Back of the class

Modern ways of teaching kids are shown the door as results give the education system a very middling grade.

- Danyl McLauchlan

When policy fails, it is often because of some combination of ideology, cronyism, incompetence or malevolence: the four horsemen of New Zealand politics. But recent weeks have seen an announcement from Education Minister Erica Stanford that the government will no longer build the open-plan classrooms that the previous National government championed, and that the future of NCEA is under review after a scathing report into the credibility of the assessment framework.

Two key education reforms of the past 20 years appear to have failed the students they were supposed to help. No one wanted to wreck the public education system. Everyone had the best interests of students in mind, and most changes were informed by distinguished academics, implemented by diligent public servants, passed by well-meaning politicians.

But 25 years ago when the OECD began its Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) rankings, we had one of the top-ranking education systems in the world, and it has been steadily downhill since then.

In 2024, an OECD report on New Zealand's economic prospects warned that our self-inflicted damage to public education is a key threat to the nation's prosperity. Where did all the clever experts go wrong?

Most people who recall their own school days instinctively understood that open-plan classrooms were a dubious idea. But the social sciences can be prone to academic fads and in the 2000s and early 2010s, a suite of pleasingly counterintuitive theories swept through education studies.