If you, much to your great misfortune, happen to be born poor, there are a lot of opportunities that you are going to miss out on that your more well-off peers will receive. While the differences between the rich and the poor appear much more overt in third-world, they are still very tangible and very real, even in first-world countries, New Zealand included. In fact, the relationship between your economic background and your educational achievements is so pronounced in New Zealand that many third-world countries surpass us in terms of educational equality.
Teach First New Zealand is a government-endorsed programme designed specifically to combat these educational inequalities. The highly lauded programme employs graduates of New Zealand universities, placing them in low-decile secondary schools, in academic areas where there are often shortages of teachers. The organisation’s mission attempts to sculpt a world where what you can achieve in life is not determined by how much your parents earn.
The Teach First programme was first established in the United Kingdom, but was brought to New Zealand by CEO Shaun Sutton in 2011. “I’m a Kiwi originally from Auckland,” Sutton states, “but I spent about five years in Asia, and then five years in London. That was where I heard about Teach First UK – traditional teaching pathways didn’t appeal to me, but I was instantly hooked.” Sutton was quite possibly the first New Zealander to go through the programme, and was stationed at the UK equivalent of a decile one school in West London, in a primarily white, working class neighbourhood. The school was located right by the Heathrow Airport runway, and it was there that he first realised the power of great teaching. “Research shows that the quality of the teacher and of the leadership is the most effective change – That’s what Teach First is about. No matter what these kids end up doing they carry that with them.”
After returning to New Zealand five years ago, Sutton was eager to introduce the programme to New Zealand schools. Although the programme here was inspired by Teach First UK, it was built to fit New Zealand. This means acknowledging the fact that we are a bicultural society, and honouring the Treaty of Waitangi. For Teach First NZ, that means accepting as many Maori and Pasifika graduates as they can, so that all children can have role models who share a background and a culture with them to help foster their aspirations. Sutton said New Zealand needs a programme like this because: “The sad reality in New Zealand is that your post code will be the greatest predictor of your success.”
“We are an initiative set up to tackle New Zealand’s educational inequalities,” states Teach First NZ’s Recruitment and Selection Manager, Steph Curley. Despite being widely considered a first-world country, there is a huge disparity in educational quality and achievement between those of high and low socio-economic backgrounds, a fact that has even been criticised by the United Nations, who claim that we are “embarrassing.” This is especially poignant when the fact that many countries with higher rates of poverty, such as Thailand, India, and China, have less inequality in education than we do. “In New Zealand, if you’re from a high socioeconomic area, there is a 90 percent chance you will go to uni,” claims Curley, “Whereas, in places with a low socio-economic rate, only 58 percent of students achieve NCEA Level 2. With our current educational system, people don’t get the opportunity.”
Teach First recruits high-achieving graduates with areas of study focusing on the sciences, mathematics, ICT, Te Reo, and English. They run an intensive six-week programme on teaching, which fast-tracks these students for a placement teaching in a decile one school. Deciles are ratings used by the Ministry of Education to determine the level of funding that a school will receive, based on census data for households in the school’s zone. This includes factors such as average income, the number of parents on benefits, occupations, levels of education, and the number of people per household. Every school will be given a decile rating from one to ten, with approximately ten percent of schools in each category. Schools rated decile one, the lowest decile, have the highest proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds. Not as many graduates are deciding to go into teaching in recent years, and those that do often don’t want to work in low decile schools. Those that take these positions are often recruited from overseas, may not be fluent in English, or have a marked disinterest in the students’ education. Curley reports being shocked upon hearing one teacher remark to students, “You don’t want to get more than achieved, I’ll teach you to answer one question.”
Mitchell Denham is a recent Otago graduate who is currently doing a placement teaching English at Northland College, a decile one high school in the rural township of Kaikohe. He first saw the Teach First NZ page advertised on Facebook, and thought that it sounded like something he wanted to do. Being only 24 years old, Denham looks quite young, and often gets mistaken for a student. At last year’s prize-giving ceremony, an elderly woman even scolded him for sitting with the teachers. His students still listen to him, however; “when kids know you mean business they will listen. Age doesn’t really matter to them if they know you are there constantly and have their best interests at heart.”
Most of the problems Denham has noticed with teaching in a decile one school are issues around funding. The school lacks money for events like school trips, resources are limited, many of the buildings are not well kept, and there is a high turnover of staff. However, he doesn’t believe that there is a difference between the students in low and high decile schools. “I think at the end of the day, kids are just kids – it shouldn’t matter what decile their school is.”
Apparently, it’s the little things that let you know you’re really making a difference. “We’ve just had parent-teacher interviews. Whanau came in and told me that they’ve ‘never seen them read before, but now they’ve bought home that book you recommended,’ or ‘for the first time, they want to tell me what they did in English today.” In the end, Denham thinks the most rewarding thing is watching the changing perspective these kids have of school – as a safe, comfortable space; somewhere they can enjoy themselves.
Shaun Sutton also has a story of a time he knew he had made a difference. “I remember taking the Year Ten students to the University of Oxford for a day, to the robotics department. None of the students had ever set foot on a university campus before, let alone a collegiate one. One small boy came up to me, and he told me, “The only reason I came was to get off school for the day. Now I want to apply.”
To teach in a decile one school, the most important qualities to have are resilience and self-reflection. “On the bad days, you need to reflect on what went wrong, and come back with a positive attitude and change it. You have to want to teach the kids.” Mitchell Denham would highly recommend the programme to anyone who is interested. “It’s the most challenging thing you’ll ever do in your life – definitely not for the faint of heart. Particularly for those kids who’ve had a rough start to life. I’d say 100 percent do it. Despite the challenges, it’s so rewarding – all the little things make the hardships worth it. I really believe in the programme. Teaching is not a last resort – you get to be an agent of change within a community.”
To date, Teach First NZ has made significant headway with their goals. The selected participants represent a wide array of diverse backgrounds, many of which are underrepresented in teaching, such as Maori, Pasifika, and male teachers. Despite many of them not previously having considered teaching as a career, all of them chose to take their placements in low decile schools, where they have filled many places as teachers of Maths, Chemistry, Physics, Science, and Te Reo. Participants are proving to be well-liked, with all principals of partner schools wanting to employ more Teach First NZ participants in the future. They have also judged Teach First participants to perform extremely well in the classroom, and other school staff describe them as “high calibre,” “hard working,” “friendly,” and “resilient.” After a recent evaluation by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, the evaluators found that, “In most departments staff reported that they noticed comparable, if not improved, levels of student achievement for participants’ classes. They were able to justify this by standardised literacy test results, NCEA moderated internal assessments, completion rates for achievement and unit standards, as well as informal judgements about student engagement.”
Despite the glowing reports of the programmes by principals, parents, and the graduates who have undertaken the programme, the Post-Primary Teachers Association recently opposed the methods by which these teachers were placed into schools. The debate was the subject of a recent court-case, where the ruling was that the current method is illegal, and that it breached the State Sector Act. In order to prevent qualified teachers from missing out from teaching posts in these schools, the decision was made that they had to be advertised via the Education Gazette, rather than exclusively offered to students in the Teach First NZ programme. Anna Kirtlan, the PPTA Communications Advisor, clarified that the PPTA does not oppose the scheme itself, and that teachers being paid to train, receiving mentoring, and spending more time in schools is a positive attribute of the programme.
According to Steph Curley, “Educational inequality is tangible. We’ve got a problem with this, and we’ve got to fix it. Young people will make a difference – our generation can resolve this.” Four cohorts have undergone the six-week training programme, and have been placed in low decile high schools throughout the country. The praise these young teachers have received aside, 93 percent of the first group are still teaching as of 2016. One of the ways in which participant Mitchell Denham said that he gained the respect and trust of the kids was by being a constant presence in their lives, and if that is the case, then surely the teachers who have completed the Teach First programmes are making an enormous difference.