more than half of pupils in some regions have failed the latest compulsory literacy and numeracy tests should be a wake-up call – and raises the question of whether current policies are making things worse.

As RNZ reported yesterday:

• The 2,200 students who sat the tests in Northland achieved pass rates of only 49% in reading, 39% in writing and 40% in numeracy.

• In South Auckland, the respective rates among its 5,000 pupils were 43%, 44% and 40%.

• This compares poorly with the national averages, which – though themselves not impressive – were 61%, 55% and 57%, respectively.

High-stakes testing

The tests have their origins in the last Labour government and concerns about NCEA. Under the flexible NCEA system, students have been able – in crude terms – to ‘demonstrate’ their core reading, writing and mathematics skills by achieving credits that had elements of those subjects but were not necessarily devoted to them.