Over the last four months as part of our education research project I have visited a number of schools around New Zealand and I was struck by two things.

The first: despite some of these schools being labelled as under-performing, the vibrant corridors were packed with eager young children with real potential.

The second: there was no obvious way to tell whether the schools they were in would actually enable them to reach these possibilities.

The rhetoric in the sector is that although there are pockets of excellence, too many schools are failing our kids. But how and when do we know which of the students, teachers and schools are at risk of underperforming? Better yet, how is effective performance identified?

Our current project is looking at these questions. Our initial observation is that current indicators of success and failure at the system and the school levels are far from excellent.

The general approach to performance evaluation appears disjointed and accountability lines are blurred.

On one hand, the Ministry’s hands-off approach means that often its dealings with under-performing schools act as the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. On the other, some schools in decline had not sought support early as they did not always know that they are at-risk.

Instead both the schools and the Ministry commonly rely on the middle man, the Education Review Office, to tell them what is going on. Though, the office cannot get to each school every year so some schools wait for three years only to find out that they are underperforming.

We think there are a number of levers available to the education sector to reconnect the joints. The sector has access to rich data that can be used for effective school improvement strategies.

Thousands of students may be stuck in schools that fail them year after year. And for many, it could be for their entire schooling career.

Unfortunately this could be the reality for some of the children who excitedly greeted me in their school corridors.

With whom should the educational responsibility for this future generation lie?