This week’s 2012 PISA results should have sent shockwaves down the country.

New Zealand slipped from 7th to 13th place in reading, 13th to 23rd in maths, and from 7th to 18th in science in the OECD’s Programme of International Student Assessment (PISA), a study of half a million 15-year olds in 65 countries.
 
But it seems that some of the shock was absorbed last week when Education Minister Hekia Parata announced that a drop would be probable, and that the drop in rankings would be due to the improved performance of Asian countries.

Indeed, the top seven performers are Asian jurisdictions like Singapore and Hong Kong. Shanghai’s 15-year-olds are a full three years ahead in performance compared with the average OECD 15-year-old.

But attributing New Zealand’s slip in rankings to the rise of the Asian dragons masks three undeniably shocking facts. First, it was not just the ranking that slipped: it was actual performance.

New Zealand’s 15-year-olds of 2012 were around 6 months behind their counterparts of 2009 in maths.

Second, the drop in performance was not due to a gradual downward trend such as we saw between 2000 and 2009. It was a sharp turn for the worse. 

Third, it is not just average results that are concerning. The kids at the bottom are falling further and further behind. One in four (23 per cent) 15-year-olds cannot do maths at a level needed for work or further education. That is an increase of seven percentage points from 2009.

So what can New Zealand do with this shock?

My journey this year to Singapore, Germany, Finland, England, and Canada revealed that shocking PISA results in educational performance can be a spur and a catalyst for widespread change. In 2000, the first year of PISA, Germany found that they performed much worse than they expected, with low average performance and wide disparities between the top- and bottom-performing students.

Teachers and their unions in Germany got behind reforms to drive up standards and improve the system, and they have seen remarkable gains in the last 12 years. Even in the last four years, Germany surged ahead, while New Zealand fell sharply behind. Where New Zealand was ahead of Germany in 2009, Germany now sits at 16th place while we have fallen to 22nd.  

Next week The New Zealand Initiative releases its second report in a series on teacher quality, reporting on how leading jurisdictions like Germany and Singapore have strengthened their teaching professions. 

But before we even begin to talk reform, New Zealand needs to acknowledge that these PISA results are shocking.