Massey High School

Bruce Ritchie

Principal, Massey High

DO WE VALUE EDUCATION? Former Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Jim Bolger, once said there are three things that will drive this nation forward. They are “education, education and education.” My experiences on a recent educational study tour to the USA, England and Finland further confirm this view for me and lead me to question the value we place on education. My study was sponsored by the Woolf Fisher Trust, for which I am very grateful, and it is important to note that these are my thoughts and not those of the Trust. Space will not allow me to discuss all aspects of this wonderful experience but I would like to focus on Finland as a country not much bigger than New Zealand (5.2 million) and a country which forty years ago was poor educationally and economically. However, it is now one of the stronger economies in the OECD and the top performing education nation in the world as measured by the OECD Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA). How did they do this and what can we learn? Many people say Finland is mono-cultural and that is why they do so well. Forty years ago they were even more monocultural and were performing badly. Other ‘monocultural’ Scandinavian countries do not do as well as Finland. I believe it is their culture of learning which they have developed rather than their monoculturalism. In the late sixties, Finland began a process of major educational reform. Too many of their people were poorly educated and a dual system of public and private education had developed. At the time, parents were voting with their feet away from state schools to private schools. The Finns talked about “losing the reserve of human resources that Finland would badly need in order to bring industry up-to-date”. Sounds familiar. They brought a ‘think-tank’ of stakeholders together and developed a plan to reform education. They made education their number one priority. Dr Reijo Laukkanen, Counsellor (Policy Adviser) to the Finnish National Board of Education, in a paper he presented to a conference entitled “Educational Systems and the Challenge of Improving Results” at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland in September, believes there are six reasons for Finland’s success. • They legislated for a national nine-year basic education that represented the ideology of comprehensive education, that is, education for all. Included in this was the abolition of streaming. • They targeted resources to the lower secondary level where they believed it was most needed. • They decentralised decision making powers to local education boards. • They elevated primary teacher education to Masters degree level. Secondary already had a Masters degree as a requirement. • They provided extensive support to special needs students. Currently they spend 15% of their education budget on special education. • They brought together the stakeholders who were able to express their opinions and they developed a shared vision. After their comprehensive education, students have to compete on the basis of their academic achievements to get into General Upper Secondary Education. Alternatively they take up Vocational Upper Secondary Education and Training. Both pathways lead to University or Polytechnic places. Education policy was targeted at improving performance and equitable outcomes for all. This sounds very much like our Ministry of Education mission of “Raising Achievement and Reducing Disparity”. They made education free from pre-school through to tertiary, including free lunches provided by state-of-the-art cafeterias whose healthy menus are determined by the local education boards. I was fortunate to be able to secure a meeting with Dr Laukkanen and it is quite clear that government policy development, supported by educational resources, is a major factor in their success. For example, the abolition of streaming was initially met with opposition but is now accepted. The research shows that placing lower achieving students together condemns them to a pathway of failure resulting in greater disparities of achievement. Not only have these reforms resulted in Finland’s high ranking within the OECD economically and educationally, but they have created an education system that is highly valued by its own people. This is where I believe we as a nation fall a long way short. While education in Finland is highly valued, so is teaching as a profession. Prior to 1974 teacher education was in the hands of Colleges of Education. From 1974, teacher education became the responsibilities of the Universities. We are just moving to this model in New Zealand now, thirty years later than Finland. Teaching is now so highly valued in Finland that a recent survey of school leavers revealed that it is their most popular professional career choice. Only 15% of teacher applicants are accepted into the profession. Some say it is more difficult to be accepted into teaching than it is into Law or Medicine. They do not have a recruitment or retention problem and salaries are at the OECD average. Dr Laukkanen believes there are three reasons that teaching is so popular. • By raising the standard of teacher education it is now considered a very academic profession. • Teachers are trusted and have considerable autonomy. There is no equivalent of the Education Review Office (ERO) and no teacher appraisal system. They deliberately rejected the accountability model in favour of a high trust model. The National Board of Education monitor standards by light sampling and address issues through in-service training and/or policy development. • In Finland, education is highly valued and teachers enjoy considerable respect. From my 35 years of teaching I believe our schools are served by very dedicated and committed professionals who want to do the very best they can for their students. Some would argue otherwise and that teachers are their own worst enemies. This would apply to a very small percentage, probably smaller than in most other professions. I do believe that, like Finland, we need to raise the bar of Teacher Education. Professor Richard Elmore from Harvard University says that education is an occupation and not a profession as it lacks a model of professional practice. There are some very good models being developed like Te Kotahitanga from Professor Russell Bishop at Waikato University, but by and large Professor Elmore is correct. We need to make education our number one priority. In funding terms we are ranked eighth in the OECD for the percentage of GDP we spend on public education, 6.8% compared with the OECD average of 5.9%. This is commendable. Unfortunately we are ranked twentieth when that percentage is converted to equivalent US dollars. This would indicate our small GDP is a major hindrance in the resourcing of education and no doubt other public sectors. New Zealand is actually ranked 21st out of 30 countries listed for GDP per capita within the OECD. On the other hand the PISA results show New Zealand to be in the top 10 for literacy, numeracy and scientific literacy of 15 year olds. So is our education problem, that is the large gap between high achievers and low achievers, an education problem or an economic problem? Maybe our economic problem is an education problem which could be solved following Finland’s model of educating our nation out of the economic quagmire. OECD commentators say that our economy needs to grow at 3% per annum to achieve the OECD average, or beyond. We have not done that since 1960! I was very interested when the Minister of Economic Development, the Honourable Trevor Mallard, recently announced his economic development agenda. This plan has five themes: 1. Development of globally competitive firms 2. World-class infrastructure 3. Innovative and productive workplaces 4. Environmental sustainability 5. Auckland, an internationally competitive city Where is education in the Minister’s plan? The South Carolina state government has just introduced a law called the Education and Economic Development Act. They see the two as inextricably linked. They have decided, like Finland, to educate their way out of their economic difficulties. What about us? Auckland’s Metro Project has a 31 point plan to make us internationally competitive. Points 15 and 16 allude to education but there is no definitive statement on education. The committee for Auckland, has a ‘skills and education’ workstream and the focus will be on business links with secondary schools and assisting schools in low-decile areas to perform to their potential. There is an implication here that the school is the problem. I am sure all schools would welcome additional resources but I am not sure the school is the problem. The resources must be used to professionally develop teachers and to empower the teaching profession. All the research points to the teacher in the classroom as the paramount factor in raising student achievement. It is ironic that a sector languishing in the bottom 10 of the OECD rankings may advise a sector excelling in the top 10. Maybe the business community could learn something from the education community. In my view education should be the first point of the 31 point plan in the Metro Project and at the top of Mr Mallard’s agenda. In spite of our poor economy, New Zealand is well placed to become the number one education nation in the world. We do very well at the top end, in fact as good if not better than Finland, but we have an achievement gap. If we could solve the achievement gap, we would be number one. Thus, the solution lies in the value we place on education, both individually and as a nation, and in our investment in education. My agenda for New Zealand’s economic development also has five themes: 1. We must empower the teaching profession and develop a supportive ethos of education. 2. We must ensure that scarce and valuable educational resources are targeted at the “chalk-face” and not consumed by an ever hungry bureaucracy. 3. We must make profound changes in education policy based on validated educational research. 4. We must develop a model of professional practice that will ensure we close the achievement gap. 5. We must make education our number one priority to drive our nation forward.