New Zealand’s great education decline

From Tyler Cowen.

"A growing proportion of children leave school unable to read an instruction manual or do basic maths. Over the last twenty years, our education system has slipped from being the envy of the world to barely mediocre.

Kiwi students once ranked near the top of international education league tables. In the latest results from the highly rated Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study, Year 5 students placed last among all English-speaking countries and 24^th out of all 26 participating OECD countries. Students suffered similar slides in maths and science.

The New Zealand education system is also now one of the most unequal in the world. The gap between the educational “haves” and “have nots” eclipses all our English-speaking OECD peers. All this, despite Government spending per child increasing in real terms by more than 30% since 2001.

Here is more from Roger Partridge (2020).  Here is a 2022 update:

Low attendance at school is another sign the country’s education system is slipping with children from lower socio-economic areas the worst affected, the executive director of the New Zealand Initiative says.

The New Zealand Initiative is a think tank which carries out research to help New Zealand plan for the future.

It has commented on new research by the Education Review Office that shows children are missing school more in New Zealand than other English-speaking countries.

The office found four in ten parents were comfortable with their child missing a week or more of school per term and a third of students did not see going to school every day as that important…

The education system had been declining for 25 years and data backed up his view, such as the Pisa study carried out by the OECD. As an example, in maths the knowledge of a 15-year-old New Zealand student equated to a student aged 13 and a half 20 years ago.

Also from 2022:

In the past 12-18 years, New Zealand’s scores had declined by 23 points for reading, 22 points for science and 29 points for maths. The OECD estimated that 30 points was equivalent to one-year of learning.

Here is the Kiwi establishment being vague about the causes of the literacy decline.  What are the actual reasons for all this?  There are plenty of regions of New Zealand without massive immigration, and they do not seem immune to these trends.

Here is some more circular blah blah blah, calling for a “holistic approach,” and so on.  Does Kiwi culture work best when most of the citizens are more “tough-minded” than what is currently the case?"