ABOLISH STREAMING, that is the demand of the Post-Primary Teachers Association (PPTA). They are not alone in their determination to put an end to the “blatantly racist” practice of grouping secondary-school students according to their intelligence/academic ability. The Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, considers streaming “inequitable” and the Ministry of Education agrees with him. With forces as powerful as the Minister, the Ministry, and the Union ranged against the practice, its days would appear to be numbered.
Which just leaves New Zealanders with the vexed question of what will happen when streaming is no more? Will their children emerge from the public education system with the skills and qualifications necessary to foot-it in the modern world? Or, will their education be limited to whatever the least engaged and least talented students allow their teachers to impart? If that is the outcome, then all the opponents of streaming will have achieved by its elimination is a society managed by traditionally-educated immigrants equipped with all the internationally recognised skills and qualifications that young, publicly-educated New Zealanders no longer possess.
Although driven by demands for equity, the abolition of streaming in the public secondary system will not make New Zealand a more equitable nation. No more than the students themselves, will parents be fooled by the randomised mixing of individuals of radically different abilities. The mums and dads of highly intelligent and powerfully motivated children will do everything within their power to ensure that their offspring are pushed and extended to the fullest extent of their powers. If they cannot get this from the public sector, then they will turn to private providers. The reformers’ push towards equity will not end in a narrowing of the class and racial divides, it will drive them wider apart.
Māori middle-class parents will be as keen to see their offspring extended as middle-class Pākehā parents. Those who cannot afford the $30,000 per year fees of the leading private schools, will do all within their power to move their families into the zones of the most prestigious public schools, where the strong class bias of the “good schools’” catchments will lessen the impact of streaming’s abolition. Māori middle-class parents are well aware that as diversity quotas are achieved, and the need for positive discrimination declines, social advancement will increasingly depend on having the right credentials. Though they can hardly come out and say so, the drive towards racial equity – of which the abolition of streaming is part – is not in their own children’s interests.
There is, after all, a very powerful justification for streaming. Highly-complex, technologically-sophisticated civilisations, based on science, simply cannot do without the rigid hierarchies of competence that keep them functioning. The streaming process is, therefore, absolutely critical to the social and intellectual winnowing required to concentrate and develop talent. Streaming isn’t just about grouping the smartest students together, it’s about acculturating the smartest students to being smart. Streaming encourages students to value and accept their larger capabilities. In a non-streamed environment, the pressure is inevitably towards the mean – in every sense of the word.
The supposed downside of this meritocratic imperative is its negative impact upon those of lesser competence. New Zealanders, in particular, jibe at the very notion of hierarchies. They tell themselves that they are egalitarians, and fool themselves into thinking that egalitarianism means every person is the same as every other person – even when they know it isn’t true. (Just ask them if they would select an All Black team on that basis!)
New Zealanders have forgotten that their public education system was not conceived as an environment in which every student gets an “A”, but as a place where every kid capable of getting an “A” receives the professional instruction and educational resources he or she needs to be awarded an “A”. It should not matter whether you’re Māori or Pākehā, rich or poor, male or female, gay or straight: if you’ve got the talent, then you should be equipped to go as far as it can take you. And if getting “As” in academic disciplines isn’t your thing, then the education system’s job is to find out what your thing is – and develop it to the fullest extent.
That is what Charles Beeby and Peter Fraser meant when they together defined the education policy of the First Labour Government:
“The government’s objective, broadly expressed, is that every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers.”
Apart from the relentless use of the masculine pronoun, the phrase that sticks most in the craw of twenty-first century educators is: “for which he is best fitted”. The PPTA’s argument is that the cultural logic of colonisation leads racist Pakeha teachers to the view that Māori and Pasifika are “best fitted” to be hewers of wood and drawers of water: a stereotype into which, for the rest of their time in secondary school, the system will do its best to transform them. Get rid of streaming, argues the Union, and that evil colonial project is made much more difficult.
Except, of course, transforming secondary school classes into random collections of students of every colour from every background is, itself, a pipe dream. Different races and different classes live in different places. Getting rid of streaming at Auckland Grammar will look quite different from getting rid of streaming at Northland College. And even if the Ministry of Education could magically produce perfectly random collections of students (much as the US Supreme Court tried to do by “bussing” kids from one side of town to the other) the Bell Curve would still not be denied – only those kids at either end of it.
It is a matter for considerable regret that the PPTA, in its determination to overcome the effects of colonisation, shows every sign of establishing a new regime where the “soft bigotry of low expectations” will only end up making the racist outcomes worse.
Great article Chris . . good luck trying to hold back the ever incoming tide of woke bullshit.
It’s simply Critical Race Theory writ-large. It is Far-left nonsense academic ideologies imported into NZ directly from the USA where its slowly destroying what remaining social fabric remains.
The question isn’t what other NZ institutions buy into this nonsense – but are there any institutions left that don’t promote this garbage? Very few, if any.
America has some push-back from the Courts and NGOs such as FAIR. UK has some alternative media and counter-voices.
NZ is an hegemonic orgy of “critical justice” theories in virtually every social and political institution.
I’m not usually given to catastrophizing, but I see NZ as almost singularly fucked and most of TDB commentators are stuck in tribal-Left groupings who can’t see the only real solution is to hold your nose and seek counter-balance through a strong Act turn-out. The reality is that Act is hardly going to offer much difference from neo-Liberal Labour (despite Martyn’s continual ‘Labour is still better’ nonsense apologia) anyway, but at least offer a side-ramp off the social demolition of NZ.
CRT simply means teaching that some whites think that being white makes them superior to blacks and other races, and that once, whites forced blacks to piss in seperate toilets, owned them as property, etc.
Anyway, it looks like the tide is turning, with Asians leading the charge to not have to have their kids in classrooms with blacks.
You are absolutely correct Chris.
You know it, I know it and I suspect most of the teachers know it’s true. However, the union is hijacked by ideological zealots who would sooner see all the kids fail, just as long as they fail equally.
Meanwhile, as our education performance slowly drifts down the international rankings neither the politicians nor the bureaucrats have any answers. Hell, they won’t even acknowledge it as a fact!
Coupled with overcrowded open plan classrooms – sorry, modern learning environments – abolishing streaming is just another accelerant to mediocrity. And get cellphones out of schools.
Yeah, I was inclined to think that this was something that could possibly work with small classes and masses of remedial resources per pupil … oh, wait.
Education dept is going to fund 350 teacher less next year due to falling roles rather than keep the teachers and cut class numbers and increase one on one for those falling behind. This could bring the children up to a higher standard rather than stop streaming to stop discrimination.
Pray for mediocrity, prepare for civil conflict.
My immediate reaction is the same as Cris’s and everyone else. But I have some thoughts .
Firstly it is disruptive kids that prevent others from learning and though they might not be the most academically inclined they are not necessarily the dumbest by any means. If they could be “streamed” out it might help.
Secondly as far as secondary school takes education, as long as a kid can read and has a basic maths grasp by 15 or 16 if they have talent they can catch up with a bit extra motivation at uni.
Third by the age of 15/16 many if not most of the unmotivated kids will have streamed themselves out anyway, and as long as the remainder have the basics i doubt if many of them will be badly disadvantaged by the loss of the extra specialist stuff they might have missed out on up till then.
Speaking as one who though never disruptive was not a good student. there was always something much more fun to do outside than homework.
D J S
A good point David!
A lot of those ‘dumb’ kids knew they were wasting their time, fooled around in the classroom and then got into the trades. Result: Five years later they’re out-earning their teachers and the ‘bright’ kid who went to uni who has a miserable working life in an office and a student loan to pay off.
Both of my kids got their UE in the day but chose not to go there. Both doing great and both own homes.
So what happens to those dumped in the dumb classes if the commenters beloved streaming is kept?
They are just written off, like so many other NZers have been since 1984.
Go back and read the post again, Millsy.
I am absolutely of the view that our public education system should aim to equip all students for a good life.
What I don’t believe is that the hierarchies of competence necessary for the sort of properly functioning modern society that makes it possible to attend to the needs of every child can be maintained without streaming.
How do you guarantee health care for all if there are insufficient qualified and competent doctors?
Our schools don’t even teach students basic civics like “never talk to the police if you’ve committed a crime”.
And the Greens want 16 year olds to vote…
Millsy is a typical of the hard left who call for no scores recorded for sporting teams so there are no losers and winners . The problem is he would rather see the elite students shackled to the level of the poor students so they are equally bad rather than doing the hard work of sorting out the poor students and giving them the help to improve .
This country should aim to be the one that sends doctors nurses IT specialists and teachers around the World after getting a first class education rather than stealing them from other countries .Stealing educated people is the easy way that respective governments have taken over the years and covid has proved it is a poor model to follow going forward
I just dont think it suits anyone for certain groups of students to be ‘isolated’ from each other, that is all, and streaming segregates pupils, and the pupils that dont get in the top class just get written off, condemed to low wage menial jobs. At least in the good old days, that people like you deride, because apparently people at the bottom got over paid, one could leave school at 15, and get an entry-level clerical job/apprenticeship and work ones way up from there.
A good life is just being on the property ladder. How does one undo the serfs and landed gentry bifurcation that is emerging, and that is before ethnic, linguistic and national(!?) differences are added on top?
That’s an argument for more effective testing, if students are being incorrectly put into classes where they are more than capable of grasping concepts at a greater rate than their peers. The point of effective streaming is to ensure that classes are learning at approximately the same rate. It doesn’t set a limit on the maximum level that individuals or classes can achieve at, beyond the limits set by the typical number of years that a student spends in secondary school.
@millsy That’s an argument for better support at the bottom end (which I fully support) potentially a broader educational base with an emphasis towards more applied and less academic teaching. Consider an obvious consequence, have you tried teaching a class of 30+ kids with wildly varying abilities, what do you think likely outcomes would be?
As CT says removing streaming will simply result in even more resources and opportunity accumulating towards those who can afford to send their kids to private school, buy houses in the right catchment areas or access after school tutors.
This is overwhelmingly a class issue being framed as a race issue with a solution that will magnify and entrench class differences. Exactly what we have come to expect from the elitists and useful idiots of the woke left.
“That’s an argument for better support at the bottom end”
That is a point Tui. Streaming might well be of more importance for the slower kids. They might need more teaching, especially if there were more teachers around like Snow White.
D J S
The biggest issue I have is people on this blog labelling kids in lower streams as “Dumb”. If adults in this forum have such narrow views, how can they teach anything different to their kids.
There are kids who do well academically as they are gifted or have strong desire to achieve top of the class and put serious efforts towards it, and there are kids who have less or both. However, that does not make lesser kids dumb. They have yet to find their motivation, or find things that they love doing.
Needs of both these student groups are different, and to lump both together so that some kids don’t get labelled dumb, is throwing the baby with the bath water.
If this happens, teachers will be unfair to 1 group, either they will teach stuff that is too high for some kids, or too low for others. I myself come from a small school, where we had only 1 class per year level. The top 15 competed against each other, while the bottom 15 sat in the back and were invisible to the teacher.
I thoroughly disagree. Intelligence is a collection of highly related innate attributes. Certainly, you can waste someone’s innate intelligence by treating them as if they are stupid and giving them no opportunities to learn. Just as there exist people who are above average in say spatial intelligence but below average in verbal intelligence and vice versa, but generally intelligence is like any other normally distributed trait, and more of it is generally good. People who score higher on other measures of intelligence even have faster reaction times, of all the seemingly ‘intelligenceless’ things one could measure.
We can, and should, acknowledge that intelligence is real. Very few people chose to be dumb. I’m of average intelligence and I have dumb relatives who I love and so do you, and society should be structured so that people who are dumb can still live a fulfilling decent life.
Embryo selection is already allowing embryos to be chosen with gene distributions that may put them a few IQ points above what would be the average expected for a random embryo from the pairing. IVF births are already 10% of births in many developed nations. We should make sure that these services are available to as many couples as possible in future.
The denial of intelligence and the uplifting of self-agency is probably the nastiest aspect of libertarianism, which tends to be followed by not very successful ‘gifted kids’ who want to crush the weak because they selfishly think they’d have been successful if only tax money wasn’t being wasted “feeding the poor” and suchlike things they consider unnecessary.
I somewhat agree.
However my comment was not on intelligence, but on academic success at school. Even the most intelligent person would underachieve at school if put in wrong environment. There are lot of environmental factors at play, e.g. parental support, parental education, nutrition, peer groups & friends, quality of teachers, and teaching support.
Hence, intelligence alone will not guarantee academic success at school.
Yes, one may achieve well if gifted/intelligent or have strong work ethic at school. However, a “dumb” kid at school might own their own business and pay the wages of the academic achiever. Does that make the later “dumb”. Example, a cleaner may run their own business, while a (academic achiever) accountant will work for them.
I do support streaming, but all levels need to extend the ability of their students. If teachers treat their lower stream as “dumb” and just baby sit them, then that is injustice to the students, and to the society as a whole.
Secondly, society does not need every person to be Bill Gates or Einstein. Everybody has an ability to excel in some field and earn a living. Right support will greatly enable students to achieve in fields that cater to their ability and make them prosper.
When I was at high school they dumped people into the lowest stream, had the least expectations of that class and had the inevitable result that most left school at 15. This was followed by that greatest of all social barriers School C. The use of scaling the results to ensure only about 50% passed meant that the majority of kids “failed” high school. If streaming is the only remaining vestige of that inequitable system then good riddance to it.
I’ve always been confused by the problem that people have with scaling. It’s not like, in a population of tens of thousands, anyone in one year got cheated because the rest of their year group was somehow substantially smarter than them, and they would have gotten better grades in another year.
If your problem with the percentage metric is that it’s set at a point that half of students will fail, then it sounds like you want to change things so that achieving at the 30th percentile rather than the 50th percentile is a pass, not with scaling itself.
NCEA just makes it more difficult to tell what student grades mean. A student who gets the same ‘NCEA Level 1’ certificate as any other might be anything from a B+ to F student.
I wouldn’t be surprised if larger employers have models they can feed individual NCEA data into, taking courses, schools, and other factors into account. It’s completely worthless for any other purpose though.
Oh, come on Peter H, toughen up! I started teaching in 1970, when woke types were already wittering on about how monstrous it was for School Certificate to deliberately and cynically fail 50% of its beloved candidates..
After a couple of weeks of teaching, I realised that in fact we should have been failing 80% of the lazy little brats: only about 20% were really making an effort.
My proposal would be to stream everybody, and allow only 20% to pass. Half of that 20% would be eligible for promotion to a higher stream, and the bottom 10% of a class would be eligible for demotion to a lower stream.
That might prepare our students for life’s real lessons, which now seem to be avoided in schools rather than actually taught.
Sadly deregulation failed the 80% you talk about. In the days you were teaching those struggling at school had many industries and assembly businesses to fall back on. Not any more. These people now fall.back on the benefit and we wonder why?
Yep, 80%, thrown on the scrap heap, condemned to a life time of low wage jobs. People like you make me sick.
Millsy – they were NOT thrown on the scrapheap. They got a pretty fair go. Job at 15, and after a few years they were generally improving their positions to the point that most of the mugs who stayed behind at school to get School Cert never caught up in terms of total money earned. Those stats came out in the mid-70s.
I guess some people really need that sarc tag.. And it is unemployment since Rogernomics that has caused the real tragedy, OK?
Out of idle curiosity, what systems are in place to determine the success of this proposal?
How will the country know if it’s a success?
When will the country know if it’s a success?
You’ll just have to rely on NCEA results… hahahahahahahah.
Here’s how this will be implemented:
A) Private schools will continue streaming, if they have the appropriate scale. Students will be appropriately challenged.
B) Public schools will not. So if your son or daughter has high mathematical aptitude, instead of being streamed into a ‘Year 11’ class where they would be prepared to do pre-university calculus work at a reasonable level in the latter two forms, or at least learn something about statistics, their class will be doing a bunch of numeracy ‘unit standards’ (“If Caleb is holding four bananas in one hand and two in the other, how many bananas is he holding in total?”) so that everyone gets to pass.
Of course, it means your kid won’t be taking ‘achievement standards’ where they could accumulate credits towards a ‘merit’ or ‘excellence’ ‘endorsement’ (the equivalent of about a C-B average or B-A in a real system) on their meaningless NCEA pass certificate, they’ll just get the same meaningless NCEA cert as everyone else who showed up to class most of the year.
But our betters in Wellington don’t send their kids to public schools, so they won’t be bothered.
How will the country know if it’s a success? When will the country know if it’s a success?
I remember asking those exact questions when Tomorrows Schools was promulgated. All those changes, all those ‘babies out with the bath water,’ all that angst. Would kids learn better or more and be any better off? And the country be any better off? 30+ years later, are there answers?
If the PPTA are concerned about ‘racist’ test results, there is a simple solution. Return to a real percentage based mark, and simply norm Maori test results separately from non-Maori.
Abolishing streaming without abolishing class society will not have the outcome that the liberals in the PPTA desire for the reasons that Chris Trotter outlines – the Rich will simply circumvent it – but also for a more fundamental reason.
It’s a liberal illusion that it is possible to change society through education. Streaming in schools does not produce inequality, it merely reaffirms what is built into the social relations of class society and automatically reproduced by it.
Of course “every person is not the same as every other person.” Karl Marx recognised this in his famous aphorism “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The classless society of the future will celebrate those with an aptitude for science, as it will its sporting champions or its talented artists. To what extent, if any, it will be necessary to place those people into segregated environments in order to develop their abilities will be a question for the citizens of that society to decide.
Another triumph of ideology over common sense. Our education system is effed. My kids were taught six years apart and already they have experienced a vastly different quality of education, to say nothing of ideology. They both attended single sex special character schools.
My son is not neuro typical and was always going to struggle and my daughter is bright enough to do Level 2 Calculus. One attended an achievement-oriented school with good teachers, higher class numbers and a demanding NCEA load of 21 points in most subjects. Average class size 32.
6 years later my daughter who is a bit lazy but bright enough attends the sister school with a 6% higher pass rate. It is Woke AF and not streamed. I thought the curriculum had changed in the intervening 6 years as my daughter seemed to have 1/2 the workload of my son. Midway through Level 2, I woke up to the fact that at the girl’s school, the points aimed for in most cases were only 14 – 16. So the kids are given less work in order to keep or raise the pass rate. Average class numbers 25 – 27.
We have recently got through mock Level 2 exams and nearly everyone in the Classics class failed and failed down at the 25 percentile. The teacher then suggests that the entire class only attempts one of the 2 subjects to be sat externally. Classics isn’t hard and in my daughter’s case, she didn’t bother studying at all and then told me she was only going to attempt 1 subject on teacher’s advice. So on that basis, for the entire subject and a single external pass she would receive only 13 or 15 points for the entire subject. We had a row about it but she won’t budge and tells me that she has already passed for the year due to 20 extra Covid points.
Apparently, her non streamed friends most of whom do home economics are all planning on not sitting any exam which is difficult and that is the strategy they are adopting because they can get by on the Covid points and it looks better for them on their record (and for the school) if they don’t attempt anything they won’t clearly pass. The only exceptions, the child of the Chinese cafe owner and the child of the Indian single mum house cleaner.
So despite the issues of ‘class’ and English as a second language (neither girl is NZ born) and living in a poor area, these kids will do well because their parents are non negotiable on it. I am absolutely certain my daughter would have achieved so much more at school had the school been better and had she not been streamed in with kids whose highest ambitions were to be an ECE teacher or chef. Add in the Covid points and the last few years have been a CF.
I’m trying to work out why the ‘good old days’ with the ‘world leading education system produced such a shitfest of a country. We have poverty, lawlessness, intolerance and ignorance aplenty.
so where did they come from? We had streaming, did they come from there?
Because it taught the people in charge the discipline to fuck everyone else over. One size doesn’t fit everyone. Streaming for all.
Great article.
Reminds me of a Kurt Vonnegut short-story describing a dystopian society regulated by the Handicapper General. Vonnegut was a visionary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrison_Bergeron
Kia ora Chris. Tautoko i to whakaaro. I don’t know what proportion of rank and file teachers support the PPTA’s stance on this issue (there was a survey put out by PPTA to members but results have not been published – it was self selecting so could lack validity). I do however suspect there is at least an even split of opinion on this issue by teachers BUT any dissent is silenced and/or ridiculed. Like you the only outcome I see from this ideology is more streaming between schools rather than within schools which to me will only make matters worse.
I somewhat agree.
However my comment was not on intelligence, but on academic success at school. Even the most intelligent person would underachieve at school if put in wrong environment. There are lot of environmental factors at play, e.g. parental support, parental education, nutrition, peer groups & friends, quality of teachers, and teaching support.
Hence, intelligence alone will not guarantee academic success at school.
Yes, one may achieve well if gifted/intelligent or have strong work ethic at school. However, a “dumb” kid at school might own their own business and pay the wages of the academic achiever. Does that make the later “dumb”. Example, a cleaner may run their own business, while a (academic achiever) accountant will work for them.
I do support streaming, but all levels need to extend the ability of their students. If teachers treat their lower stream as “dumb” and just baby sit them, then that is injustice to the students, and to the society as a whole.
Secondly, society does not need every person to be Bill Gates or Einstein. Everybody has an ability to excel in some field, earn a living and fulfill needs of the society. Right support will greatly enable students to achieve in fields that cater to their ability and make them prosper.
Too true Benny. I went to school with a real slimeball loser in both a social and educational sense (Sounds harsh but that was the absolute consensus at the time).
Came back to my hometown 15 years later and he owned about a 1/4 of it. I’ve been successful but its a drop in the bucket compared to him.
Once upon a time we understood the value of learning and the contribution that it makes to the social fabric.
In the modern context we have moved away from the persuit of Meritocracy to actively embrace Idiocracy and now are in serious danger of sliding into Ideocracy…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideocracy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
meh – streaming – what a crock of shit. all the goody goody two shoes and try hards – no social skills, no collaboration, all selfish pricks who wouldn’t listen and thought they knew everything. All about grades and nothing about knowledge. most fell by the wayside by the time scholarship came around. same thing at university – all the high achievers couldn’t even work an oscilliscope or set up an experiment – answered the theory questions but struggled to get any decent data – fail. see it every day in the enterprise environment – all the right answers, apparently, but no skills. intelligence can’t be taught by being in the “special” class. lol
invested teachers investing knowledge in their students – no more, no less. whether it’s in the top middle or lower stream makes no difference – time eventually levels the playing field but how many have to wait until they’re adults before realising it.
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