The Long Tail (Tale?)

As you may be aware the campaigning is well underway for the upcoming election, and as usual, education will be a hot topic. Politicians will no doubt debate, throw statistics, policies and philosophies at each other, and to the voter, in a bid to hold office for the next three years.

Thus, I thought I might throw some stats too. Often we hear (usually from the Minister of Education) about the 20% of students, or one in five, who leave school that can not read or write. This 20% has been named the ‘tail end’. This would be a total outrage, if true.  An article by NZEI President, and local Principal, Ian Leckie published some more accurate facts in the recent Education Aotearoa magazine.

The first is that 84% of New Zealand students pass NCEA Level 2 (old 6th form cert). Of the outstanding 16%, 3% have servere learning disabilities (that is, they have trouble holding a pencil). So this now leaves 13% of students who are not passing NCEA level 2. Of this 13% about half have the ability to pass but choose not too. This could be for a number of different reasons, job offers, apprenticeships, or the student does not what to sit NCEA. The remainder are the students who are leaving school with a very low reading, writing and maths level (about 6% to 7% of students). These are the students that need a lot of help and unfortunately a lot of these students are closely correlated to poverty too.  It is here that politicians must recognise the student as a whole, that schooling, home and community all play a part in helping these students reach their potential.