Tag: International

  • New models of international partnership

    New models of international partnership

    Universities face a double jeopardy: a changing geopolitical world order and looming financial sustainability issues borne out of an over-reliance on international student fees.

    In some cases, it is estimated that up to 70 per cent of a university’s income is based on international fees. The dependence on international income is accentuated by loss of European markets following Brexit.

    The cumulative impact of fees, geopolitics, global competition, and domestic tensions around immigration have all added to a complicated picture that requires skilful navigation and innovative ways of working.

    There is cause for optimism, though. The Labour government has put universities at the heart of its international relations by making a commitment in their manifesto for universities to lead soft power and influence. The focus from Labour on putting universities at the heart of their mission for economic growth is welcome and recognises the critical role that universities play in developing partnerships internationally.

    To rise to this challenge, we need to rethink the way we do things – instead of imperialistic we need to be realistic. We must adopt new models of international collaboration, cognisant of the changing global order, to survive and thrive.

    Inspiration from India

    According to the latest Census data, Leicester has the largest population of people with Indian ethnicity outside of London. The links between our city and India run deeply through our culture, history, society and economy. What happens in India is relevant to us in Leicester and we can learn from one another.

    With this in mind, we have developed a partnership with one of India’s largest healthcare providers, Apollo Healthcare. It is a wide-ranging collaboration that will include the launch of a new joint Centre for Digital Health and Precision Medicine, bilateral higher education courses, and professional pathways that will address skills gaps in the NHS and India.

    This model combines shared research strengths for mutually beneficial outcomes that are applicable in both India and Leicester. Making the most of complementary areas of expertise, identifying shared aims, and finding areas of commonality are the key to this more reciprocal international model.

    Centre for Digital Health and Precision Medicine

    The Centre will harness the research strengths of the partners and the extensive longitudinal patient database of the Apollo Hospitals Group. This will help to deliver improved population health with a global perspective through better disease prediction and prevention, improved and earlier detection, diagnosis and management of multiple acute and long-term conditions in hospital and community settings. It will make a tangible difference to improving the health of communities in India and the UK, including local communities with Indian heritage in Leicester.

    In a globalised world, we must recognise that we can’t be the experts in every area of research. Truly two-way partnerships can help us to learn from leading experts overseas, combining our shared research expertise for mutual benefit.

    Working across continents with access to large population data also transforms the breadth, depth and quality of outcomes for our research. High volumes of diverse data allow researchers to answer more intricate questions and with greater speed – ensuring that outcomes can be translated into clinical practice sooner.

    Data-led and industry backed approach

    The importance of data in modern healthcare cannot be underestimated. Researchers at the University of Leicester were the first to identify the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on ethnic minority communities because of ethnically diverse data available to us in Leicester. We hope this partnership with Apollo will produce equally significant findings, supporting the partners’ shared commitment to inclusive and equitable healthcare.

    Another aspect of the partnership which marks it out as distinctive is that it is not just with another university – rather the University is working with an industry partner and the NHS. Apollo will have input into the curriculum – providing relevance in a globalised world – and in partnership with the University Hospitals of Leicester it will help address the shortfall in health professional skills and nurses and doctors. It is unusual for a university to work in partnership in this way with industry and public services – but it speaks to the need for universities to develop new approaches to partnership working that seek genuine change and are not driven by a narrow self-interest in student recruitment.

    Genuine partnership

    Our partnership is grounded in shared values where the benefits for both institutions as well as their local communities and countries are clearly defined. It represents a new type of international engagement that is mutually beneficial (recognising that many overseas partners have knowledge that is better than ours) – not a colonial attitude. It is grounded in the needs of industry – ensuring that despite changes in politics the skills and research requirements – partnerships will continue to be informed by industry and evolve quickly. It is also, most importantly, based on long term commitments between universities and communities in places that go beyond individual student preference and geopolitical factors. We hope that put together these factors and this new model will be better placed to stand the test of time.

    It is vital that universities in the UK adopt similar approaches to further demonstrate our importance and value to the UK – responding to the priorities set out by the Secretary of State for Education for universities to support economic growth at the same time as developing international links and contributing to the prosperity of our local communities.

    Delivering new and equitable models of partnership does not come without policy challenges and it is important that we consider them as a sector. We can no longer engage with the rest of the world with a ‘what is in it for me attitude’ or expect that partners will always deal with us on our terms. There are legitimate questions around which legal and governance frameworks are utilised, how research funders can work across multiple countries effectively and equitable funding and commercial arrangements that all require a shift in mindset and policy in the UK.

    None of these challenges are insurmountable, though, and they can all be addressed with the right approach. With new models of partnerships that are grounded in shared values and mutually beneficial, we can make a huge difference in the UK and globally.

    The new Centre for Digital Health and Precision Medicine will be led by Professor Sir Nilesh Samani from the University of Leicester, also the former Medical Director of the British Heart Foundation, and Dr Sujoy Kar, Chief Medical Information Officer & Vice President at the Apollo Hospitals Group. Its vision is to advance healthcare and its delivery through the development and deployment of digital health and precision medicine solutions using advanced analytics.

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  • Politics and international relations has grown over the last decade – but unevenly

    Politics and international relations has grown over the last decade – but unevenly

    The world seems an uncertain place to live in as we begin 2025: growing levels of conflict and instability across the globe, democratic institutions under pressure, and civic infrastructure being tested by the raging unpredictability of the natural world. Has there ever been a more appropriate time for people, young or old, to study politics? Has there ever been a time when we have been more in need of the expertise of political scientists, theorists, and scholars of international relations to help us make sense of this complex and changing world?

    It feels timely, therefore, that we at the British Academy are publishing a report on the provision of politics and international relations in the UK. This report is the latest in a series of state of the discipline reports from our SHAPE Observatory. It aims to take the temperature of the discipline by examining the size and shape of the sector and observing key trends over the past decade or so.

    Going for growth

    One of the key themes that emerged from our report was expansion. Compared to 2011–12, there has been a 20 per cent increase in first degree students and a 41 per cent increase in postgraduate taught students taking politics and international relations. The number of academic staff has also increased by 52 per cent since 2012–13.

    With this expansion has come diversification, both among students and staff. There are now more female students studying this traditionally male-dominated subject and the proportion of first degree students from minoritised ethnic backgrounds has increased by eight percentage points since 2011–12. Over the same period, the number of international students from outside the EU has more than doubled. The workforce is also becoming more international, with notable increases in staff from outside Europe and North America.

    All of this is positive, as it shows there is still strong demand for the discipline in the UK and that both students and scholars want to come here from around the world to work and study. In interviews we conducted with academic staff, there was a strong emphasis on the positive effects of this diversification. It was argued that the learning and research environment is enriched by bringing a range of perspectives and backgrounds onto campus.

    Uneven development

    But when you scratch beneath the surface of the aggregate numbers, another picture starts to emerge. When we looked at student numbers by institution, it became clear that changes have been highly uneven across the sector since 2011–12. A stark difference was observable, for example, between the average change in student numbers at Russell Group institutions and the rest of the sector:

    Number of institutions Mean change in student numbers
    Russell Group 23 320.2
    Pre-92 other 39 -24.7
    Post-92 51 -16.8

    Mean change (FPE) in first degree student numbers, 2011–12 to 2021–22

    So, if this is a story of expansion, it is really a story of a select few institutions that have expanded remarkably, while the rest of the sector has seen its share of politics and international relations students dwindle over the past few years.

    This pattern will be familiar to some at the institutional level, particularly in England and Wales, where caps on student numbers have been removed. Yet the overall institutional picture can mask ups and downs in recruitment within the same university, along with any restructuring of departments and course portfolios. Isolating changes in student numbers for a single disciplinary area is therefore very revealing.

    Growing pains

    So what are the implications of these changes? More students are engaging with the discipline, and in England and Wales more are able to attend their first-choice destination. Those working within departments at research-intensive universities may argue that the expansion of their department has preserved a degree of pluralism in research activity and practice. The UK has a proud history of political theory, for example, and this sub-field continues to carve out a notable space in the disciplinary landscape – something not mirrored in other leading research nations.

    However, the divergence in recruitment has clearly had a destabilising impact on some politics departments. The redistribution of students across the UK has real-world consequences, leading in some instances to internal restructuring and even departmental closures. Amid gloomy forecasts for the sector, mounting financial pressures, and announcements of course closures in all manner of disciplines, the risk of an uneven balance of course provision has come into sharp focus.

    Mind the gap(s)

    It is in this context that the British Academy recently launched a new map showing changing SHAPE provision in UK higher education over a decade. The picture for politics and international relations is broadly positive, with good coverage across the country at least at the regional level. However, when you exclude students with prior qualifications above the average tariff for the discipline, there is a notable absence of people studying single honours degrees in politics and international relations in the central belt of Scotland.

    The question of access to the discipline is an important one that deserves more detailed exploration at a local level. Many of the institutions that have seen a drop in their student intake are the same universities that would argue they are most adept at reaching local communities where access to higher education is lowest. Moreover, they would likely contend that they are best placed to support these students to succeed at university.

    In an era where more of the learning experience is being digitised and moved online, and where the numbers of commuter students are increasing, perhaps the concentration of politics and international relations students at fewer universities is less of an issue. Institutions are being asked to do more with less, and from a technocratic perspective, this can create economies of scale. Whether this is in the long-term interest of students is questionable. Moreover, ever-concentrating provision does seem antithetical to the notion of addressing regional inequalities, and it runs counter to the government’s ambitions to boost local R&D.

    A question of sustainability

    The question that emerges is not whether this is a problem, but whether it is sustainable.

    There is a great deal of discussion about how current disruption in higher education will spill over into the research base. When we interviewed those working in the field, the diversity of the politics and international relations sector was identified as a key strength, and as one of the elements that contributes to its enviable reputation around the globe. Once a department is gone, it is very hard to reestablish.

    In these volatile times, facing global challenges, politics and international relations has so much to offer both students and wider society. Let’s hope the discipline continues to thrive here in the UK for many years to come.

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  • UKVI is tightening the rules on international student attendance

    UKVI is tightening the rules on international student attendance

    Back in April you’ll recall that UKVI shared a draft “remote delivery” policy with higher education providers for consultation.

    That process is complete – and now it’s written to providers to confirm the detail of the new arrangements.

    Little has changed in the proposal from last Spring – there are some clarifications on how it will apply, but the main impact is going to be on providers and students who depend, one way or another, on some of their teaching not being accessed “in person”.

    The backstory here is that technically, all teaching for international students right now is supposed to be in-person. That was relaxed during the pandemic for obvious reasons – and since, the rapid innovations in students being able to access types of teaching (either synchronously or asynchronously) has raised questions about how realistic and desirable that position remains.

    Politics swirls around this too – the worry/allegation is that students arrive and then disappear, and with a mixture of relaxed attendance regulation (UKVI stopped demanding a specific number of contact points a few years ago for universities) and a worry that some students are faking or bypassing some of the attendance systems that are in place, the time has come, it seems, to tighten a little – “formalising the boundaries in which institutions can use online teaching methods to deliver courses to international students”, as UKVI puts it.

    Its recent burst of compliance monitoring (with now public naming and shaming of universities “subject to an action plan”) seems to have been a factor too – with tales reaching us of officials asking often quite difficult questions about both how many students a provider thinks are on campus, and then how many actually are, on a given day or across a week.

    The balance being struck is designed, says UKVI, to “empower the sector to utilise advances in education technology” by delivering elements of courses remotely whilst setting “necessary thresholds” to provide clarity and ensure there is “no compromise” of immigration control.

    Remote or “optional”?

    The policy that will be introduced is broadly as described back in April – first, that two types of “teaching delivery” are to be defined as follows:

    • Remote delivery is defined as “timetabled delivery of learning where there is no need for the student to attend the premises of the student sponsor or partner institution which would otherwise take place live in-person at the sponsor or partner institution site.
    • Face-to-face delivery is defined as “timetabled learning that takes place in-person and on the premises of the student sponsor or a partner institution.

    You’ll see that that difference isn’t (necessarily) between teaching designed as in-person or designed as remote – it’s between hours that a student is required to be on campus for, and hours that they either specifically aren’t expected to come in for, or have the option to not come in for. That’s an important distinction:

    Where the student has an option of online or in-person learning, this should count as a remote element for this purpose.

    Then with those definitions set, we get a ratio.

    As a baseline, providers (with a track record of compliance) will be allowed to deliver up to 20 per cent of the taught elements of any degree level and above course remotely.

    Then if a provider is able to demonstrate how the higher usage is consistent with the requirements of the relevant educational quality standards body (OfS in England, QAA in Wales and Scotland) and remains consistent with the principles of the student route, they’ll be able to have a different ratio – up to 40 per cent of the teaching will be allowed to be in that “remote” category.

    Providers keen to use that higher limit will need to apply to do so via the annual CAS allocation process – and almost by definition will attract additional scrutiny as a result, if only to monitor how the policy is panning out. They’ll also have to list all courses provided to sponsored students that include remote delivery within that higher band – and provide justification for the higher proportion of remote learning based on educational value.

    (For those not immersed in immigration compliance, a CAS (Confirmation of Acceptance for Studies) is an electronic document issued by a UK provider to an international student that serves as proof of admission, and is required when applying for a student visa. The CAS includes a unique reference number, details of the course, tuition fees, and the institution’s sponsorship license information – and will soon have to detail if an international agent is involved too.)

    One question plenty of people have asked is whether this changes things for disabled students – UKVI makes clear that by exception, remote delivery can permitted on courses of any academic level studied at a student sponsor in circumstances where requiring face to face delivery would constitute discrimination on the basis of a student’s protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.

    A concern about that was that providers might not know if a student needs that exception in advance – UKVI says that it will trust providers to judge individual student circumstances in cases of extenuating circumstances and justify them during audits. The requirement to state protected characteristics on the CAS will be withdrawn.

    Oh – and sponsors will also be permitted to use remote delivery where continuity of education provision would otherwise be interrupted by unforeseen circumstances – things like industrial action, extreme weather, periods of travel restriction and so on.

    Notably, courses at levels 4 and 5 won’t be able to offer “remote delivery” at all – UKVI reckons they are “more vulnerable to abuse” from “non-genuine students”, so it’s resolved to link the more limited freedoms provided by Band 1 of the existing academic engagement policy to this provision of “remote” elements – degree level and above.

    Yes but what is teaching?

    A head-scratcher when the draft went out for consultation was what “counts” as teaching. Some will still raise questions with the answer – but UKVI says that activities like writing dissertations, conducting research, undertaking fieldwork, carrying out work placements and sitting exams are not “taught elements” – and are not therefore in scope.

    Another way of looking at that is basically – if it’s timetabled, it probably counts.

    Some providers have also been confused about modules – given that students on most courses are able to routinely choose elective modules (which themselves might contain different percentages of teaching in the two categories) after the CAS is assigned.

    UKVI says that sponsors should calculate the remote delivery percentage on the assumption that the student will elect to attend all possible remote elements online. So where elective modules form part of the course delivery, the highest possible remote delivery percentage will have to be stated (!) And where hours in the timetable are optional, providers will have to calculate remote delivery by assuming that students will participate in all optional remote elements online.

    The good news when managing all of that is that the percentage won’t have to be calculated on the basis of module or year – it’s the entire course that counts. And where the course is a joint programme with a partner institution based overseas, only elements of the course taking place in the UK will be taken into account.

    What’s next

    There’s no specific date yet on implementation – IT changes to the sponsor management system are required, and new fields will be added to the CAS and annual CAS allocation request forms first. The “spring” is the target, and there’s also a commitment to reviewing the policy after 12 months.

    In any event, any university intending to utilise (any) remote delivery will need to have updated their internal academic engagement (ie attendance) policy ahead of submitting their next annual CAS allocation request – and UKVI may even require the policy to be submitted before deciding on the next CAS allocation request, and definitely by September 2025.

    During the consultation, a number of providers raised the issue of equity – how would one justify international and home students being treated differently? UKVI says that distinctions are reasonable because international students require permission to attend a course in the UK:

    If attendance is no longer necessary, the validity of holding such permission must be reassessed.

    There’s no doubt that – notwithstanding that providers are also under pressure to produce (in many cases for the first time) home student attendance policies because of concerns about attendance and student loan entitlements – the new policy will cause some equity issues between home and international students.

    In some cases those will be no different to the issues that exist now – some providers in some departments simply harmonise their requirements, some apply different regs by visa status, and some apply different rules for home students to different dept/courses depending on the relative proportion of international students in that basket. That may all have to be revisited.

    The big change – for some providers, but not all – is those definitions. The idea of a student never turning up for anything until they “cram” for their “finals” is built into many an apocryphal student life tale – that definitely won’t be allowed for international students, and it’s hard to see a provider getting away with that in their SFE/SFW/SAAS demanded home student policy either.

    Some providers won’t be keen to admit as such, but the idea of 100 per cent attendance to hours of teaching in that 80 per cent basket is going to cause a capacity problem in some lecture theatres and teaching spaces that will now need to be resolved. Module choice (and design) is also likely to need a careful look.

    And the wider questions of the way in which students use “optional” attendance and/or recorded lectures to manage their health and time – with all the challenges relating to part-time work and commuting/travelling in the mix – may result in a need to accelerate timetable reform to reduce the overall number of now very-much “required” visits to campus.

    One other thing not mentioned in here is the reality that UKVI is setting a percentage of a number of hours that is not specified – some providers could engage in reducing the number of taught hours altogether to make the percentages add up. Neither in the domestic version of this agenda nor in this international version do we have an attempt at defining what “full-time” really means in terms of overall taught hours – perhaps necessarily given programme diversity – but it’ll be a worry for some.

    Add all of this up – mixing in UKVI stepping up compliance monitoring and stories of students sharing QR codes for teaching rooms on WhatsApp to evade attendance monitoring systems – and for some providers and some students, the change will be quite dramatic.

    The consultation on the arrangements has been carried out quite confidentially so far – I’d tentatively suggest here that any revision to arrangements implemented locally should very much aim to switch that trend away from “UKVI said so” towards detailed discussion with (international) student representatives, with a consideration of wider timetabling, housing, travel and other support arrangements in the mix.

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  • New UK government video targets international students

    New UK government video targets international students

    Secretary of state for education, Bridget Phillipson, addressed students considering studying abroad, highlighting the benefits of a UK education and promoting the country’s post-study work opportunities.

    “In the new academic year, we will welcome thousands of international students who will be starting courses in our universities and I hope to see many more in the future,” Phillipson said in the video shared by the UK Council for International Student Affairs (UKCISA).

    “The UK is a wonderful and safe place to study. Our country is home to some of the very best universities in the world – four of the world’s top 10 can be found right here in the UK.

    “An education from a British university has been the springboard for success for so many global trailblazers, from politics to business, from the arts to the sciences, in fact dozens of current and recent world leaders studied here in the UK and our universities have driven some of the most exciting and valuable research anywhere in the world.

    “You could be part of the next groundbreaking wave of research and join a new generation of inspiring leaders,” she told prospective students.

    Phillipson went on to describe some of the ways in which UK universities support their international students through pastoral support, work experience, scholarships and bursaries.

    “You’ll also get have the chance to join Alumni UK – a global group of people from around the world who have studied here. It’s a fantastic professional network that you can tap into to get great advice and guidance.”

    Phillipson went on to promote the UK’s Graduate Route, describing the opportunity which lets graduates “work, live and contribute” in the UK.

    International students forge international friendships so by studying abroad, you can help build bridges between our countries, and these connections help make the world a better, brighter place.

    Bridget Phillipson, UK secretary of state for education

    “Studying in the UK sets you up for success in your career, but it’s more than that. International students forge international friendships so by studying abroad, you can help build bridges between our countries, and these connections help make the world a better, brighter place.”

    Phillipson previously addressed international students in a video not long after stepping into the role in July 2024.

    On the release of the latest video, Anne Marie Graham, UKCISA chief executive, said she was “encouraged” to see the continuing messages of welcome and support from the UK’s education secretary.

    “Current and prospective students will also welcome the secretary of state’s ongoing support for the graduate visa and her reflections on the mutual benefits of a UK education – not just the contributions that international students make to the UK, but the positive impact on their own careers and ambitions,” she told The PIE.

    “We look forward to continuing to work with the UK government to ensure international students are welcomed and supported, from pre-arrival visas to post-graduation work opportunities, so that all international students have a positive experience studying here.”

    Pedram Bani Asadi, chair of the UKCISA’s Student Advisory Group commented: “I welcome the support from this government for international students’ hopes and dreams, and recognition of all the contributions we make to both UK culture and the economy.

    “Having access to the Graduate Route has been absolutely essential for me to be able to reinforce the skills I learnt in my studies and contribute to the UK. I appreciate all the friends and experiences I’ve had here and look forward to continuing my role as a #WeAreInternational student ambassador, and working with the UK government to support my fellow international students to have a positive experience.”

    Since Labour took came into power, sector stakeholders have noted the government’s more welcoming tone toward international students, a marked contrast to the rhetoric of the previous Conservative government.

    Despite a change in rhetoric, the Labour government has shown no intention of reversing the Conservative’s decision to ban international students on UK taught master’s courses from bringing dependants with them to the UK.

    “While the new government has said many positive things about international students, the focus on immigration remains acute,” said Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International in an update to sector earlier this month.

    The UK’s international educations strategy is currently under review, and the rollout of the new approach is set for April.

    Sector leaders gathered at the QS Reimagine Education summit in London late last year to discuss priorities for the UK’s international education sector going forward, giving suggestions for a refreshed strategy, which included improved post-study work rights.

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  • One country wants to close math achievement gaps by ending academic tracking

    One country wants to close math achievement gaps by ending academic tracking

    CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — Many students in New Zealand have a story to tell about “streaming” — being grouped into separate math classes based on their perceived ability to master the subject.

    Manaaki Waretini-Beaumont, now 18 and an environmental science major at the University of Canterbury, learned about the downside of streaming when she enrolled in Avonside Girls’, a 1,000-student high school in Christchurch.

    Avonside starts at Year 9, equivalent to eighth grade in the United States, and ends at Year 13, equivalent to 12th grade. Before the start of her Year 9 term, Waretini-Beaumont and her fellow students were divided up into groups to take tests in “maths,” reading comprehension, and patterns and shapes.

    Afterward, the students were separated into lettered groups that spelled out the word B-I-N-O-C-U-L-A-R-S. Waretini-Beaumont was a “9-N” student in mathematics — as she describes it, “the top of the middle block.”

    But she said she didn’t feel comfortable as one of the few Māori students in the class.

    “I felt like I wasn’t good enough to be in that space,” said Waretini-Beaumont, whose iwi, or tribal affiliations, are Te Āti Haunui-A-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Apa, Ngāti Paoa. “If there was something I wasn’t understanding, I felt like I wasn’t able to say that, because I’m supposed to be in the smart class with all these smart people.”

    So she shifted to another mathematics class with her Māori friends, who were in the “S” classes. 

    “Being in two different spaces, I could really see the change,” Waretini-Beaumont said. “At the top classes, the teachers’ language towards the students was always positive and it was always encouraging. And they really wanted students to learn and were trying to help them.”

    Manaaki Waretini-Beaumont experienced the effects of “streaming,” or academic ability tracking, during her time as a high school student at Avonside Girls’ School in Christchurch, New Zealand. Credit: Image provided by Richie Mills/Ngāi Tahu

    In the classroom where her friends were assigned, in contrast, the mathematics work mostly amounted to simple worksheets — “coloring pages and word find,” Waretini-Beaumont said.

    Related: Sign up for a limited-run newsletter that walks you through some of the most promising solutions for helping students conquer math.

    For years, much like in the United States, New Zealand has worried about sliding student proficiency in mathematics, as captured by both national and international test scores. Later this month — the beginning of the New Zealand school year — the country is launching an overhaul of mathematics instruction that education leaders hope will reverse the trend.

    But other groups in the country have been trying to approach the problem of academic achievement from a different angle. They believe that streaming is driving achievement gaps in the country, including in mathematics. Tokona te Raki/Māori Futures Collective, a think tank focused on youth, has been working since 2019 to persuade schools to voluntarily end the practice by 2030. The initiative is called “Kōkirihia”— Māori for “take action.”

    Streaming is just one of many ways that schools group students by academic ability. Ability grouping can include separating students into vocational or university tracks at different schools as early as age 10, as is common in Germany and other Western European countries. But it could also include teachers creating informal and non-permanent groupings within their own classrooms to provide enrichment or extra support to students who need it.

    In New Zealand, critics say streaming pushes two groups into so-called “cabbage,” or lower-level mathematics, at a disproportionate rate: Māori students, who are indigenous to New Zealand, and students who are Pasifika, the New Zealand term for people from Samoa, Tonga and other nations in the Pacific Islands.

    In the 14th century, the Polynesian ancestors of today’s Māori migrated thousands of miles by canoe to what they called Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud. Hundreds of years later, English settlers came to engage in trade and now represent the majority ethnic group in New Zealand. In 1840, the two groups signed the Treaty of Waitangi that established New Zealand’s bicultural identity.

    Many youth with Pacific Island backgrounds are descended from people who were encouraged to move to New Zealand after World War II to address a labor shortage.

    Both Māori and Pasifika are a fast-growing, and young, population. By the 2040s, more than a third of children in the country are expected to identify as Māori, according to Stats NZ, the country’s official data agency.

    Related: Eliminating advanced math ‘tracks’ often prompts outrage. Some districts buck the trend

    The New Zealand Ministry of Education’s official stance discourages streaming, but the country’s more than 2,500 schools operate with a great deal of independence: Principals have similar powers and responsibilities as school superintendents in the United States, and each school has an elected board that sets policy and manages budgets.

    New Zealand does not track streaming or ability grouping by race or ethnicity, but surveys show it is common: Eighty percent of students are in schools that group students by ability level in mathematics, according to a 2022 survey conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment.

    Other data shows a wide academic gap among students of different ethnicities in New Zealand.

    Students at May Road School in Auckland, New Zealand, work through a lesson on fractions. Credit: Becki Moss for The Hechinger Report

    In the Auckland region, the country’s most densely populated of 16 regions in all, 76 percent of Asian students left secondary school with the highest of three levels on the country’s National Certificate of Educational Achievement in 2022. Like a high school diploma, the NCEA Level 3 is a minimum qualification to enter college in New Zealand.

    About 66 percent of Pākehā, or white, students left school with that credential. About 46 percent of Pasifika students and 40 percent of Māori students did the same.

    In comparison, the high school graduation rate by race and ethnicity in the United States in the 2021-22 school year was 94 percent for Asian American/Pacific Islander students, 90 percent for white students, 83 percent for Hispanic students, 81 percent for Black students and 74 percent for American Indian/Alaskan Native students.

    Misbah Sadat, the newly appointed principal at Kuranui College, a high school 50 miles northeast of the capital of Wellington, began actively working to “destream” mathematics courses soon after emigrating to New Zealand in 2009 and becoming a teacher there.

    As head of mathematics at a high school called Horowhenua College, she started by identifying promising Māori students on her own, moving them to higher level classes, and mentoring them, as described in a Ministry of Education newsletter.

    Related: OPINION: As a middle-class Black student, I was tracked into lower-level math classes that kept me back

    Eventually she convinced her colleagues at Horowhenua to create mixed-ability classes rather than dividing the students. She continued the same work as deputy principal at Onslow College in suburban Wellington, where she worked before her new appointment.

    The streaming practice comes from a patronizing mindset, said Sadat, who was also a math teacher in Montgomery County, Maryland.

    Schools are telling parents that their children might be lost and overwhelmed in a more rigorous class. In actuality, “We have demoted some students to learn crap,” she said. “And then we are saying that at age 16, ‘You are dumb at maths.’ How dare we decide what a young person is capable of or not capable of?” 

    Students at Kaiapoi North School in suburban Christchurch, New Zealand, work through a multiplication problem in chalk on the playground blacktop. Credit: Becki Moss for The Hechinger Report

    Both of New Zealand’s unions for elementary and secondary teachers signed onto the pledge to end streaming by 2030. In a newsletter to members, the elementary teachers union noted that its members have noticed “a sense of ingrained hopelessness that comes with being in the ‘cabbage’ classes.”

    But in the same newsletter, another teacher said educators struggle with the mix of abilities in one classroom, along with managing behavior challenges.

    David Pomeroy, a senior lecturer in education at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, is studying schools that have committed to reducing their reliance on streaming.

    It’s a difficult task, he said. So many teachers are accustomed to the practice, since they went through it in school themselves. Parents of students in high-level classes are worried their children will be shortchanged. Teachers also say that it is easier to work with students who are all roughly on the same skill level.

    And then there is an emotional connection to the practice, Pomeroy said. Unlike in the United States, lower-level mathematics classes are often taught by teachers who have a lot of classroom experience and who express real fondness for their students, he said. Pushing students too hard is seen as setting them up for repeated failure, which teachers were reluctant to do.

    Abby Zonneveld’s bulletin board at St. Clair School in Dunedin, New Zealand, asked students to describe their “tūrangawaewae,” or place where they feel a special connection. Credit: Becki Moss for The Hechinger Report

    “Even if they accepted streaming wasn’t the right next step, they wanted to protect them from anything that could damage their confidence,” Pomeroy said.

    For schools that have made a commitment to reducing or ending streaming, he said, one useful tool has been to bring mathematics teachers in different schools together so they can work through challenges, such as lesson planning, and share successes.

    Related: Racial gaps in math have grown. Could detracking help?

    The research into the benefits or harms of academic tracking or streaming show mixed results. In 2016, a group of researchers compiled all the best U.S-based research on ability grouping and acceleration at that point, going back for a century. They found certain kinds of ability grouping, such as placing highly gifted students together, was a benefit to those students. But grouping students in high- or low-performing classes did not show any benefit or detriment for students.

    The New Zealand Initiative, a right-of-center think tank, said that the country should conduct its own research on the effects of streaming in the country, rather than relying primarily on research done elsewhere and on qualitative reports that primarily capture feelings about the practice. “Research suggests that lowerstream students are often taught less engaging content by less experienced teachers. So, it may not be streaming itself that increases gaps in achievement but streaming done poorly,” the initiative said in a report.

    But the efforts to reduce streaming voluntarily seem to be catching on.

    When looking at all academic subjects, not just mathematics, principals on a 2022 PISA survey said 67 percent of students in New Zealand are grouped by ability into different classes for at least some subjects. That’s a drop from 2015, when 90 percent of principals reported that students were grouped into different classes in their schools.

    The change is welcome, said Waretini-Beaumont, who works on social media for Tokona te Raki. Streaming “has more impact than just cutting off some opportunities and stopping someone from doing calculus,” she said. “Our grandparents have been streamed and they don’t know it was even a thing. They just thought they were dumb.”

    Contact Christina A. Samuels at 212-678-3635 or [email protected].

    This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

    This story about academic tracking was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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