This article is based on the first section of the paper presented by Iain Middleton at the New Zealand and Australia Secular Heritage conference and its Future, Rutherford House, Wellington, 30 August 2008.
It is a myth, but some people believe that private schools, and in the New Zealand context that usually means religious schools, give superior education. It is a core argument of those who seek to expand religious schools in New Zealand at the expense of the State school system. Others consider or know that it is wrong. Here we will examine the evidence.
Even now, elements of the religious right and some political parties are arguing for a substantial privatisation of the New Zealand education system. In 1975, political parties seeking Catholic votes passed the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975 that enabled state funding of private Catholic schools and a few others. Under this act, the state pays all teachers salaries and running costs. Despite this large injection of money, the Catholic Church continues to cry poor and push for increased subsidisation of its education system while also claming that the state funding resulting from the 1975 Integration Act has enabled it to expand its education system. This push for privatisation does not receive much publicity but can be seen in the policies of some political parties and in the lobbying of religious educationist that takes place largely out of the public eye. A visiting Humanist from America warned that American Humanists and secularists either slept or were busy with trivial concerns and convinced that they were protected by the constitution while the religious right took over the country. Will we sleep in New Zealand while the religious schools are increasingly subsidised and expanded in number at the expense of our state schools?
Those arguing for the privatisation of education can be divided into two primary groups and some who fall into both categories. First, for the right, privatisation gives an opportunity for capitalists to invest money in schools and achieve returns. But, realising that the number of decile 10 parents are limited and that the majority of parents are not capable of paying the significant school fees that are required by private schools to make a profit, or even capable of paying the fees needed to provide basic education, they lobby for state subsidisation of independent schools. The subsidy becomes a profit that they claim as a return on their investment. To support their argument for subsidies they claim, without evidence, that private schools offer superior education.
For the religious, the aim is to get as many children as possible into religious schools where they can be inculcated with the tenets of their religion. To them, the largely secular state schools undermine belief in supernatural gods and their own sectarian brand of religion. Religious elements also argue and lobby for substantial state aid for the schools they operate so that they may extend their tenets to as many children as possible. Religious organisations are also able to run their schools using the tax exemptions granted to religions making it difficult for any other private organisation to compete with them. Consequently, we find a nexus between the right and religions organisations for the provision of private schools.
One of the major advantages of a free, secular, and compulsory, state education system is that it generally tries to treat all people equally, regardless of their ethnic or religious background. From an early age, children attending state schools are able to mix with others of different religious and ethnic backgrounds. Consequently the students see their fellow students as fellow humans and gain some understanding of others views and attitudes.
People of a secular mind need to be concerned at any attempt to expand, or any policy that will result in an expansion in the number of religious schools in New Zealand. When we look at countries and localities where ethnic or sectarian strife has occurred there is almost invariable segregation in the schools. Northern Ireland and Bosnia are prime examples. The growth of Saudi funded madrasa education in Pakistan, as distinct from the state schools in Pakistan, led to the creation of the Taliban (Islamic students - Taliban means students). The Taliban invaded and captured most of Afghanistan from 1994 and gave refuge to Al Qaeda allowing the establishment of terrorist training camps with an objective of taking terrorism to the world, and continue to cause problems in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similar madrasa education is being funded in Bangladesh and other countries around the world causing increasing problems.
Even at their best, sectarian religious schools are divisive, no matter whether this is their intention or not. They separate people from their fellow citizens at an early age, inculcate sectarian attitudes that lead to a lack of trust between people, and promulgate divisions in society that may last a life time in the individuals that have been inculcated in these schools. Members of the in group, those who attend the sectarian school, often come to see themselves as superior for moral reasons, and those who attend other schools and have other ideas, beliefs, or attitudes, become dehumanised. Members of the out group, the others, come to be regarded with suspicion and disgust for their immoral behaviour, or for their alternative views of life or belief in god.
While some of the religious schools in New Zealand may act responsibly, some may not. The remaining independent schools that have not integrated tend to be elitist, charging fees that most parents cannot afford, while remaining largely free to promulgate their particular brand of religion. Most Roman Catholic schools have been absorbed into the state system under the Private Schools Conditional Integration Act 1975. This Act requires "Integrated" schools to be open to all (pupils cannot be excluded on the basis of religion, race, or socio-economic background) but allows them to give preference to those children with a philosophical or religious connection to the school. While these "Integrated" schools are supposedly free, the Act allows the schools to charge dues, rather than fees, to provide for school buildings and other capital costs and when these dues are not paid a child may be suspended or expelled. Integrated schools may also fund raise and accept financial contributions on a voluntary basis. The Act allows the Integrated Schools to retain their special character with religious observances and instruction and to teach the syllabuses "with a special character" by using "religious and other examples to reinforce teaching throughout the school day". A condition of enrolment is that the pupil "is to participate in the general school programme that gives the school its special character" but does allow pupils and parents with different religious and philosophical affiliations to not participate in religious observance and religious instruction concerned with particular observances if they do not wish to participate.
Returning to question, can the educational standards of private and state schools be distinguished? Rather than look at the whole country, it is simpler to narrow the study and look at one of the larger metropolitan centres where we can compare the results for various secondary schools by looking at their performance in an external exam. For this exercise, the Wellington region comprising the five geographically close and interrelated cities of Wellington, Lower Hutt, Upper Hutt, Porirua, and Kapiti with a total population of close to 400,000 people has been chosen. Published tables using School Certificate results from 1995 are used for the comparisons. School Certificate, sat at the age of 15 or 16 was for many years the first external exam that pupils sat and it was sat by a greater proportion of pupils than sat external exams in the following two school years as many pupils would leave school after school certificate or fail to sit subsequent exams. People have used these results to claim that private or religious schools give better education.
Some educationists are reluctant to use an academic qualification like school certificate to compare schools, particularly when low decile schools are involved, or to use any form of comparison between schools at all. Nevertheless, it is necessary to use these tables to test the contention that any one type of schooling gives superior education. School Certificate results, rather than NCEA (New Zealand Certificate of Educational Achievement), are used as NCEA uses a greater number of internal assessments and awards credits in such a way that meaningful comparisons between schools becomes difficult. Schools and decile ratings also change over time and these results may not be indicative of present performance.
The Wellington region was originally settled and contested by various Maori iwi (tribes) and some are still present in the city. From 1840, British settlers arrived and established what was to become Wellington city and the descendants of British migrants remain a dominant influence. Wellington also has longstanding Greek, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Jewish and other minorities. Wellington became the capital city in 1865 and government department and company head offices became established in Wellington. The promotion of capable people to head office and the recruitment of capable people from overseas has brought people to Wellington. From 1940 to 1970 substantial numbers of Maori from Hawke Bay, East Cape, and Taranaki, and Pacific Islanders arrived to work in the expanding industries. British immigrants, Maori, Pacific Islanders, and minorities from many countries continue to arrive as migrants or refugees. There have also been population outflows with people leaving for other counties and other New Zealand centres or leaving Wellington when they retire.
In Wellington, expensive housing is found in inner city suburbs like Kelburn, Woburn, Khandallah, Karori and Seatoun, but is also distributed in parts of the Hutt Valley, Porirua, and Kapiti. An extensive state housing area largely developed in the 1950 to 1970 period provides housing for low-income people in Porirua city, and other state housing areas are found in the Hutt Valley and Wellington city.
Wellington city has the highest average income level in New Zealand but there are also significant numbers of people on lower incomes. Wellington has an unusual distribution of income levels. If we divide individual incomes for the country into deciles numbered one to ten with one being the lowest income decile, we would have 10% of the population in each decile. The incomes of parents of pupils attending Wellington state and integrated schools have been determined using census data and sampling the parents of each school. This is used to produce a decile rating for each school that represents the average income level for parents of that school. The decile rating is thus determined from the income of the pupils parents and may differ from the average income of people in the schools geographical area.
When we look at the parents incomes for all the secondary schools in the Wellington area and plot the distribution of incomes, we find an uneven distribution of incomes as shown below. Sixty four percent of parents have incomes in the top three deciles (the average for the whole country is 30%) while only thirty six percent have incomes in deciles one to seven. Consequently, there are more schools in the Wellington area with high decile ratings than there are with lower decile ratings.
In 1995, more than 24,000 pupils from 35 secondary schools in the Wellington region sat school certificate exams. Table 1. shows these 35 schools with their decile ratings and the 1995 School Certificate pass rates. The table has been sorted to show the schools with the highest pass rates at the top and the lowest at the bottom. The private schools, all religious, have been highlighted with yellow for Anglican, red for Presbyterian, green for Roman Catholic, and blue for others. It is evident that the religious schools are distributed over the entire range from the poorest performing schools to the best and that their decile ratings also vary.
The four schools with the highest pass rates are among the highest achieving academic schools in the country. They are all private non-integrated religious schools and do not have a decile rating determined. The three top schools are girls schools, and girls schools generally outperform boys and coeducational schools. They are also centrally located and well positioned to take pupils from high-income homes. Two of the top schools are Anglican, charging high fees while the other two are Presbyterian and while they charge lower fees than the Anglican schools the fees are still beyond the reach of most parents. Together these four schools account for 6.2% of total pupils. Because of the fees that they charge, their locations, and what is known of these schools, it is reasonable to assume that they are all decile ten schools, in the top ten percent of parental incomes. For our purposes, this assumption has been made. It is also possible that the parents' incomes for these schools will be in the top five percent or higher. It can also be assumed that these schools are creaming off some of the highest performing pupils from state schools and that they are consequently depressing the performance of the state schools that these pupils may have otherwise attended. While the top four schools are private religious schools outside the state education system, their pupils are sitting state examinations based on the state curriculum so it can be assumed that these schools teach the state curriculum. They may also have a teaching advantage with such a high percentage of academically high performing pupils in a school.
The other schools with no decile rating are the relatively small Reikorangi Christian College with only 50 pupils sitting school certificate and the Correspondence School with 1,101 students that has pupils all over the country.
Even a cursory examination of the pass rates of the Wellington schools reveals that the higher the decile rating the higher the pass rate. The pass rate varies from over 93% of pupils with A, B or C passes at the top to just over 33% at the bottom. This strong correlation between the decile rating and the pass rates is plotted in chart 2 with a separate trend line for private (religious) and state schools. The two trend lines are very similar and lie very close together and this alone indicates that there is no significant difference in the performance of religious and state schools. Religious schools, on this chart, perform a little better than state schools at higher deciles and not so well in the decile one to five range but the difference is not considered statistically significant and probably results from the creaming off of top pupils from state schools by the four top performing religious schools.
One decile 10 Presbyterian integrated school lies a little below the trend lines and most Catholic schools tend to be below the trend line, except one decile 7 Catholic school which is above. Unlike the Anglican and Presbyterian schools that cater only for the children of high-income parents, Catholic schools cater for the children of parents with a greater range of incomes. State schools also show a scatter above and below the trend line with some schools doing better and some not so well.
Looking at a smaller geographic area, the Porirua basin, we find five schools including one religious school. The three lowest performing schools from our original thirty-five are the geographically close coeducational schools, decile 1 Porirua College, and the two decile 2 schools, Mana College, and Bishop Viard College (a Catholic integrated school). Almost all their pupils are from state houses. The three schools have very similar performance results - there is less than one percent in pass rates between them. Porirua College is the higher performer and more so because it is the only decile one school. A little to the north, decile 5 Aotea College, performs better. Located near a relatively high-income area it also has a significant number of pupils from the nearby state housing area. To the south, Tawa College is a decile 9 school with about 10 percent of its pupils from state houses. Tawa College is the highest performing coeducational school in the Wellington Region and outperforms two decile 10 schools and four other decile nine schools.
From the data, after considering the correlation with decile ratings, there is little evidence of performance differences between state and private schools. Both groups have schools that perform above and below the trend lines. Some Integrated schools appear to under perform while the top four religious schools may perform well because they are attracting some of the best pupils in the region and do not have to cater for a large range of pupil performance, and not because their education is superior. Consequently, we cannot say that private or religious schools perform any better or any worse than state schools, and this justification for extending support for or creating more religious schools funded by the government fails.
What then should we infer from the correlation between decile rating and school performance? Do schools perform better because they have higher incomes? Can the performance of a school be improved by increasing the income of the school?
To ensure equality of opportunity, poorer schools do need additional money so that they are similarly equipped to the high decile schools that have greater fund raising potential. However, once this equality has been achieved, additional money may not produce a significant increase in performance.
The performance of a school is the sum of the performance of the individual pupils that attend the school. Should we then infer that the performance of a pupil is proportional to the income of the pupils parents, or are we making wrong assumptions?
It is unfortunate that some have deduced that the correlation between decile rating and school performance indicates that the children of poorer parents will not succeed because their parents' incomes are not high enough. It has long been known that some children from very poor backgrounds have succeeded despite the odds. It is also wrong to assume that an injection of money is all that is needed to ensure that a pupil will succeed.
Any two pupils attending the same school should have a similar chance of success but we know that some pupils may do well and others not. What then results in higher pupil performance? A longitudinal study, known as the Competent Children Project, funded by the Ministry of Education, and conducted by Dr Cathy Wylie for the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, attempts to answer this. The project has followed a random sample of some 300 Wellington children from the Wellington region from just before their fifth birthday in 1993. When the results, for children age five, were released in 1996, it was reported that children from families earning more than $60,000 per year scored higher in literacy, basic maths, and social skills than those from low-income families ($20,000 or less). It was also noted that there was a similar link to the mother's educational level. The Evening Post on the 26 November reports Dr Wylie to have said, "What this study shows is that family income is the key to the puzzle". The findings caused some consternation when they were released to parents for it appeared to be telling parents with lower incomes that their children would not succeed because their incomes were not high enough.
However, with the release of the report for ten year olds in 2001, it was reported that there was a stronger correlation between a child's performance and the mother's education than between a child's performance and family income. Dr Wylie is reported as saying that the children of less educated mothers were disadvantaged because they [their mothers] were less likely to extend them in mathematics and language. Too much television watching also had a negative impact on achievement as it meant less time spent on things like homework or playing a musical instrument that has a positive impact on achievement. Dr Wylie added that all factors needed to be considered and that no single factor should be taken in isolation. The link to the mother's education was stronger than the link to the father's education, possibly because mothers spend more time with the children in the early years or because mothers may play a greater part in shaping a child's attitudes. As there is also a correlation between educational levels and income, the relationship between the performance of a school and the school's decile rating may be an indirect indicator of the average educational level of the mothers' of the pupils at the school.
Other factors may be important. It is known, for instance, that the children of some poor and uneducated refugee families do well academically. It is also known that the children of Asian parents tend to do better on average than the general population and that they do better than their IQ levels would suggest. This probably indicates that the attitudes toward education that parents pass on to their children are very important, but attitudes may be more difficult to measure. Cathy Wylie reported in 2004 that the children of parents who did voluntary work at their child's school "had higher average scores suggesting that the children were receiving a consistent message about the value of school".
Another key finding in the 2004 report was that "little overall difference was evident between consistent attendance at state, state integrated, and private schools". This confirms the analysis of the 35 schools in 1995 discussed above that found no evidence of differences in performance between state and private schools.
Again, we can conclude that there is no indication that private or religious schools perform better than state schools and consequently the argument that state funding of private schools and state integrated schools is justified because they give superior education must fail. The strongest correlation to a child's performance is the educational level of the child's mother, but other factors, including the father's education and the attitudes of the child's parents toward education are very important. The wisdom of funding sectarian religious schools that can lead to divisions in society must continue to be questioned.
