Schools for thought

The government believes our educational decline will be reversed by returning to policies of six years ago. Will it work?

- Danyl McLauchlan

It's always gratifying when Green MPs get caught misbehaving. They're so sanctimonious, so judgmental - but turns out they shoplift from boutique stores and throw temper tantrums at florists just like the rest of us. We're good at judging our politicians for their moral failures - we should be; we get a lot of practice - but we're bad at holding them to account for their policy failures.

They're not there to be good people, they're supposed to govern the country and, sometimes, their failures cause immense damage: squandering enormous sums of money, ruining lives, eroding the social fabric. We're oddly fine with that, though, so long as they're not horrible to any waiters while they're wrecking the nation.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, New Zealand made a number of changes to its primary and secondary education systems: the widespread adoption of a now widely questioned technique called "balanced literacy"; merging teacher training colleges with the universities; shifting the curriculum from knowledge- and skills-based learning - reading, numeracy, writing - to a student centric, "competency-based" model; devolved assessment and open-plan classrooms.

There's still some debate about which of these policies caused the most damage, but over a 30-year period, our educational outcomes declined. The drop is reflected across genders, ethnicities and deciles. The OECD's recent biannual report on New Zealand's economy contained an entire chapter documenting the failures of the education system and their profound economic and social impact. A 4% hit to national productivity already in decline - and entrenched inequality. Our politicians made us a poorer and more divided nation.

THE BLAME GAME