When an Education Review Office (ERO) report describes students as “not yet achieving,” “priority learners,” or “requiring acceleration,” it is avoiding a simpler truth: some children are failing to meet basic academic expectations.
Achievement is reported only as the percentage who meet expectations. What is missing is any direct reference to those who do not. Parents are left to pause, subtract, and ask the obvious question: what about the children who didn’t achieve?
This euphemistic framing avoids naming failure and makes underachievement easy to overlook.
In mainstream primary schools, close to a third of boys can be below expected writing standards, yet that failure is rarely named as such. Instead, it is softened through reassuring language that implies progress rather than deficit. This linguistic reframing is one of the key reasons primary school academic failure escapes scrutiny.
The ERO report for Te Huruhi Primary School can be read in full here:²
https://tehuruhi.school.nz/ero-report/
A brief chronology
• 1988–1989 — Tomorrow’s Schools reforms are introduced and the Education Review Office (ERO) is established, shifting schools to a self-managing model reviewed through periodic external reports.
• 1989–2017 — ERO operates alongside nationally defined expectations, with some degree of clarity and comparability in primary achievement reporting.
• 2018 — National Standards for reading, writing, and mathematics are removed, eliminating clear national benchmarks and ushering in narrative, non-comparable reporting.
When the bar was lowered
The decisive change came in 2018, when National Standards were abolished. Until that point, primary schools were required to report student achievement against clear, nationally consistent benchmarks, allowing parents to see how many children were below, at, or above expected levels.
Once those standards were removed, achievement reporting became school-designed, narrative, and largely non-comparable. Underachievement did not disappear, but it became easier to rename, easier to soften, and harder to see.
The statistic that matters
There is no publicly available data showing how many boys leave primary school below expected writing standards.
That is the problem.
It is not just that the bar was lowered — it is that the public can no longer see where it is, and parents are given no clear way to compare one primary school with another.
Why primary outcomes escape scrutiny
Comparable national statistics for children leaving primary school are no longer available. Since the removal of National Standards in 2018, there is no consistent public reporting showing how many Year 6 students are below, at, or above expected levels in reading, writing, and mathematics.
As a result, primary school outcomes escape scrutiny. Underachievement remains largely invisible at the point where early intervention would matter most, only resurfacing later in secondary statistics.
This is particularly relevant on Waiheke Island, where Waiheke High School is a Year 7–13 secondary school (formerly Forms 1–7) and directly inherits students from local primary schools. When gaps appear at secondary level, they are carried forward, not newly created.
National context
Education commentator Alwyn Poole’s analysis of New Zealand school-leavers’ outcomes shows that only 35% of boys leave school with University Entrance, compared with 46% of girls — a gap that reflects foundational literacy and numeracy weaknesses that emerge long before secondary school.¹
The bottom line
Primary schools escape academic scrutiny because:
• the measuring stick was removed in 2018
• failure is softened and reframed in ERO reporting
• euphemistic language obscures non-achievement
• parents are trained to accept the new terminology
• meaningful choice is constrained early
It is apt that they are no longer called teachers: since 2018, instruction has given way to indoctrination, and parents have only belatedly begun to notice.
References
¹ Poole, Alwyn.
The Academic Outcomes of Matched Girls vs Boys Schools in New Zealand.
Analysis of New Zealand school-leavers’ University Entrance data.
² Education Review Office (ERO).
Te Huruhi Primary School — Te Ara Huarau | School Evaluation Report.
October 2023.
https://tehuruhi.school.nz/ero-report/
³ Poole, Alwyn.
Why Boys Are Failing in New Zealand Schools.
Substack commentary and analysis of boys’ outcomes using NCEA and University Entrance data.
⁴ Auckland Schools Discussion Group (Facebook).
Parent discussion forum on primary and secondary schools across Auckland.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/752994986788507/
Judy Gill BSc, DipTchg, is a parent, former teacher, and a staunch advocate for secular education.
3 comments:
There must be a lot of now retired teachers, themselves educated in the 1950s and 60s, who can look back proudly saying that the education they received, and in turn was imparted on their students was correct, worked well, and was effective.
Let's acknowledge them and be grateful for their achievements.
Will the tranche of the current teachers be happy that they have been instructed to set up this generation of kids to fail ?
Thanks, Judy. And who was the Minister of Education in 2018 - Chris Hipkins, likely doing what his mummy, Rose, then instructed.
And while mentioning Hutt Valley dwellers, I see Eastern Hutt School (graded a decile 9, EQI 373) is getting back to basics and concentrating on the important. I'm guessing sometime late last year placards went up on its two busy road frontages (presumably erected by NZEI - the Primary teacher equivalent of the PPTA and who I see on the web claims to be the "Most powerful education union in Aotearoa") - emblazoned with stylized fronds and the words "kimi haeta - back our future" and then the lines "stand up for education" followed by "stand up for tamariki" and then "stand up for Te Tiriti" - the latter being the only words capitalised in the message.
And here was I thinking, schools were created to educate. It seems their purpose is to advocate and indoctrinate. Clearly concentrating on student educational achievement isn't that 'paramount objective' our current Minister thinks it is? Well, maybe that's the School Board's objective - it just needs to get its teachers in on the programme.
Prioritizing academic achievement was never the aim of the current Progressive ideology. The aim of this ideology was using schooling as a vehicle for socialization.
We at present are undergoing a really quite dramatic revolution in education with the return of education being , as we used to know it in the middle of last century, as prioritising the
basics.
This is anathema to progressive teachers who make up the majority of teachers and backed by the belligerent unions. But "back to basics" is what parents have cried out for, for decades. It is just common sense .
The turning point has been the major downfall of progressive literacy expert Marie Clay with her disastrous Whole Language and so called Reading Recovery now disproven beyond doubt. This iniquitous reading method selectively discriminated against boys .
It will take time for the effects of introducing effective reading methods to be evident since we have had the worst possible reading methods and schooling for 50 years. Gaynor
Post a Comment
Thank you for joining the discussion. Breaking Views welcomes respectful contributions that enrich the debate. Please ensure your comments are not defamatory, derogatory or disruptive. We appreciate your cooperation.