Surface readings

Today my head hurts from trying to follow up on a NZ Herald story that quotes from the Unesco report  Reaching the marginalised (Education For All global monitoring report 2010):

year 11 Maori students enrolled in kura kaupapa immersion schools did significantly better than Maori in English-language schools (p.206)

so I tried to follow up. I looked at Nga Haeata Matauranga (the Annual Reports on Maori Education)  

If I take the 2006/07 report, and look at  year 11 candidates for NCEA level one literacy and numeracy requirements -  I find that in 2006 there were 298 candidates at Maori language education schools .  Of these, 226 candidates met both literacy and numeracy requirements (75.8%) . There were 10,613 Maori year 11 candidates at other schools. Of these,  6,926 (65.3%) met both literacy and numeracy requirements. Or if you are looking at the 2007/08 report  - in 2006 (yes same year as above, but presumably a different measure): there were 509 candidates at Maori medium schools of whom 421 (82.7%) met both literacy and numeracy requirements and 11,079 Maori candidates at all other schools of whom 65.5% met both literacy and numeracy requirements for NCEA level one.
 
You would think these stats were cause for celebration, and they may well be, but the trouble is, there are things we don't know and it appears that the Ministry doesn't know either. The candidates at Maori language education schools consist of less than 3% (or 5% if you use the later figures) of the Maori candidates at other schools, and are a very small group. What else is different about those particular students at Maori language education schools? Have socio-economic backgrounds, parental education, school factors such as class size, etc been taken into account? The tables do not indicate any such accounting, and yet we know that the decile ranking of a school is a really significant influence on NCEA statistics.     

 Ngā Haeata Mātauranga - The Annual Report on Māori Education, 2007/08  at least makes a more honest  inference than the UNESCO report -

year 11 candidates at Māori-medium schools were more likely to meet both the NCEA literacy and numeracy requirements than other Māori candidates.

More likely but why? And that is literally the billion dollar question.