Government shifting the goalposts on maths assessment - Labour

Labour is accusing the government of manipulation by using the wrong data on maths education, saying it's like shifting the goalposts after the ball has been kicked.

Ministers are defending their approach, saying regardless of the figure the children at Year 8 are not where they should be - and the new curriculum the new data is benchmarked against is broadly at the same level as the previous one.

It follows Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford's selling their new maths policy at the National Party conference over the weekend, claiming just 22 percent of Year 8 students were at the expected standard for maths.

However, Aotearoa Educators Collective on Monday raised concerns the 22 percent figure was not comparing apples with apples because it was benchmarked against a new curriculum which was not yet being taught to Year 8 children.

"The original implementation of the refreshed curriculum was to begin in 2026, with a logical expectation that, as students moved through the school years, their maths achievement would be advancing. Year 1 students starting with the refreshed curriculum in 2026 would be in year 8 in 2033," AEC spokesperson Prof Jodie Hunter said.

"We question the use of data based on assessments where student tasks are based on a curriculum that is not being taught.

"The result of around only one in five students working at the appropriate curriculum level in Year 8 seems questionable given it contradicts previous national and international studies, including NMSSA, TIMMS, and PISA, which all show higher levels of student achievement."

PM, Education Minister defend claims

Luxon denied it was a shifting of the goalposts.

"No, look, I mean, as you know the assessment moved at the end of last year to be in-year, looking at Year 8 versus a multi-year band. What we're focused on is making sure we fix the problem," he said.

"Whether it's 45 percent or whether it's 22 percent, we've got a problem in maths ... we see three out of our five kids are actually a year or more behind, four out of five are actually not at the standard they need to be to take on high school, That's a big problem."

He said parents just wanted to know their children were at the standard they needed to be at for high school.

Stanford said the people who had done the new assessment in Otago had told her it was broadly the same as before.

"I said to them, at year eight, is the assessment broadly the same level? And their answer was, yes, it's broadly the same, it is more detailed, but it's broadly the same level, which is why we can sort of compare the old with the new."

She rejected suggestions the government should wait for future results to compare the figure against, saying the new assessment - introduced by the previous Labour government - was "extraordinarily useful".

"The new curriculum is internationally benchmarked. It's year by year, and it's detailed, so there's a level of detail in the new curriculum we haven't had before ... the last government were the ones who put who actually ordered this assessment and good on them, and it's given us some very sobering data, those children at Year 8, where they should be at Year 8, 80 percent of them aren't there."

'That is manipulation' - Labour

Labour's leader Chris Hipkins said the government was not using accurate data.

"It's a bit like moving the goalposts after the kids have already kicked the ball," he said.

"I think the government should use data and information that's accurate. I think assessing kids against a curriculum that they have not been taught isn't a fair reflection of what kids are capable of.

"The data they're using now doesn't have any historical comparators, we can't benchmark that against anything because it's literally data that's been made up from assessing kids against a standard that they haven't been taught."

He pointed to data from 2022 showing about 42 percent of Year 8s were at the standard they should be, and acknowledged that was a problem - just not as extreme as the government was claiming.

"That does highlight that there is an issue, a gap between Year 4 and Year 8, that seems to be where we lose progress in the system - but that gap has been pretty consistent now for quite a long time. There is no magical fix here."

Labour's Education spokesperson Jan Tinetti said she was angry.

"This government has manipulated data to justify their own crisis ... they've shifted the goal posts on the assessments, they have assessed kids against material that they haven't been learnt," she said.

"Effectively you're measuring kids against something that they've never, ever been taught. That is manipulation ... It's very populist statement to be able to make, the statement that's going to land in people's heads is the 22 percent - it's an unfair judgment of where our kids are at."

She said she had heard the government was also looking at further reworking of the curriculum in a depature from the work Labour had put into it. Labour's refreshed curriculum, introduced last year, was what the Year 8s were assessed against.

"Now, don't get me wrong, I absolutely know that there was a difference in an issue between what was happening at year four and year eight ... we had a curriculum that we had developed with experts, we got them in, we got an evidence-based curriculum that was coming into place, we did what overseas countries have been doing, we looked at best practice overseas," Tinetti said.

"The devil is in the detail here, but it looks like this government has got rid of that and put in a curriculum, or putting in a curriculum, that has no evidence around it and no research base to it and I'm really angry about this, because ultimately our kids will suffer even more ... it looks like they're talking about bringing in a one size fits all model that is not the same curriculum that we had in place."

Hipkins said National was prioritising politics over good policy, and education and curriculums should have bipartisan consensus rather than teachers being forced to change every three years.

"In the six years that we were in government, we were focused on a bipartisan curriculum, so all of the work we were doing around rewriting the curriculum, we involved the opposition in so that there was a bipartisan agreement around that," he said. "The education curriculum, [former National MP] Nikki Kaye was integrally involved in that process."