A Summary of Cameron Bagrie’s Business Desk Piece on Education (all quotes below)
– Do we have equality of opportunity in schooling? We’d like to think so. I’ve heard many politicians talk about it. We do not have it.
– Education is one of my bugbears that I consider an essential part of the economic formula for addressing social challenges and increasing living standards.
– In the race of life and schooling [some] have a massive head-start courtesy of wealth, parents’ education and income, the school zone grown up in, family support, whether parents own their own home or rent, are still married, haven’t been in prison, or subject to physical harm to name a few.
– The operational funding for primary and secondary schools, including teachers’ salary, was around $7.9 billion in 2024. It works out to be around $9,300 per student. This excludes private schools.
– Teacher’s remuneration is the biggest cheque by a long shot coming in around $5.4 billion in 2024. The government directly funds that but try running a budget with a fixed wage cost representing 70 percent of your operation. You do not have many levers left to play with if you have an unexpected expense or underlying pressures.
– To help level the playing field, schools have access to Equity Funding.
– The EQI is a mechanism that tries to understand the relationship between social and economic factors and student achievement. The EQI determines how much equity funding a school receives in addition to their regular funding. The higher the EQI, the more funding the school receives per student. It starts at zero (EQI 344) but goes up to around $1,100 per student (EQI 569).
– Attend a 350 EQI school and the data tells us more than 80 per cent will get NCEA level 3 and retention in school to age 17 is more than 90 percent. Sixty percent will get a bachelor’s degree or level 7 qualification.
– Attend a high EQI school (>500) and the average for NCEA level 3 achievement is less than 40 per cent though there are outliers. The (average) percentage progressing to getting a degree is less than 10 percent. The same divergences apply with attendance.
– Equity Index funding in 2024 was less than $250 million in total against direct spending of $7.9 billion. Compare that to $2.5 billion of departmental output expenditure and several hundred million on school lunches.
– EQI funding is around 3 per cent of primary and secondary schools operational and teachers pay funding, yet it is one of the mechanisms we are trying to level the playing field. Three percent! I almost fell off my chair.
However, as a comparator, consider what as parents you might pay in donations if your child goes to a low EQI school. Odds are it’ll be more than $1,100.
I recently visited a school with very low attendance and lots of gang related students. The principal showed me the Budget. EQI funding was 5 per cent of total funding. Some things that chewed up their EQI contribution … Loaner uniforms. Stationery. Sport transport and payment of fees (because parents can’t). Licenses. Vandalism. Bus hire for trips and visits. This is before a cent is directed at core teaching.
– We spend more on the winter energy payment than we spend on EQI funding.
The EQI funding rate rises by 1.5 per cent between 2025 and 2026. Inflation is 3 per cent. The effective funding has been cut.
The EQI contribution needs to be lifted a long way if we are serious about equality of opportunity. $1,100 [at the MOST] is simply not enough.
Alwyn Poole, a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system, he founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. This article was published HERE
– The operational funding for primary and secondary schools, including teachers’ salary, was around $7.9 billion in 2024. It works out to be around $9,300 per student. This excludes private schools.
– Teacher’s remuneration is the biggest cheque by a long shot coming in around $5.4 billion in 2024. The government directly funds that but try running a budget with a fixed wage cost representing 70 percent of your operation. You do not have many levers left to play with if you have an unexpected expense or underlying pressures.
– To help level the playing field, schools have access to Equity Funding.
– The EQI is a mechanism that tries to understand the relationship between social and economic factors and student achievement. The EQI determines how much equity funding a school receives in addition to their regular funding. The higher the EQI, the more funding the school receives per student. It starts at zero (EQI 344) but goes up to around $1,100 per student (EQI 569).
– Attend a 350 EQI school and the data tells us more than 80 per cent will get NCEA level 3 and retention in school to age 17 is more than 90 percent. Sixty percent will get a bachelor’s degree or level 7 qualification.
– Attend a high EQI school (>500) and the average for NCEA level 3 achievement is less than 40 per cent though there are outliers. The (average) percentage progressing to getting a degree is less than 10 percent. The same divergences apply with attendance.
– Equity Index funding in 2024 was less than $250 million in total against direct spending of $7.9 billion. Compare that to $2.5 billion of departmental output expenditure and several hundred million on school lunches.
– EQI funding is around 3 per cent of primary and secondary schools operational and teachers pay funding, yet it is one of the mechanisms we are trying to level the playing field. Three percent! I almost fell off my chair.
However, as a comparator, consider what as parents you might pay in donations if your child goes to a low EQI school. Odds are it’ll be more than $1,100.
I recently visited a school with very low attendance and lots of gang related students. The principal showed me the Budget. EQI funding was 5 per cent of total funding. Some things that chewed up their EQI contribution … Loaner uniforms. Stationery. Sport transport and payment of fees (because parents can’t). Licenses. Vandalism. Bus hire for trips and visits. This is before a cent is directed at core teaching.
– We spend more on the winter energy payment than we spend on EQI funding.
The EQI funding rate rises by 1.5 per cent between 2025 and 2026. Inflation is 3 per cent. The effective funding has been cut.
The EQI contribution needs to be lifted a long way if we are serious about equality of opportunity. $1,100 [at the MOST] is simply not enough.
Alwyn Poole, a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system, he founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. This article was published HERE
8 comments:
One small nitpicky semantic point: the term 'equality' is usually used in relation to opportunities and 'equity' to outcomes.
More importantly, all the public money in the world won't compensate for private irresponsibility on the part of those parents. If anything it will send the signal that society condones their wanton recklessness with regard to their children's future and will take over their responsibilities.
Use the money currently frittered away on 'equity' measures to prosecute those parents for negligence.
This issue of the relationship between achievement and finances and home environment is a topic I have become very concerned about . Alwyn you seem to be certain they are the main factors in school achievement . I do not, based on research, current and historical examples and personal experience.
Here is the list of the examples I base my stance on-
The second to bottom achieving and impoverished US state, Mississippi, astonishingly within a few years this decade went from bottom to into the top half of US states in achievement , simply by changing their methods of teaching reading from Whole Language to intensive phonics . Meanwhile the wealthiest ( and trendiest) state California stagnated , even declined in reading scores.
The Michaela Community school drawing pupils from the most disadvantaged London suburb has achievement levels equivalent to Eton students by simply implementing traditional teaching methods ( as we used to have in NZ) .
The Clackmananshire research in which the poorest Scottish shire
implemented intensive phonics for reading instruction and the results were so remarkable, that England changed the reading method to this and now score the highest levels in the English speaking world.
Then there are many, many Charter schools in the US and UK which are achieving outstanding academic results for disadvantaged students with just more traditional teaching methods. Not injection of funds
From my experience I have in my own family , parents who spent
multi thousands in school fees at a very prestigious Australian private school with heavy progressive ideology, but moved their child away because she was underachieving for her intelligence . She now attends a state school where more traditional methods are used.and she achieves much better.
Personally in our private school room dedicated to structured teaching, we encountered from the highest decile homes , 1500 children who where years behind in the basics . This , in a decile 9 , low equity suburb where homes and schools were extremely well endowed with funds and rich home environments. These remedial students did not suffer from any deprivations but simply ineffective teaching and discipline such as we mostly have in NZ schools now
.
When traditional teaching methods were dominant in NZ , last century we had a world class education system without the longest tail of underachievement we have now .
What low decile , high equity schools need is more traditional teaching methods, content rich ( to improve reading comprehension)
and strict discipline .
Isn't it interesting when the racists who complain about Maori low achievement, high crime, and poor health; are the same who complain when someone tries to do something about it?
And I know you don't mention Maoris Alwyn but we all know which race the majority of gang members are.
During the course of my formal education I did notice some had a massive head start especially at university.
But it was NOT courtesy of wealth, parents’ education, income, school zone, family support, housing or marital status, prison history ETC.
It was courtesy of their ENTHNICITY or RACE and the never-ending list of subsidies for which they could apply.
I don't know if it resulted in an EQUITY of outcome, but it certainly resulted in an INEQUALITY of lifestyle for many poor students struggling with allowances less than the unemployment rate.
Children tend to inherit their parnts looks, physique etc. Obviously the children of those wealthy through their ability often inherii similar intellect and application. So most studies base d just on wealth are very dubious.Streaming per ability is most likely to succeed as it did 100 years ago.
As the intro text on inferential stats invariably stresses, correlation does not necessarily imply causality.
Many kids who flunk school are in fact quite intelligent. It's just that they choose to apply those IQ points to matters outside formal education,
It's all about motivation which in turn is largely about role models and expectations. A kid born to two professional parents is going to grow up regarding varsity attendance and training in some profession as a norm. S/he would have to actively rebel to deviate from such a path whereas the intelligent kid living in a shambolic household with no educated role models has to actively rebel (in a sense) to get onto a decent life trajectory.
Income tends to be associated with education and profession but doesn't 'cause' scholastic success. Hence it is logically flawed to expect cash injections to produce success in kids at the lower socioeconomic end.
As a matter of interest, I came from a rather poor family and am the only one who went to varsity, which I worked my way through with considerable determination - I got through my first degree by working in factories, truck driving, security guard work, etc etc. I completed 4 more degrees on a part-time/extramural basis. I was a self-driven youngster who didn't want to go down the same road as the rest of my family. But that makes me an exception rather than an adherent to the usual rule.
You also benefited , I would conclude Barend, from having experienced probably the best years of NZ traditional education . I do wonder if you would have done so well if you had attended a current NZ school where there is mostly a lack of thorough and effective teaching particularly at primary school. Would your family have been able to make up for the slack that now occurs in primary schools? In the past in NZ , middle class children were not attending after school tuition in the large numbers they do now.
I went to primary school in NZ but completed Forms 4-7 with the Correspondence School while the family were living in the New Hebrides (subsequently Vanuatu). From age 16 I was working as well at the French bank in Luganville and the Japanese fishing plant at Palikulo Point. I did my external exams under the watchful eye of the wife of the Assistant British Resident Commissioner. Let's call my school education an interesting variation on the traditional theme :-))
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