The Post-Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) voted unanimously to enact a policy advocating for the abolition of streaming from classrooms by 2030 and called for the resources and professional support needed to make this happen.
Union delegates attending the annual conference in Wellington were presented on Wednesday with a paper calling for support for de-streaming, acknowledging what they called the “historical and current damage done to rangatahi Māori” by the practice.
In high school streaming, students are grouped by ability, but often Māori and Pasifika students are overrepresented in low-stream classes.
While the paper acknowledged the view of streaming proponents that better-performing students would be “unreasonably hindered” if the practice were eliminated, the opposite was true. Students won socially and “did not suffer academically from being placed in non-streamed classes,” it said.
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Before the vote, Chris Abercrombie, junior vice president of the PPTA and teacher in Southland, claimed that streaming was “racist, sexist, elitist” and repeatedly repeated the same sentence: “We need change.”
PPTA delegates chose to introduce a policy at the annual conference in Wellington on Wednesday to end streaming in classrooms by 2030. (File photo)
Education Minister Chris Hipkins, addressing delegates after the vote, praised them for their weight in the fight to end streaming, saying it had “no place” in New Zealand’s education system.
The Ministry of Education has also expressed its support for destreaming because of the inequality it has created.
Manager of the ministry’s policy unit, Tipene Chrisp, said streaming “can limit students’ aspirations and self-fulfilling cycles of lower academic achievement”.