4 thoughts on “Kiwi Kids Nose-Dive in the Education Stakes: PISA Scores – updated”

1. Ah poor kiwis. The old tall poppy syndrome of discriminating against people who can study and show intelligence is finally beginning to show. Degrees are bullshit remember? Ah poor things.

2. While this survey obviously focuses on primary and secondary education it would be interesting to see how New Zealand ranks when it comes to tertiary education as well. Having been a student at 4 New Zealand tertiary providers I was shocked at how poor the standards were.

   In my first experience with the New Zealand tertiary system I went onto a course with a private training provider. I was outright lied too from the very beginning to get me onto the course. There was no way I was going to be able to pass it. The fact was that all they wanted was my money, and this became apparent one the fees had gone into their account and their attitude dramatically changed. I ended up leaving. Their lies cost me a large amount of money and their was nothing I could do about it.

   After being ripped off for such a large sum of money I was cautious about further training, but I enrolled in a short course with another provider to test the water before a larger investment in education. The second training provider, had teachers with such a low level of knowledge on their subjects that they were ‘teaching’ by handing out a booklet, and learning the topic from their students. Suffice to say that once I had completed the qualification I didn’t do any further training with them.

   The third provider was a polytech, where I began a degree. Again I was cautious, but this course was structured in such a way that I could exit at the end of each year and still gain a qualification for each year studied. It quickly became apparent that they didn’t use textbooks, and they reduced the number of elective subjects from 12 to 2 within a week of the course beginning. During the second year they informed us that the third year was a repeat of the second year with only a few minor alterations. Not wanting to waste time and money doing the same training twice I left after the second year. The provider then outright refused to issue my full qualifications. Since I had met all the requirements I was outraged. When I threatened to report them for fraud they backed down and reluctantly agreed to issue the qualifications I had earned. However, unbeknownst to me they were already under investigation by the police for embezzlement and fraud, and were on the front page of the newspaper 2 weeks after I left! I got my qualifications from them, but was absolutely disgusted with their conduct.

   My final experience with the New Zealand tertiary sector was with one of New Zealand’s universities (which are controlled by a different set of standards than the polytechs and private training providers). Training started off well, and I was relieved that finally I could actually get an education without all the nonsense previously experienced. But, after 2 years everything changed; the university eliminated printed study materials on most papers (while still charging students for them), started sending out materials late when they were available (one paper had materials arrive 8 weeks late on a paper that was 16 weeks in duration), made online materials available either at the last minute or late, left bits out of online materials that would be discovered later, and started having very large numbers of mistakes in their materials. Absolutely disgusted to be experiencing this sort of nonsense again I wrote a formal letter of complaint to the Vice Chancellor. There was no interest whatsoever shown in solving any of the problems I detailed, and all I got in response was a long list of lame excuses. I soon realized that the university itself was not interested in providing quality education anymore. Their policies had become entirely centered around profit to the detriment of their students – greed had become their primary value.

   As a result of my experiences I could never recommend getting tertiary education in New Zealand and would highly advise that students go overseas if they are serious about getting qualifications. Tertiary education in New Zealand is a greed driven, money grabbing business that has no regard for providing quality education, and only exists to suck as much money out of students as possible.

3. You might want to visit this website for the complete list. Even comparatively poorer countries like Poland and Estonia score light years ahead of New Zealand. http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/PISA-2012-results-snapshot-Volume-I-ENG.pdf

4. I suspect this was not a fall in the rankings, but rather, PISA actually oversaw the survey to prevent the Kiwis from cooking the books. Here is a great illustration of how the Minister of Earthquake Recovery, a former schoolteacher, lacks basic English knowledge http://eqctruths.wordpress.com/2013/11/07/what-gerry-knew/.

   Incidentally, you can see how poorly New Zealanders do on the Australian citizenship test http://www.australiantimes.co.uk/news/news-from-australia/news-in-australia/britons-and-nzers-struggle-on-australian-citizenship-test.htm. They score lower than do people from Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ethiopia. I scored 95% on the practice test, despite never living in Australia. The only question I missed was the one about the colours of the aboriginal flag. The rest of the questions are common sense and anyone with a few brain cells should be able to pass the test, but somehow, Kiwis cannot.

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