New Zealand infrastructure spending: High costs but poor value – Cameron Bagrie

So, let’s have a talk about education and linking it to infrastructure; both are long-term investments. The infrastructure managers and engineers of tomorrow are the schoolkids of today.

I’ve consistently taken the view that the education standards of today will define where New Zealand will be in 30 years. Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders.

According to the IPSOS Issues Monitor Education is ranked number 10 on importance.

Education needs to be at the epicentre of the upcoming election. It traverses so many areas. Student achievement is declining and equity is not improving. That will have long-term consequences economically and on the social/political food-print.

The empirical evidence is pretty clear, according to the OECD, “Schooling quality and equity are important determinants of individual earnings, the distribution of incomes, productivity and economic growth.”

Common sense tells us that better-educated students should be able to manage projects better, i.e. they will be better at maths.

If you want a defining issue, here is a basic one: Infrastructure involves maths. Any infrastructure project inherently involves a lot of maths, data and measurement. Get the spec right on building that bridge or road.

Lacking those basic requirements, you are heading in the wrong direction or mismanagement of assets.

According to the OECD, New Zealand has seen a decline of almost 29 points in the average PISA schooling measure score between 2006 and 2018. That will eventually reduce aggregate productivity by close to four percentage points. Ouch.

The fact that the OECD had an entire chapter on education in its 2024 Economic Survey of New Zealand was telling.

So, heading into this election, my suggestion is we heed the words of the OECD when it comes to numbers. Measure, assess, and monitor, as the guardians of tomorrow’s infrastructure are the students of today. After all, a lot of numbers sit behind every infrastructure project. Let’s be numbers-literate and not the reverse. This needs to be fully embraced across the political spectrum.

“Valid and reliable evaluation and assessment that leads to improvements of education practices and lifts student learning are key to establishing a high-performing education system.” (OECD, 2013)There is no single best-practice model for an assessment system, but it is important to be based on a high-quality, coherent curriculum with standards and learning progression documents; with a wide range of assessments; and that it sets clear external reference points in terms of expected levels of student performance at different levels of education.There is also insufficient measurement of individual child progress against achievement standards and systematic school-level reporting to administration throughout primary and secondary schooling.There is an urgent need to complement the existing assessment system by systematically better measuring how much individual progress children are making against well-specified standards.Introducing new regular assessments of students in reading, writing and mathematics from years 3 to 8; introducing common reporting templates so parents know how their child is progressing in these core areas; introducing a new assessment near the end of year 2 to check basic skills like counting, phonics, and letter formation.A revised national data collection and reporting framework that focuses on children’s progress towards common achievement standards in literacy, numeracy, science, etc should be rapidly reinstated.

Any political party that pushes against such basic concepts needs calling out.

Not measuring or accepting benchmarking goes right to the heart of future effectiveness in many areas, including infrastructure and asset management.

Student achievement at the primary and secondary levels is getting more attention, and rightly so.

The tertiary sector sneaks under the radar somewhat.

Maybe it needs more attention. New Zealand Universities do not rank highly when compared to global peers. Lord knows what is happening with the polytechnic debacle in Hamilton, which seems to have gone off the radar.

The bottom line

We need more “bang for buck” when it comes to infrastructure. At the heart of that is having people capable of delivering.

Today’s students are tomorrow’s asset and project managers. Make sure they know maths.