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Selective Measuring

by Whaleoil on September 22, 2012

Jacinda Ardern keeps carping and moaning about measuring poverty.  When National put the figure of welfarism at $47 billion she was not happy.

Now the National are trying to bring in leagues tables, again Labour are not happy.

The Government’s pig-headed determination to use “ropey” data to create school league tables will do nothing to help our kids, says Labour’s Education Spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta

“National is obsessed with measuring the problem – it thinks if it can just produce a nice chart that shows how schools are doing in terms of meeting its National Standards all will be well.

How dare National try and measure student performance?

Labour are again moaning when New Zealand spends more money on education than any other country in the OECD.

An annual report on education by the OECD says the Government spends more of its budget on education than any of the other 33 countries in the organisation.

The 34-nation organisation’s annual report on education published overnight tues night

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says New Zealand directed 21.2% of its public spending to education in 2009.

That was enough to push it past the previous biggest spender, Mexico, by nearly one percentage point.

The OECD average is 13%.

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  • DRHILL

    They measure the performance of hospitals and district health boards, I don’t see any different in trying to measure the performance of schools.

    • thor42

      Agreed.
      The bottom-line is – if it uses taxpater’s money, it MUST be performance-assessed.
      Common-fricken-sense.

    • Dion

      Indeed – not only that but the results are published in the newspaper.

      Strange how we don’t see anyone in the health sector complaining about “flawed measures” and “junk data”. They just seem to get on with the job. And they work more than four hours a day, too.

  • Michael

    It is a truism in business that “what gets measured gets fixed”. Not that Labour knows much about business (no, getting subsidies until you go bankrupt is not business), but at least they (1) acknowledge that there is a problem (“National is obsessed with measuring the problem”) and (2) they acknowledge that National is trying to do something about it. Now that it is being measured, it may just get fixed – charter schools anyone?

    • Michael

      Bloody hell – doppelganger even thinks like me.

    • Bunswalla

      Yep – you can’t manage what you don’t measure. Since we direct over 21% of our public spending to the education sector, I think we’re entitled to know how wisely, well and effectively that money’s being spent – at a detailed level. That’s point 1.

      Point 2 is that the measurement is a reflection not just of how well our children (and by definition the teachers and schools they attend) are achieving, but also a benchmark against which to improve that performance.

      Yes I know that parents and communities make a big difference, and that no ranking system is perfect, but FFS we have to start somewhere. let’s just get on and do it without this relentless carping from the disaffected few.

  • AnonWgtn

    Surely it not the amount of money spent it is how effectively this is spent. Not too well yet in education, but at least we are trying to get a benchmark, despite the very best efforts of the teachers and education academics. The parents will win..
    Like the similar kind of comment about the number of working hours that New Zealanders do, it is what is put into those hours that matters.

  • thor42

    I can shut her up with one sentence.
    That figure of $47 billion is the amount of money that is being thrown at bludgers instead of being put into useful things like hospitals and schools.

  • Sooty

    It appears that NZ is producing too many dumb kids by our teachers. In one door and out the next and very little put between their ears in the way thru.

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