Competitive disadvantage

Kick­ing a rugby ball or run­ning around a net­ball court on a wintry Sat­urday morn­ing is all part of a Kiwi edu­ca­tion. Sport has obvi­ous phys­ic­al bene­fits and also builds lead­er­ship skills such as con­fid­ence and resi­li­ence. For the Lydia Kos and Steven Adams of the world, this can be a spring­board to a sat­is­fy­ing work­ing life, allow­ing them to play a game they love while at the same time reap­ing the fin­an­cial rewards that go with pro­fes­sion­al sport. As New Zeal­anders, our pas­sion for com­pet­it­ive sport is part of our DNA, and the sport­ing elite, rightly or wrongly, are held up as role mod­els and ‘her­oes’.

In those coun­tries where edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tun­it­ies are lim­ited, there are aca­dem­ic hurdles to jump if stu­dents are to pro­gress (or not) through the edu­ca­tion sys­tem. Not so in New Zea­l­and, where the gov­ern­ment has set the tar­get that 85 per­cent of 18-year-olds will have achieved NCEA Level 2 or an equi­val­ent qual­i­fic­a­tion in 2017. NCEA, with its flex­ible mod­u­lar approach, enables schools to assemble pro­grammes to suit a range of learners. This stand­ards-based qual­i­fic­a­tion was not inten­ded for stu­dents to meas­ure their per­form­ance against each oth­er. Rather, Achieved grades or bet­ter are alloc­ated in accord­ance with how well stu­dents meet estab­lished bench­marks and, yes, it is pos­sible for a pass rate of 85 per­cent, or even 100 per­cent if all stu­dents reach the standard.

Run­ning counter to the NCEA philo­sophy is the com­pet­it­ive New Zea­l­and Schol­ar­ship exam­in­a­tion. Intro­duced in 2004, this met a need for a chal­len­ging aca­dem­ic exam­in­a­tion. It is, in effect, a com­pet­i­tion with gen­er­ous mon­et­ary prizes awarded.

Look­ing at the 2013 Schol­ar­ship exam­in­a­tion res­ults released in Feb­ru­ary, I am struck by the fact that, although at all levels of NCEA it is girls who have the edge, it is boys over­all who are gar­ner­ing the most out­stand­ing Schol­ar­ship res­ults. An ana­lys­is of the Premi­er Awards is telling. These are the most pres­ti­gi­ous of all the Schol­ar­ship awards and carry a mon­et­ary value of $10,000 for three years. Stat­ist­ics show that although slightly more girls register for the Schol­ar­ship exam­in­a­tions, over a five-year stretch, from 2008 to 2012, 38 (81 per­cent) males and only nine (19 per­cent) females gained a Premi­er Award. What is hap­pen­ing at the seni­or levels for girls? Why aren’t they rising to this par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge? Is it that by Year 13 our young men have developed a super­i­or com­pet­it­ive edge over their female coun­ter­parts? Does this dis­par­ity of per­form­ance fore­shad­ow future imbal­ances such as the gender pay gap and the dis­ap­point­ingly low rep­res­ent­a­tion of female dir­ect­ors — less than 10 per­cent — on New Zea­l­and boards?

Of late I have been dip­ping into Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and many of her ideas have res­on­ated with me. The cur­rent chief oper­at­ing officer of Face­book, Sand­berg writes of how women unin­ten­tion­ally hold them­selves back in their careers. She iden­ti­fies a ‘lead­er­ship ambi­tion gap’, the unwill­ing­ness for women to step up to the next level des­pite hav­ing the requis­ite skills and ability.

Is this what the dis­ap­point­ing Premi­er Award stat­ist­ics reflect? Do our girls lack the com­pet­it­ive instinct found in their male coun­ter­parts? Should we ask our girls to kick the ball harder, run faster and jump high­er? If not, will our girls con­tin­ue to take the back seat to males as they move into future careers. I believe we need to join with Sheryl Sand­berg and urge our girls to aim high, lean in and take their right­ful place at the table.