The Act Party wants to have education checks on 4- and 5-year-olds and a new ranking system for all schools, so parents can see which ones are high- and low-scoring.

Making the announcement during a visit to Auckland Grammar School todayWednesday September 20, Act leader David Seymour said the rankings would be based on standardised testing twice a year in all schools.

School rankings have been controversial because there are many variables that contribute to educational quality, which itself is seen as subjective. A ranking can be more a reflection of the student population rather than anything the school is actually doing.

School comparisons have also been found to impact property prices in certain areas as parents try to move closer to schools that score higher. A potential byproduct is that higher-ranked schools can then become increasingly better at enrolling high-achieving, more-affluent students.

Seymour said the online ranking resource would mirror Australia’s, called My School, and would allow student bodies with similar socio-economic backgrounds to be compared.

A 2023 Melbourne Institute paper into My School found that high-scoring schools received 13 per cent more enrolments per year on average compared to low-scoring ones, where enrolments fell by 35 per cent on average per year.

Overall attendance in low-scoring public schools did not change, however, mainly because they are in areas where “there are few accessible high-scoring options locally”, the paper said.

It found My School had not led to a greater concentration of poorer families in low-scoring schools, and that the system was helping parents to find good schools. Whether it had motivated low-scoring schools to improve “is unclear”.

Seymour said the education check on children entering or about to enter primary school could be part of the B4 School Check, which provides a free health and development check nationwide for kids aged 4 and 5.

It would include whether the child could read their own name, knew the alphabet, hold a pencil and pick up a book, group items together correctly such as different animals, match items by their shape, and communicate thoughts and ideas

“Over time, ECE [early childhood education] providers that fail to contribute to outcomes may risk losing their funding, or the ability to be licensed as an education provider,” Act’s policy document says.

This is also likely to raise questions, as there are issues that can contribute to child development that are outside of an ECE’s control, such as parenting and the stability of the home environment.

“There is little information currently available on the performance of the ECE sector because the Government does not effectively measure the educational and developmental outcomes,” Seymour said.

Act leader David Seymour wants all schools to have standardised testing twice a year, and an online resource with all schools listed, so parents can see which ones are high- and low-scoring. Photo / 123rf

Other aspects of Act’s education announcement include:

• Replace the current practice of appointing a limited statutory manager or commissioner to a struggling school. A tendering process would enable existing school operators to apply to take over.
• Use information on school attendance and school performance to prioritise which schools should be targeted for inspection by the Education Review Office (ERO); require all schools to be inspected regularly.
• Set minimum criteria for the primary school curriculum (looking at cognitive development and foundational skills), invite curriculum writers to provide a version, and then pay them royalties based on how often theirs is used.
• Higher numeracy and literacy standards from 2025.
• Replace NCEA 3 with the current University Entrance requirements, and to help school-leavers to be work-ready, allow employers and tertiary institutes to help develop NCEA and UE standards.
• A punitive approach to truancy with a traffic light system, where a red light could see a school facing an ERO investigation or even statutory intervention for chronic absenteeism (defined as 30 per cent truant).

“Some New Zealand schools are already adopting alternatives to the national curriculum by offering the Cambridge curriculum at primary level,” Seymour said.

“Act’s policy simply expands the options available to schools who are wanting to offer a quality, evidence-based, local curriculum.”

Act’s truancy traffic light system has been upgraded. A red light previously meant a police referral or a fine for the parent of a chronically-absent student. This is no longer in the policy document, but a party spokesman said they would still be an option in addition to the options for school intervention.

Today’s announcement did not include Act’s plan for a government education account for every child with $250,000 in it, which parents can use to apply for their child to attend any registered school, public or private.

The spokesman said this was still party policy, but would be part of a separate announcement.

Act also wants to halve the staff at the Ministry of Education and put those savings into classrooms.

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery and is a former deputy political editor.