Standards delay for Maori schools

The Government's flagship national standards education policy will not be fully set up in Maori-language schools for three years, despite new figures showing Maori are far behind their Pakeha classmates.

This week, Education Minister Anne Tolley said the standards were meant to address the widening gap between the highest and lowest performing children.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Education released studies showing the science and problem solving performance of 15-year-old pupils "differed considerably" between the four main ethnic groups in New Zealand.

Whereas Pakeha children scored an average 547 in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for science, Maori scored an average 473 and Pasifika children 441. The average for developed countries was 500 points.

"Maori and Pasifika students were more likely, on average, to have weaker performance in all areas than Pakeha and Asian students," the ministry's report said.

"There were significant numbers of Maori and Pasifika students who were very weak readers."

The report said there were "population groups" where few children were reaching high levels.

"While these students are usually able to master simple tasks, they are less likely to be able to provide solutions for more complex and unfamiliar tasks in mathematics, reading, science and problem-solving."

The many low performers would suffer when they became adults because the demand for higher levels of literacy was "significantly higher than in the past," the report said.

All primary and intermediate schools will assess children against the national standards in literacy and numeracy from next year.

In English-language schools, results against the standards will be reported to the Ministry of Education in 2011. Schools teaching the Maori curriculum – Te Marautanga o Aotearoa – will not have to report results until 2012.

Wally Penetito, a senior lecturer at Victoria University's faculty of education, said national standards were "a quick fix" which would not work for Maori.

Academics and the teaching profession were "crying out to the Government" that they could not push standards on to pupils, Penetito said.

This week, Tolley said the changes needed to be made immediately.

She said the extra year for Maori immersion schools was because they had less of the basics already in place.

"The Maori curriculum is not a direct translation of the English curriculum, and so the Maori-medium standards have had to be developed from scratch," Tolley said.

- © Fairfax NZ News