Pressure is building to end academic streaming following a new report that shows the practice disadvantages Māori students.
Harmony Te Raki moved from a kura kaupapa into a mainstream high school because she believed it would give her better opportunities. Not long after starting in Year 9, Harmony was told by her classmates that she was in the "cabbage class" – the lowest stream.
“I got put straight into the cab class based on the fact that I went to a kura kaupapa school,” she says. “I just got told that I was cabbage, that I was dumb. I just started falling into it.”
A report from Ngāi Tahu-led education research group Tokona Te Raki suggests that streaming gives an unfair advantage to some students, leading to significant inequities later in life.
It looked at the experience of four high schools that have ended academic streaming in mathematics; Horowhenua College, Wellington High School, Hastings Girls High School, and Inglewood High School in Taranaki.
The report found that ending streaming improved academic achievement across the board, especially for Māori and Pasifika students who achieved a greater number of merit and excellence grades in NCEA. This in turn led to more students moving into year 11 and year 12 maths than occurred under the streaming system.
The study also showed that students self-belief, confidence and motivation improved, further increasing the likelihood that they would attempt higher NCEA standards.
“They were disengaged, but there was nothing wrong with their brain. In fact, many of them were bloody clever.”
– Misbah Sabat, Horowhenua College
At Horowhenua College, where Māori and Pasifika students account for roughly half the student body, ending streaming led to significant improvements. After the school stopped streaming in algebra and calculus at NCEA level 1, the number of students continuing on to level 2 jumped from ten to twenty-four. Fifteen of those students carried on to level 3 calculus, compared with just six the previous year. Overall, the numbers of students in level 2 maths more than doubled.
Misbah Sabat, a mathematics teacher at Horowhenua College at the time of the research, says the students in lower streams are no less intelligent or capable than those in higher ones. Out of 15 students in one of her lower-stream classes, Sabat says 13 were only there for behavioural issues.
“They were disengaged, but there was nothing wrong with their brain,” she says. “In fact, many of them were bloody clever.”
Streaming, otherwise known as tracking, banding or grouping, is a common practice in New Zealand schools where students of perceived similar abilities are grouped. The idea is that more support can then be dedicated to students that need it, while more advanced students are given more challenging work.
The stream a child is placed in is often based on short tests in their first days of entering a new school. The test results are then said to determine a student’s stream, though the process is different in each school. However, the report suggests that students are more likely to be streamed based on behavioural issues rather than genuine differences in ability.
“We’ve seen evidence that while they do the tests and get results, there is no logic to the streaming when you track the students,” says the report’s co-author Piripi Prendergast.
Māori students who rank near the middle in streaming tests can often end up in the lower streamed classes. Meanwhile non-Māori students who rank near the bottom can end up in the middle classes.
“There is a layer between the testing and the class placement where bias dictated who actually got in the class,” he says. “So, you end up with lower classes being largely Māori and Pasifika, and the very top stream classes mostly European and Asian.”
The report’s findings are supported by by Dr Hana O’Regan, education researcher and former general manager of oranga/ wellbeing at Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu. O’Regan says she doesn’t believe teachers are consciously disadvantaging students; rather that the impact of streaming can often be hidden from those who didn’t experience its down-sides.
“It’s not about the raw facts of how good someone is, it is about teacher expectations,” she says.
“If you’ve been told something enough than you just start to believe it”
– Harmony Te Raki.
The report suggests that one of the most damaging impacts of streaming is on students self-belief.
For Harmony Te Raki in Ōtahutahi/Christchurch, even though she was promoted into a higher stream in year 10, the whole experience was so disheartening that she returned to Te Kura Kaupapa o te Whānau Tahi the following year.
Now 21, she says the impact of streaming is still something she struggles with.
“I still question whether I’m capable enough to do something,” she says. “If you’ve been told something enough than you just start to believe it.”
According to Dr O’Regan, these stereotypes can become internalised to the point that students give up trying and develop behavioural issues which further entrench them in the lower streams. The stereotyping is also picked up by other students, parents and teachers, who can begin to attribute lower abilities to Māori students in general.
“If you don’t understand the system that has created this, then people end up misunderstanding and thinking it’s because that’s what Māori are like,” she says. “That’s what our country has done, we’ve failed to tell the story of how streaming perpetuates that inequality”.
The psychological impact of that stereotype can last well into your adult years, according to Mananui Ramsden a former student at Hillmorton High School in Christchurch. Ramsden says he was put into the lowest stream at school and told he was slow without any formal assessment being done. He says this impacted his motivation to such an extent that he was barely able to read and write by the time he got to high school.
“It took me well into my mid-20s to build that confidence up, let alone change the narrative I had programmed into me,” he says. “Just imagine where the bros and I would be if we were told we were smart from the time we entered the education system.”
One of the major barriers to ending streaming may be parent’s perceptions of its benefits for their own children. According to Sabat, senior school management are worried that if extension classes are not offered for students of perceived higher ability then parents will take their children elsewhere. This would bring down the schools role and negatively impact the funding they receive from the Government.
Sabat remembers push-back from parents during the first year Horowhenua College removed streaming for all subjects in level 10.
“One of the parents stood up and said if she had known that we don’t stream in year 10 she would have never brought her child her,” she says.
Pressure to end academic streaming has been building over the past year, with the education union NZEI Te Riu Roa and the Principal’s Federation announcing their support for ending the practice.
The Minister for Education Chris Hipkins has also voiced his opposition to streaming, saying it “does more harm than it does good”. However, no formal policy has yet been announced.
