Wellbeing at School

New Zealand: Educational Inequality in a High-performing System

Below is a forthcoming chapter in a book that arose from a seminar in Rennes (France) called Wellbeing at School, in mid-2019. It’s taken so long for it to get even this close to being in print, that I’m reproducing my chapter on NZ below. It’s a long read, and may be truncated if you’re viewing on email, so maybe view on the website, if you’re keen – and you can always just skip to the conclusion. It’s a bit out of date, since the change of government in 2023 has led to a back-to-basics approach, with less emphasis on wellbeing. I’m just putting it out there, rather than see it go to waste in an obscure book.

New Zealand: Educational Inequality in a High-performing System

 Compulsory primary and secondary education is crucial for individual and social wellbeing. This may imply wellbeing at school, the long-term or lifelong wellbeing consequences of educational achievement, and/or the complex interactions between children’s school, home and community environments that affect or sustain their wellbeing. And what do we mean by ‘wellbeing’? It may refer to subjective wellbeing, happiness or life-satisfaction (Layard, 2005; Veenhoven, 2010) or whole-of-life fulfilment or self-actualization (Seligman, 2011); it may be represented in a set of social indicators such as the New Zealand Treasury’s Living Standards Framework (Te Tai Ōhanga The Treasury, 2019). In addition, there is the political question of whether (or to what extent) wellbeing should be a concern or aim for government and public policy including education. There is no compellingly logical link between wellbeing research findings and practical conclusions as to ‘what governments should do’ (Duncan, 2010). Policy decisions – including those about schools and their activities – are still political decisions that involve socially shared values and differences of opinion (Botterill & Fenna, 2019). They can’t be reduced to technical ‘measurements’ of wellbeing factors.

Nonetheless, quantitative research into happiness and wellbeing at school has tended to look for ‘determinants’, as if happiness and wellbeing were independent variables representing ultimate life-goals, often reducing subjective wellbeing to a statistic or an ‘outcome variable’ (Boniwell, Osin, & Martinez, 2016) or isolating factors that predict youth happiness and evaluating classroom interventions for wellbeing promotion (Suldo, 2016). Some see happiness as an intervening or correlative variable, and less as an ultimate outcome, relating it to social conditions such as belonging at school (Tian et al., 2016). Nonetheless, there is an assumption that puts the individual first: wellbeing at school is about individual self-determination, autonomy, competence and scholastic achievement (Deci et al, 1991; López‑Pérez & Zuffianò, 2021). Relational qualities such as teacher–student interaction, friendships and belonging are ‘add-on’ variables. Below I present an approach that derives our very concepts of wellbeing from social interaction and belonging in the first instance, with subjective individual experience of wellbeing deriving therefrom, rather than the other way around.

The New Zealand government in 2019 adopted a wellbeing model for its annual budget and high-level policymaking. The present chapter recounts how New Zealand has grappled with a complex set of concerns in education around inter-ethnic disparities in achievement rates, wellbeing in schools, and the Covid-19 lockdowns. New Zealand has a high-performing public education system that promotes children’s wellbeing, but international league-tables reveal that its outcomes are also comparatively unequal. Ethnicity is one significant factor in the achievement gap. Children of indigenous Māori or Pacific Islands families have lower rates of educational achievement. This persistent problem has been attributed to colonization and institutional racism and hence to “deficit theories” that Māori and Pasifika children achieve at lower rates because of their cultural backgrounds, thus stigmatizing students from minority groups, rather than addressing monocultural biases in education (Bishop, 2003). The alienation experienced by many students, especially Māori students, detracts inherently from wellbeing in school and in later life. The New Zealand government recognised and addressed this inequality. Its focus then shifted from inter-ethnic disparities and equity towards a generic concept of wellbeing in public policy from 2019, although this was severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. These developments are outlined below, but first I explore the concept of wellbeing itself.

2.1. Wellbeing

The concept of wellbeing is culturally variable, philosophically controversial, and not amenable to a universally applicable theoretical or operational definition – although this difficulty need not deter schools and governments from making efforts to define and improve it, within reason. This section introduces a critique of utilitarian wellbeing discourse, and sets out an alternative relational approach, inspired by Hegelian dialectical thought. This relational (rather than individualised or identitarian) model helps us to understand the learning process itself and the social context of wellbeing.

There is no universal agreement – nor can there be – about what constitutes wellbeing. For practical policy purposes, there are some frequently used indicators of a good life, or a life lived well (healthily, ethically and productively), or social wellbeing, such as longevity and educational achievements, and there are widely-used statistical resources, such as the UN Human Development Index and the OECD’s Better Life Index. And no one could convincingly argue that the coronavirus pandemic boosted social wellbeing. But the characterization of wellbeing for a society as a whole, or for an individual, is a culturally variable, interpretative and particularistic exercise. Definitions of the characteristics and qualities of wellbeing vary according to what we value, which values we treat as the highest priorities, and how we recognise one another’s similar and diverging values. Individual liberty, for example, may be valued more or less highly than family and community belonging, according to one’s cultural norms and personal preferences. Ideas about compassion and social solidarity, and about what or how much we owe to one another as members of a society, will affect the political choices that communities and countries make – and the policies adopted in schools, in particular. No one experiences wellbeing in isolation from other persons, moreover, and education requires relationships with teachers and between students. So, our being-with-others is integral to our wellbeing, and this also means difference and disagreement with one another about what constitutes “a good life lived well”. But the utilitarian idea that wellbeing or happiness is our ultimate aim in life does not suffice as an explanation for anything much at all; it is only “true” in a trivial sense, as, after all, hardly anyone aims for illness and misery. The utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill aggregated individuals’ states of wellbeing, rather than regarding wellbeing itself as relational and social to begin with. An individualistic premise in wellbeing studies works nowadays for survey research methods. But the contemporary “new utilitarianism” (Layard, 2005; Veenhoven, 2010) resulted in a politicization of subjectivity (of our inner “selves”) and a subjectivization of the political, or a tendency to reduce social and education policy to a kind of public or socialized psychotherapy, in the hope of taking actions that will improve society and yet also rise above political ideology and contestation. A supposed “natural” and “universal” drive for happiness and wellbeing should, it was argued, be a scientifically valid and incontestable guide to resolving ethical and political debates.

Developments in scientific knowledge and technical capabilities may, at least, inform us about the causes and correlates of our wellbeing (however we view that), and about the best remedies. But such evidence about “what works”, even in the interests of happiness, does not trump political debates that engage our competing and differing values. Indeed, even when accounting for the statistics and the research, I see no compelling evidence to persuade us that “happiness” or “wellbeing” should be the aim of good government, above all other values, such as liberty, fairness or capabilities (Duncan, 2007, 2010). There is, besides, a good Kantian argument that suggests that happiness should not ultimately guide our ethical and political reasoning.  Instead, we have duties to one another. These duties may include concerns about my own and others’ wellbeing. But the performance of a duty for its own sake, and the respect for others as ends in themselves, does not necessarily add to one’s own wellbeing. Kant advises us to do what’s right, but not only on the grounds that it should make us any better off.

Claims have been made about a universal cross-cultural validity of subjective wellbeing as a concept and a statistical output (Veenhoven, 2012), but these claims do not overcome critical analysis of their political-ideological grounding, and they fail to meet even the normative scientific criterion of falsifiability (Duncan, 2007, 2014, 2019). Wellbeing is not something that we instrumentally produce, manage or measure, moreover. National statisticians can measure certain “objective” factors that relate to wellbeing, such as morbidity rates and educational achievement rates. One can also survey “subjective wellbeing” such as self-reported happiness or satisfaction with one’s own life. But, to be socially meaningful, wellbeing entails the many things that people do collectively, including formal learning. Collective actions, like educating children, precede and form our criteria for evaluation of wellbeing, rather than follow it. The ways in which we interpret statistics, the choices made about what constitutes a socially shared problem, and the decisions that we make about relevant collective actions (or inaction), are socio-political concerns that vary between social groups and over history.

Wellbeing (whatever it means to us) could be evaluated – with emphasis on the contentious word value. We must take seriously the basis in values if we evaluate wellbeing for public policy. A government that’s unable to explain how its policies and services contribute to “wellbeing” (however defined) would be liable to lose support. But happiness-maximization need not necessarily be an aim of governments – nor, therefore, of publicly-funded schools. And policy reforms in affluent societies will probably have no impact on happiness-survey results in any case (Duncan, 2005, 2010). We should think of “wellbeing” in a broader sense, not only subjective wellbeing, happiness or fulfilment. It is more than “merely” subjective or socially constructed; it is a matter for informed public decisions and rational deliberation. It demands listening and mutual recognition, and discerning whom to trust as authorities or as friends – abilities that develop and mature with age and education. Social context and deliberation matter to any wholistic notion of wellbeing, recognising that which we have in common as well as that which makes us differ.

Whenever we propose wellbeing as a criterion for public programmes, we may well invite a debate about what is meant by “wellbeing”, whose “wellbeing” is being served, and at the expense of whom. There is a critical debate, well worth following, about a trend to regard public institutions, especially schools, as sites of wellbeing “production” and hence quasi-therapeutic intervention (Davies, 2015; Furedi, 2004). To move beyond this, we can take a Hegelian dialectical approach to wellbeing and education. That is, we seek and (to varying degrees) achieve recognition and self-awareness only in and through relations with others. And such recognition comes in material as well as cultural forms. The work of solidarity performed through universal public education is an expensive fiscal concern for the state, as much as a powerful vehicle of cultural transmission and personal development for present and future existence. Contemporary recognition theory, as developed in particular by Axel Honneth, has been applied to the understanding of wellbeing in schools (Thomas, et al. 2016).

Education takes the child outside of herself and her embeddedness in familial attachments, and reintegrates her into a shared, more universal, existence, through participation in a school community and through acquisition of knowledge accumulated from the past. This creates the individual’s potential for personal freedom within (and not so much against) the concrete institutions of the state, in particular the public school. The subject’s original nature is thus lost, given up, or alienated, and yet transformed and enlarged as a “second nature”, by enculturation into habits of everyday conduct and learning.

“In elaborating the concept of a ‘second nature’, Hegel sought to show that education (Bildung) implies not only the individual component of education in which we form and cultivate our nature, but also the effort by which the social structures transform themselves into a system of institutionalized morality that transitions into awareness of social responsibility. On the other hand, the primary obligation of the state is to care for its citizens by supporting the arts, culture and cultural institutions such as universities, museums, theaters and cultural monuments so that the individual as citizen can realize her education” (Zovko, 2018, p. 655).

Evolving conceptions of wellbeing, in as much as we regard them as relevant, will necessarily be entailed, explicitly or implicitly, in this public enterprise of education. Although human beings will never, and need never, arrive at an agreed technical definition of wellbeing, nor a universally applicable set of wellbeing-maximizing policies, this is no cause for political or governmental inaction or insouciance. The critical thing is to continue to be engaged in the social dialogue (including disagreement) about what is best for the wellbeing of future generations, based on what we can reconstruct of the past, and to argue over these matters civilly. We are morally and politically compelled to do things on the grounds that they will make others, especially children, better off somehow, and not worse off. And it is widely agreed that state-mandated publicly-funded education must be a part of that. This is recognised (albeit in reduced form) in indices of human development and social wellbeing, and by knowledge of the positive and equitable personal, social and economic outcomes associated with higher levels of educational attainment. As the New Zealand Shared Prosperity Index (2019) puts it:

“[the] availability of education is an important method of removing barriers to equitable outcomes of other kinds, by generating future prospects that are not tethered to an individual’s initial or current situation.” (New Zealand Shared Prosperity Index, 2019)

The child alone cannot judge his or her wellbeing, nor what is best for him or her in the long run – and many adults have trouble with this too! International law on the rights of the child recognises that it is up to parents, caregivers and the state, as lawful obligations, to judge what is in the best interests of the child and to act accordingly. It is even asserted in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 28) that compulsory primary education is a right of the child. It’s not strictly logical to say that something compulsory is also a right, as if you have a right to pay taxes. But we can live with that paradox if we view the education of the person dialectically, or in terms of the developmental and historically-contingent realization of one’s freedom as an autonomous and accountable citizen.

In the modern economy, a state-mandated education system, and compulsory participation therein (until a prescribed age), are normally regarded as essential for individual and social wellbeing. And the child’s wellbeing while at school is important, at least for basic safety. One need not advocate for promotion of happiness, or “positive education”, as this may excessively psychologize the child’s existence in school. Formal education assists in development of cognitive capabilities to deliberate and judge rationally, or to choose, based on evidence and reason, and to appreciate the cultures and values of the past. This may include judging what is “good for us” and what we “owe to others”. But this is only the beginning of a life-long process, or an education that is, in the original Latin, a leading out of the emerging person. It is neither a narcissistic exploration nor a confession of who or what one is. An “education” that is based upon a therapeutic notion of wellbeing would have the effect (metaphorically speaking) of looking into a mirror, or leading inwards – not outwards.

Schools achieve more than just the acquisition of examinable knowledge and skills, moreover. They serve a crucial role in the child’s emergence from the realm of familial attachments and into the wider social world of friendships, ethics and mutual obligations. They provide critical steps on the pathway to a person’s achievement of autonomy in civil society, as a member of networks and institutions, and as a subject with formal rights and duties within the state. Standard utilitarian theories of “wellbeing” do not capture these emergent qualities of schooling. But schools do play a vital role in our wellbeing as children and into adulthood. This can include the recognition and development of culturally particular practices, even within compulsory state-mandated or “universal” education.

2.2. Wellbeing and schools

The realization that cultural capital acquired in the child’s home and family life is highly influential for educational achievement means that we could take seriously, for at least a moment, the iconoclastic view of Ivan Illich (1973) that children learn in spite of, rather than because of, their schooling. The really important learning –which affects what the child will gain from future experiences – has already occurred before schooling begins. The characteristics of the student who arrives at the school gate – ready to learn, or not – as the “raw materials” of the educational process, are what really count, and are already formed. On Illich’s view, this implied that bureaucratically-run, state-mandated schooling was out, and Milton Friedman’s (then novel) idea of vouchers to permit freedom of “consumer” choice was potentially in, on the grounds of improving diversity.

Is “choice” (even the “choice” not to send one’s children to any school at all) really so beneficial, compared to compulsory public institutions? After all, the empirical evidence now tells us that, seen merely as a statistical variable, “Schools barely make a difference to [educational] achievement” – as little as 5 to 10 per cent. In as much as there is variance between schools in terms of results, educational attainment is more powerfully explained by the family backgrounds of the children that attend the school. Socially exclusive schools get better results, but not necessarily because they are better educators. Socially segregated neighbourhoods and economic inequality lead to unequal educational outcomes from the schools themselves, regardless of how well the schools and their teachers do their job. This does not mean, in spite of Illich, that we do not need public schools – we do need them – but it signifies that the variance (and hence choice) between schools counts for little in terms of the outcomes. According to the same study, teachers and their teaching styles account for 30 per cent of the variance (Hattie, 2003). But the teachers do not get to teach without schools.

It’s not entirely worthless, but it’s surely artificial, to treat teachers and students as distinct statistical “factors”. Learning in school is a dialectical relational process in an especially transformative sense. The child and the teacher are changed (mainly for the better) in the process of being “led out”. A meta-study of school belonging concluded with the importance of student–teacher relationships for academic achievement (Allen et al., 2018). We need somehow to account, therefore, for teaching and learning in terms of relationships between children and their parents, between children and their teachers, among networks of childhood friends, and within communities as a whole. Cultural, social and economic contexts need to be included in our evaluations. Children’s relationships with parents and other family members are laying the real foundations of learning. These formative experiences shape the child’s educational development and potential, and hence they have already “led out” the student who presents him/herself to the school. If the home and family matter the most when it comes to the child’s performance and wellbeing at school, is it not artificial to evaluate schools in isolation from them?

Hartas points to the benefits of “encouraging and enabling parents to engage with their children’s learning in less instrumental ways by creating a culture of learning and intellectual curiosity in the home” and suggests that “parents who read for enjoyment are likely to convey a sense of learning as pleasure, experimentation and intellectual exploration and encourage their children’s evolving intellectual capacities” (Hartas, 2015, p. 192). Rather than label objects around the home in order to teach the child to recognise individual words, one’s efforts as a parent may be better spent just reading books with the child. The emotional bonding alone is priceless. Parents could let the teachers teach the child to actually read – a job made easy if the child already enjoys books and enthusiastically seeks them out in the classroom. Even though most parents are actively engaged in their children’s education, Hartas points to “the achievement gap” between those from wealthy and those from poor families. She rightly recommends a multi-dimensional analysis, “to avoid essentialist interpretations”, and “family policy that is socially and culturally relevant and accounts for the structural constraints and affordances in parents’ life” (ibid., pp 193-4). This points to three themes to consider in relation to New Zealand. The first is the educational achievement gap that has emerged in a system that performs well on average; second is the danger of taking an overly instrumental approach to education and wellbeing; third is the risk of cultural essentialism in addressing an achievement gap.

2.3. New Zealand: A brief history

New Zealand’s former status as a British colony was founded partly on a treaty signed in 1840 between representatives of Queen Victoria and numerous chiefs of indigenous tribes. The validity of this treaty in terms of either indigenous customary law or European international law is still a matter of debate. Nevertheless, the British parliament gave (or imposed upon) New Zealand a Westminster-style government. New Zealand later became constitutionally fully independent soon after World War II. Since 1867, it has included an electoral roll for indigenous Māori and originally four (now seven) dedicated Māori seats. In 1996, the Westminster-style system of representation, which tended to deliver parliamentary majorities that only a minority had actually voted for, was terminated in favour of a proportional electoral system.

As a unitary (not federal) state with a small population, moreover, it was feasible and efficient for the New Zealand government to provide public education under the auspices of a single department of state. The commitment to free universal education was expressed in an oft-quoted statement by Peter Fraser, the Minister of Education in the first Labour Government of 1935 to 1949.[1]

“The Government’s objective, broadly expressed, is that every person, whatever his level of academic ability, whether he be rich or poor, whether he live in town or country, has a right as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he is best fitted, and to the fullest extent of his powers” (Peter Fraser, 1939, in Grace, 1991, p. 28).

In 1944, the school-leaving age was raised to 15. The aspirations of that era saw education as “a public good which ought to be provided by the State at all levels from early childhood to university scholarship”, delivered from the centre by a public-service organization (Grace, 1991, p. 29). But it was a monocultural Anglophone system, and there was little or no recognition of indigenous Māori language or culture. Indeed, speaking te reo Māori[2] was discouraged and even punished.

In 1987, a Treasury-led push within the public service, supported by business lobbyists, sought to challenge the social-democratic ethos that was consolidated in the late 1930s and the 1940s. The Treasury rejected the idea of education as a public good and described it instead as a commodity tradeable in a market. Therefore, it was claimed that education is provided at suboptimal quantity and quality by any centralized bureaucracy, and is especially hampered by the state’s curtailment of freedom of choice and consequent inefficiency. The fourth Labour government (1984–90) was not entirely persuaded by the Treasury’s free-market ideology, but it was under pressure to reform the education system, to make it more efficient and more responsive to communities, especially to improve Māori educational achievement. It chose to disaggregate the nation-wide Department of Education and devolve school governance to local boards of trustees and management to principals. The aim was to bring decision-making as close as possible to the communities of parents and children, and to enhance local responsiveness and diversity. To address the concern that this could mean reduced accountability and lower standards, the schools were to be guided by a charter, somewhat like a contract with the state, and monitored by a review office. The provision for boards of trustees, elected by parents, was an essential feature of this reform. But this also created its own form of inequity, as wealthier, more educated and skilled communities were able to put forward more candidates with the requisite governance skills than poorer communities (Grace 1991).

So although the Treasury’s ideas of choice and competition in the education sector were strongly influential, and they severely challenged the tradition of “public good”, they never fully took hold. A neoliberal policy of disaggregation from centralized bureaucratic control and towards community governance, in favour of competition and consumer choice, gave way inevitably to the re-imposition of centralized control and accountability through reformed assessment systems. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) was phased in between 2002 and 2005 to replace an older system of exam-based secondary qualifications. The three-level NCEA, which spans the final three years of secondary school, is still in place. The government also introduced National Standards in reading, writing and mathematics for primary-school students in 2008. The latter were opposed by the teachers’ union, and were largely abandoned by the Labour-led government of Jacinda Ardern (from late 2017), partly due to the sheer amount of paper-work demanded of over-worked primary teachers. If the best thing that public policy can do (within schools) to improve educational achievement is professional development and support of teachers, then form-filling and assessments should surely be kept to a minimum.

2.4. The contemporary scene

In 2020, at five million, New Zealand’s population was less than many of the world’s cities, let alone sub-national states or provinces. In land-area, though, it’s about the same size as Italy. Demographically, New Zealand is ageing and diversifying (Statistics New Zealand, 2020a). About a fifth of those born there are living off-shore, mostly in Australia where New Zealand citizens have the right to work. Up to 40 per cent of those living in the largest city, Auckland, were not born in New Zealand. This means that many schools are multi-cultural and multi-lingual. Those who identify as indigenous Māori were 16.5 per cent of New Zealand’s population in 2018. The significant communities of Pasifika (Pacific Islander) families, who are often second or third generation (two thirds are New Zealand-born), comprise 8.1 percent. And 15.1 percent are classified as Asian (Statistics New Zealand, 2020b).

New Zealand devoted a greater share of GDP in 2016 to educational institutions (primary to tertiary, excluding research and development) than the OECD average: 6.1% compared to 4.5% average (OECD, 2019, supplementary tables). But, taking account of the lower-than-average GDP per capita, New Zealand’s total expenditure on educational institutions per full-time equivalent student, on purchasing power parity, is much closer to the OECD average (ibid., p. 264). Nonetheless, New Zealand has slightly above-average aggregate levels of educational attainment among those aged 25 to 34 (ibid., p. 40). New Zealand gets higher than the OECD-average PISA results in science, mathematics and reading – albeit declining along with OECD averages. The PISA performance gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students is slightly greater in New Zealand than the OECD average, however (OECD 2018). And New Zealand ranked 33 out of 38 developed countries in UNICEF’s 2018 educational inequality study – and in the bottom third for equality measures at all three levels: preschool, primary and secondary. Countries that have greater inequality of educational achievement tend to have lower average attainment scores. So New Zealand lies outside of the trend, with relatively high levels of average attainment and high inequalities.

“Finland, Latvia and Portugal have the most equal education systems across all three indicators of equality in education in the league table. Australia, New Zealand and Slovakia are in the bottom third for each of the three indicators of equality in education” (UNICEF, 2018, p. 10).

Educational attainment rates are lower for lower socio-economic groups, for indigenous Māori, and for Pasifika communities (Education Counts, 2018; Pasifika Futures, 2017).

“In 2015, 24% of Māori left school with no formal school qualification compared with 8% of New Zealand Pākehā [white] school leavers. Pākehā students also perform better than Māori students in PISA testing. In the 2012 PISA survey, while overall New Zealand achievement was above the OECD average in reading, mathematics and science, the achievement of Māori students was below both the New Zealand average and the OECD average” (Eley and Berryman, 2019, p. 123).

The effect of socio-economic background on PISA scores is greater in New Zealand than the OECD average. But this cannot be explained by immigration, as immigrant children on the whole are faring better than the average in New Zealand, due to a skills-based immigration policy. We should not draw cultural generalizations when comparing immigrants, as New Zealand’s selective skill-based immigration policy means that those with higher incomes, higher qualifications and professional occupations are much more likely to be granted residency visas. These are the kinds of parents whose children are more likely to do well in school. After accounting for the students’ and the schools’ socio-economic profiles, there was no statistically significant difference between immigrant and non-immigrant students’ PISA scores (OECD, 2018). Nonetheless, with as many as 20,000 fee-paying international students in New Zealand’s schools (in 2016), concerns about wellbeing and belonging for temporary and resident new arrivals are genuine. For example, separate ESOL classes may alienate international and new-migrant students from local students, and may not actually assist in accelerating English-language acquisition, compared with immersion in mainstream classrooms (Terruhn, 2019).

Educational inequality in New Zealand is therefore related to its unique history and ethno-cultural composition, to the historical tendency of schools to assume a mono-cultural and mono-lingual model, to institutional racism and economic inequality[3], and to socio-economic disparities that affect Māori and Pasifika communities in particular. Children of Māori and Pasifika families are more likely to begin with intersecting sources of disadvantage. Household incomes are on average lower, parents are more likely to have lower-skilled occupations or be unemployed. And, “in children, Māori were 1.6 times as likely to be obese as non-Māori, and Pacific children were 3.3 times as likely to be obese as non-Pacific children, after adjusting for age and gender” (Ministry of Health, 2019).

The home environment, parental occupations and expectations, and the cultural capital passed on to the young are significant factors in educational achievement, but are harder for teachers and policy-makers to influence directly than the school environment. A focus on parental support could lead to further stigmatization of (already disadvantaged) Māori and Pasifika families, or to comparisons with, for example, another stereotypical image of immigrant or second-generation Chinese students whose highly-skilled parents value education and have high expectations for their children’s achievements. Parents’ engagement with the education of their children may be difficult, moreover, when the institutional “culture” of the school is alien to the family’s, or when teachers’ expectations are low. Racial or ethnic self-identification does influence belonging (and hence wellbeing) in school, though not as much as other variables such as teachers’ supportiveness towards students (Allen et al., 2018).

We need, then, to address children’s cultural-familial background, but also to avoid essentialism. The outline of the New Zealand experience recounted above indicates why cross-cultural differences in educational attainment have dominated the debate. Arguably, PISA itself, as the international comparative statistical set, contributes to a monocultural model of individual achievement and system performance. What gets measured gets managed, but the skills measured by PISA do not account for all forms of valued educational achievement or life-skills learning. One could compare this with the over-use of GDP-growth as a measure of social progress – when it’s only one economic indicator in a complex set of variables. Wellbeing is culturally variable and PISA results give us only one narrow view of it. As a rough generalization to get us started, Māori and Pasifika communities are less individualistic than those generically known as “western”, and PISA test results are based upon individual achievements aggregated for statistical and comparative purposes.

On the other hand, we could create an inverted form of cultural essentialism if we argued that reading, mathematics and science somehow matter less to the long-term wellbeing of Māori and Pasifika children. There have in the past been examples of “well-intended but disadvantageous treatment of Māori students, [such as] the belief that all Māori are kinaesthetic (hands-on) learners — a belief that led well-meaning teachers to provide more ‘hands on’ learning opportunities for Māori students and thereby inadvertently limit the opportunity of these students to develop the higher level cognitive skills and metacognition that are so essential for educational success” (Education.govt.nz, 2018). The more appropriate policy is to improve the responsiveness of the school environment and the teaching profession to the learning needs and the cultural backgrounds of children from minority groups.

Educationalists in New Zealand have not been idle in the face of these concerns. The first phase in addressing educational outcomes for Māori, coupled with serious concern about the survival of the Māori language, was the creation of kohanga reo (early childhood “language nests”) beginning in 1982. They were followed by kura kaupapa Māori primary schools with Māori-language immersion and learning through Māori customs. These schools were created by Māori for Māori, although not on an exclusive basis. Anyone could send their children to them; this was not a form of segregation. The concept did not at first receive official support, but they are now a recognised part of the school system and their results have been promising. “By 2012 the percentage of Māori exiting kura with level 2 [NCEA] or better was virtually the same as for ‘all students’ and almost 19% higher than for Māori nationally” (Alton-Lee, 2015, p. 7). This comparative success may be due to selection bias, and the majority of Māori students in “mainstream” Anglophone schools needed attention too.

2.5. “Te Kotahitanga”

Te Kotahitanga (meaning “unity”) was a research and professional development project launched in 2001 in selected mainstream schools to lift the educational achievement of all Māori students. It sought to improve Māori students’ learning and achievement; it enabled teachers to create culturally responsive contexts for learning and to respond to evidence of student performance and understanding; it enabled school leaders and the school community to change school organisation. The involvement of indigenous expertise along with non-Māori educators was a key factor. There was an emphasis on relationship-building including families and community, on leadership in the schools and on development of teacher capability in building relationships with Māori students and families. A “culturally responsive pedagogy of relations” meant:

“The teachers demonstrate on a daily basis: that they care for the students as culturally located individuals; they have high expectations of the learning for students; they are able to manage their classrooms so as to promote learning; they are able to engage in a range of discursive learning interactions with students or facilitate students to engage with others in these ways; they know a range of strategies that can facilitate learning interactions; they promote, monitor and reflect upon learning outcomes that in turn lead to improvements in Māori student achievement and they share this knowledge with the students” (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh and Teddy, 2007, p. 1).

Hence, culture counts, learning is interactive, students can initiate learning activities, and power is shared. (But this 262-page report used the term “well-being” only twice.) The results for Māori students in the sixteen Te Kotahitanga (TK) schools, when compared with similar school groups that did not undertake Te Kotahitanga (non-TK), were positive. There were 6,204 Māori students in the full “Phase 5” study doing NCEA (the three-level National Certificate of Educational Achievement) over the three years 2010–12. The comparison group was adjusted for gender and for the socio-economic decile-group of the schools’ communities. Prior to the implementation of TK, in 2008–2009, Māori students at the TK and non-TK groups were achieving at roughly the same rates in the three levels of NCEA. By 2012, however, the TK group achievement rates had pulled ahead of the non-TK group. At NCEA level 3 in 2012, for instance, the TK schools’ achievement rate for Māori was 42.3 percent, compared with 33.4 percent in the non-TK “control” sample (Alton-Lee, 2015). (Incidentally, this 86-page report did not mention wellbeing at all.)

Hardly anyone would object to empowering and interactive styles of teaching in the classroom. This study was not a double-blind randomised controlled experiment, however. Those in the TK group knew what they were taking part in, and knew they were under observation. That’s not a bad thing, but we need to take account of the Hawthorn Effect, or the tendency of people to alter their behaviour when they know they are under observation – often raising their performance if supervision makes them feel special and supported. We are unable to tell if the Hawthorn Effect boosted these results, nor how much. The challenge for educators, if they are to generalize the academic successes of Te Kotahitanga, would be to reproduce those positive expectations and constructive forms of supervision regularly throughout the mainstream system – without excessive bureaucratic controls and performance indicators that might frustrate improvement. The positive TK results were documented over a relatively short time-span of three years, and so one must also ask how sustainable this apparent improvement associated with the TK programme would be.

Te Kotahitanga assumed that teachers’ “deficit theorizing” about minority-group learners (Bishop, 2003) was the problem; hence, that shifting the teachers away from this to a more empowering and interactive approach would be the solution. Teachers were to “explicitly reject deficit theorising as a means of explaining Māori students’ educational achievement levels” (Bishop, Berryman, Cavanagh and Teddy, 2007, p. 1). But the evaluation reports do not operationalize or estimate an hypothesized factor of institutional racism (inherited from colonization), nor an associated “deficit theory” about Māori under-achievement held by teachers. No surveys of the teachers’ opinions on such a deficit are reported, nor on any shift in such opinions during the study. The schools were matched on socio-economic deciles, and achievement rates of Māori students at TK and non-TK control schools were compared. But should we put the problem down to institutional racism and unconscious bias against Māori, or to economic inequality, or a combination of both? Intuitively, the answer is “a bit of both”, as ethnicity and class intersect. The Te Kotahitanga study controlled out, rather than independently analysed, socio-economic status. Other research projects have found that “education system performance has been persistently inequitable for Māori learners”, even when socio-economic factors are accounted for (Berryman and Eley, 2017, p. 98). Socio-economic status should be analysed along with ethnicity, to estimate the two variables’ relative predictive power, but the TK evaluation (Alton-Lee, 2015) does not do this.

Te Kotahitanga was justified on evidence of Māori under-achievement, attributed to social, historical and institutional factors. It was recognised that focussing too heavily on inequality of educational achievement risked falling back onto deficit theories. That is, “once students are targeted and labelled as ‘achievement gap problems’, our solutions focus on how we must fix the student” (Eley and Berryman, 2019, p. 135). It may prove difficult to eradicate deficit theories, however, if the purpose of the programme rests on a case about a historically contingent deficit called “under-achievement”. Making the distinction between deficit and discrimination clear to all concerned may require considerable education in itself. Any sign of teachers’ non-compliance with the programme could be explained tautologically by the recalcitrant remainder of deficit theories, albeit unconscious bias or institutional racism. This may, in turn, shift attention away from wider social and economic injustice and onto teachers and schools who are often publicly accused of “failing Māori youth” and hence of racism.

According to one critic, Te Kotahitanga pushed an essentialist idea that “there are distinct, separate and compartmentalised cultures” in New Zealand (Openshaw, 2009). I don’t support this critique either, as cultures do differ significantly, and identification with one’s native culture is an important aspect of wellbeing (Duncan, 2011). Programmes such as Te Kotahitanga may rely on an inverted cultural essentialism; they may reduce professional autonomy through new rules about cultural sensitivity. But such reservations don’t absolve the state of responsibility for seeking to promote, throughout the education system, the success and wellbeing of Māori students as Māori – rather than as defined or evaluated by “mainstream” (internationally recognised but culturally rootless) standards. The systemic context for positive change needs to be addressed, and a more successful approach should encompass three such contexts, according to Eley and Berryman (2019, p. 135):

1. culturally responsive and relational practices across the school

2. deliberate professional acts applied with adaptive expertise, and,

3. powerful home–school collaborations.

These culturally rooted, professionally committed and relationally contextualised approaches have a better chance of “leading the person out”, with recognition for the person whom one is to begin with, and for whom one may become in future. The recognition of cultural context and collaborative relationships discussed in Te Kotahitanga documents merge promisingly with the dialectical Hegelian approach to wellbeing introduced above.  Overall, though, the educational debate in New Zealand was dominated by concerns about inter-ethnic inequality of outcome and institutional racism (not wellbeing) and by efforts to correct these problems.

A more strategic focus on wellbeing in all areas of public policy, including education, began to take effect under the Ardern government, especially since 2019’s Budget. This was to become an annual Wellbeing Budget and the Treasury developed a Living Standards Framework based on statistical wellbeing indicators and on four forms of capital (natural, human, social and financial and physical capital). The government adopted a Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy in which “learning and developing” plays an essential part (Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, 2021). In support, the Ministry of Education asserted: “Every learner has the right to a safe, healthy and supportive learning environment, where they are accepted and respected, and an education that values their identity, language and culture, and those of their family and whānau [extended family]” (Ministry of Education, 2021). This wellbeing model was challenged by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, however.

2.6. The Covid-19 pandemic

The Covid-19 virus arrived as a force that changes history and everything we do, including education. New Zealand’s decision to take an elimination strategy to the virus was far from perfect, especially in terms of preparedness, but was comparatively successful in outcome (Duncan, 2020). It resulted in “the lowest COVID-19 death rate in the OECD and relatively low economic damage compared with other high-income countries” (Baker, Kvalsvig and Wilson, 2020; see also, Baker, Wilson & Anglemyer, 2020). But, because the virus had breached the border of this island nation, elimination required one of the strictest lockdown policies in the world, including closing schools and universities. Consequently, many families were put under stress as they had to home-school children, often with parents working at home. As a potential site of virus transmission, the school began to feel, for many parents and children, like a much less safe place to be. Inevitably, children’s education was disrupted and their sense of safety outside the home, and especially at school, was compromised. The effectiveness of distance learning depended on fast and reliable internet, or access to broadcast media, and the extent to which learning resources were distributed and used in homes. The minister of education agreed that Covid-19 had highlighted problems of inequality in education, including access to technology. The government rolled out distance learning packages, including provision of internet connections and learning devices for families who lacked them. These governmental efforts were laudable. But the impact of lockdowns, school closures and rapid adoption of distance online learning was profound. According to a survey of 2,373 educators in Australia and 1,183 in New Zealand on their lockdown experiences and practices, opinion was divided about the efficacy of online learning. Above all, teachers were concerned about the social needs and wellbeing of students, in particular the effects of social isolation (Flack et al., 2020). In August 2020, an outbreak of the virus in Auckland led to a renewed lockdown there, with schools closed for 13 days. Attendance data from the Ministry of Education showed that, once the lockdown was reduced and schools reopened, attendance rates were lower for Māori and Pasifika students than for those of European ethnic background, and attendances were lowest at schools in the lowest socio-economic zones (Education Counts, 2021).

In addition to the harm it has already caused, the Covid-19 pandemic is unlikely to lead to a reduction in inequalities, or to be one of the history’s “great levellers” (Scheidel, 2017). It forced many on already low incomes into unemployment, especially workers in tourism, hospitality and travel industries. Median weekly incomes in New Zealand were 7.6 percent lower in the June 2020 quarter than they were the same time the year before, dropping for the first time since this data series began in 1998 (Statistics New Zealand, 2020c). Sadly, the pandemic increased household income stress, put pressure on many secondary-school students to sacrifice learning for earning, and thus contributed to inequalities in educational outcomes.

2.7. Conclusion

Assuming that we can e-valu-ate (but not measure) wellbeing, it’s a problem that policymakers use indicators of educational success and wellbeing that only narrowly account for what people really value. There are diverse groups in any society who will express differing values and priorities for wellbeing. That is, to appreciate “what we really value”, there are many versions of who is, or should be, included in the pronoun “we”. For generations, the misrecognition of Māori learners in schools had a negative effect on their achievement and sense of belonging in schools and hence on their wellbeing within their own land.

Policymakers often resort to valuing that which is measurable, such as national exams and PISA results. These measurables do nevertheless indicate a wellbeing problem arising from unequal educational achievement, correlated with the intersecting variables of socio-economic status and ethnicity. Wellbeing for minority groups in schools, especially for those indigenous to the country, entails a sense of belonging, such that everyone is recognised positively for whom one is, and is to become, and where one belongs in a community. How do I see myself, and my potential self, reflected in what happens at school?

Relationships with whānau (family) and community are important and should become a part of programme development. Teacher–student relationships (not just teachers and students as distinct “factors”) are also critical. For example, teachers’ supportiveness towards students does appear to foster a sense of belonging in school. For the wellbeing of students at school, and for their development in the future, we should regard teaching and learning in terms of developing relationships, or as a dialectic of mutual and transformative recognition. That will help, I argue, to avoid instrumentalism and cultural essentialism.

In the hands of contemporary utilitarian thinkers, wellbeing was erroneously politicized and subjectivized, to the detriment of the very idea of wellbeing. On the other hand, it is pointless to argue that the wellbeing of children at school, and the long-term wellbeing benefits of good schooling, are not significant, especially if we define wellbeing in broad and open terms. Those of us with higher education should not have to debate this, surely. Wellbeing in school, and wellbeing through schooling, are matters that count, personally and collectively, and they belong firmly on the political agenda. There is, however, no universal model of wellbeing; cultural differences do make a difference. Improvements may not be gained from one-size-fits-all models. To recognise the person’s cultural heritage is to recognise the person for whom one is, and this matters to wellbeing, both in and as a result of schooling. As a case study, New Zealand shows a recent shift from a focus on inter-ethnic disparities in educational achievement (attacking, and yet paradoxically perpetuating, cultural essentialism) towards a generic “wellbeing” as a guiding principle in public policy, including education. As is perhaps inevitable with governmental programmes, however, this version of wellbeing is utilitarian: reduced to bland strategic goals, outcomes, actions and indicators. A dialectical understanding of wellbeing, described in this chapter, critically questions the ways in governments instrumentalize it. The New Zealand government’s new-found interest in wellbeing is well meant, and it does overcome any narrow focus on factors such as economic growth. Larger forces, including a global pandemic and widening economic inequality, may undermine these policies, and the wellbeing strategy may turn out to be futile. But, within the relational and dialectical model presented here, wellbeing is still conceivable as an evolving and shared social concern.

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[1] Fraser was Prime Minister from 1940 to 1949.

[2] The indigenous language.

[3] The OECD reports a Gini coefficient of 0.35 for income inequality in New Zealand, which puts it in the top 8 of the 35 member states.