Meta ...meta cognitions and education in New Zealand.

Countries, including New Zealand, keep pumping more money into education but are not getting results .... the answer's simple: find the best teachers; get the best out of teachers and step in when pupils start to lag behind - those non achievers need more practice, not less.

Reportedly the 'best performing countries ... head such league tables again and again: Canada, Finland, Japan, Singapore and South Korea.

A South Krean official put it, "the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers" ... "the quality of teachers affects student performance more than anything else."

South Korea recruits primary school teachers from the top 5% of graduates, Singapore and Honk Kong from the top 30%. America typically recruits teachers from the bottom 30% of college graduates, New Zealand?

In Finland ... a third of pupils get one-on-one remedial lessons. Singapore provides extra classes for the bottom 20% of students ... In New Zealand, 20% of maori kids leave school before they're 16, 57% of Maori boys leave without NZCEA level 1 and overall, 43000 truants a week - a 'tail' of non achievers approaching 30%.

It has not required above average salaries and has retained teaching as a high status profession.

The situation in New Zealand will not change, of course, while those making policy are not obliged to focus on educational attainment and can give 'full reign' to their imaginations - hence 'radical curricula' pursued independent of the effect ... mind you, there is historical precedent in the rigid adherence to the 'context reading' programme that created so many literacy problems that are of course being perpetuated by those with the problems now teaching our young ones. This situation is compounded by teacher training facilities being independent of and hence not responsive to the needs or requirements of the school system.

Source: NZ Herald, 25.10.2007, p.20. The answer's simple: find the best teachers

McKinsey study on the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).