Survey Findings

Drawing from my research from my Margaret May Blackwell travel fellowship, I have highlighted systemic challenges emanating from our New Zealand enrolment system—children often find themselves making the journey from early childhood to school alone and educational inequities are created based solely on birthdate. I conducted a survey to gain an insight into how teachers and educators in New Zealand felt about our enrolment system. The findings come from 309 respondents from at least 139 schools (many respondents chose not to disclose their school name).

Between school inequities

The data showed huge variance between schools regarding how they classify students as either Year 0 or Year 1 (they use different dates or cut-off/classification systems).

This in itself means that some students are better served by some schools over others depending purely on their birthdate. For instance, see Figure 1 showing how a child whose birthday falls in April would get 7 terms of Year 0/1 time before moving into a Year 2 class if they attended School A which uses an end of Term 1 cutoff (students arriving before end of Term 1 are classified as Year 1 and those who arrive after Term 1 are classified as Year 0) but would be immedicately classified as a Year 1 in school B which uses end of Term 2 as the cutoff (students arriving before end of Term 2 are classified as Year 1 and those who arrive after Term 2 are classified as Year 0).

Figure 1: Between school inequities. Some students can receive more or less time in Year 0/1 in different schools depending on the classification systems that schools use

38.8% of respondents said their school had adopted cohort entry, enabling children to start with some other peers at the start or midway through each term. The benefits of cohort entry cited included: reducing disruption to existing students; making transitions smoother for new students by starting them in groups; fostering social connections; simplifying planning and teaching for educators; and managing class sizes. However, moving to cohort entry is not necessarily an easy change for schools to make. Schools are obliged to consult their community before adopting cohort entry and many respondents in this survey cited community expectations for children to start on their 5th birthday and a fear of losing enrolments to other schools that allow immediate entry as reasons that their school had not made such a change.

Within school inequities

Irrespective of a school’s classification system though, some students always receive more time (up to 4 terms additonal time) in Year 0/1 than others (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Within school inequities. Older students who start school before their younger year group peers, receive up to 4 terms of additional time in school before moving to Year 2.

In light of this, there was overwhelming concern amongst survey respondents for students who join the school later than their peers in being “ready to learn” in Maths and English.

The reasons included:

• Disadvantage for Later Starters

Students who start later in the year (especially in Term 2 or later) or closer to age 6 often have significantly less time in Year 0/1, leading to academic, social, and emotional struggles, and a constant need to catch up.

• Curriculum & Readiness Challenges

The new curriculum, with its increased expectations and structured approaches, makes it harder for students with less foundational time to meet Year 2 benchmarks, particularly in literacy and oral language; many children are also less "school ready" than in previous years.

• Impact on Teaching & Classrooms

The varying lengths of time students spend in Year 0/1 create significant challenges for teachers in planning, differentiation, and delivering structured programs, often leading to cognitive overload for both students and teachers.

• Inequitable System

The current system is perceived as inequitable, with some students receiving up to 18-21 months of foundational learning before Year 2, while others get as little as 6-9 months, leading to lasting achievement gaps.

A need for change

The vast majority (63.4%) of respondents expressed unhappiness with our current system and only 7.5% were "happy" with it. Almost 75% described our system as being "inequitable" for learners. In most other countries, all students being school together at the start of the year. The majority of respondents in this survey were in favour of adopting a more equitable "year cohort entry" to school.

My commentary

Our present system sets schools and teachers up to "fail" our youngest students who start school later than others—some of whom have only 2 terms of school before they move to year 2. With much recent focus on the importance of attendance at school. I often wonder, “at what other point in time during a child’s education would we consider it acceptable to take a year off school?”! Interestingly, the Ministry of Education has never examined achievement data to determine how representative our "late starters" are in our long tail of achievement. I believe our late starters would be over-represented in in our long tail of achievement and would confirm that a child's likelihood of success is partly determined by the month of the year their brithdate falls!

Our new curriculum is set out with teaching statements which build incrementally on one another—they require students to have the prior knowledge and understanding to access the year level statements appropriate for each student. Our system makes it impossible for teachers and schools to get all students "ready for Year 2" when some students have had 6-7 terms at school before moving to Year 2 and some have only had 2 terms of learning. If our Minister of Education is hoping to achieve a goal of 80% of children meeting or exceeding the expected curriculum levels by Year 8 in 2030 and being prepared to excel in their secondary, changing our enrolment system to one that provides an equitable start to school for all learners will be an instrumental driver.

I hope you found the results of this survey interesting and useful. I am currently lobbying for support towards changing our current enrolment system to one that is more equitable for all learners. If you also feel strongly about this, you may wish to contact the NZPF, your regional/area principal associations (e.g., APPA, WAPA), the Ministry of Education, and our Education Minister Erica Stanford.

Dr. Jo Knox