Tackling educational inequality

A five-year project which aims to identify and transform the “chokepoints” denying many people a tertiary education has gained a $1.5 million Trust grant.

Our relatively young population could give the nation a major competitive advantage.

Faced with figures showing NZ has one of the OECD’s highest educational inequality rates, the Starpath project aims to transform results for under-achievers.  

The grant, paid over five years, will be matched by the Government’s Partnership For Excellence programme, which has identified Starpath as a key to building world-class tertiary education capability.

Prime Minister Helen Clark said Starpath won support because it “focused squarely on issues of access, participation and success. It is also concerned about building capability in the long-term”.

ASB Community Trust is also committed to partnering innovative projects and hopes Starpath will help it achieve one of its core missions – reducing inequality.

Project Director and Auckland University Professor Helen Timperley says the aim is to change lives through education.

“In NZ, a relatively young population has the potential to give the nation a major competitive advantage – but only if New Zealanders from all backgrounds have the opportunity to realise their educational potential,” she says.

“NZ has the second highest rate of educational inequality in the OECD, with Maori, Pacific and students from low-income backgrounds showing high rates of educational underachievement.”

At the same time, population balances are shifting. The latest census says that by 2050 57% of children will identify as Maori or Pacifika and 68% will be non-European.

“Unless current patterns of educational under-achievement are transformed, our chances of developing a high-income, high-value knowledge economy are in danger,” Professor Timperley says.

Starpath, led by Auckland University Distinguished Professor Dame Anne Salmond, will work with schools in Auckland and Northland, examining students’ experiences to understand barriers that cause some to stumble.

It will analyse 20 years’ worth of educational data, including internal assessment material, NCEA results and data from Auckland-based tertiary institutions. The focus will be on changing results for students who are not realising their potential. “At present, schools and tertiary institutions collect student information for educational purposes,” says Professor Timperley, “but they use it most frequently to report to the Ministry of Education and to justify the receipt of funding.

“The information is not routinely used to analyse and enhance patterns of educational achievement for students. However, without such analysis it is impossible to accurately identify the educational challenges actually experienced.”

“The Starpath project,” she says, “will enable a change to a system of evidence-based decision making that will increase the effectiveness of investments in education.

“Starpath aims to deliver a toolkit of proven initiatives and approaches that transform current patterns of educational under-achievement.”