Disadvantaged Kiwi students’ ‘resilience’ declining

<h2>The academic achievement of New Zealand children from poor backgrounds is declining by at least 1 percentage point a year&comma; an OECD report claims&period;<&sol;h2>&NewLine;<p>The report&comma; <em>Academic Resilience&colon; What Schools and Countries Do to Help Disadvantaged Students Succeed in PISA<&sol;em>&comma; shows that only 25 percent of New Zealand&&num;8217&semi;s poorest 15-year-olds performed well in the most recent international tests of reading&comma; maths and science&period; This was down from 37 percent a decade ago&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The study measured whether students in the poorest 25 percent of families were doing well and could therefore be regarded as &&num;8220&semi;resilient&&num;8221&semi;&period; According to the report&comma; the percentage of resilient students provided an indication of the quality of a country&&num;8217&semi;s schooling system&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>While the New Zealand score was the same as the OECD average&comma; it came behind Australia&&num;8217&semi;s 29 percent and well below Hong Kong and Macau&comma; the highest scoring regions&comma; where more than 50 percent of students from poor families did well&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Finland and Korea also showed a similar decline to New Zealand in the resilience of poorer students&comma; the report said&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Regular school attendance and participation in extra-curricular activities were strongly associated with resilience in poorer New Zealand students&comma; the report said&comma; while poor performance correlated with the number of computers in classrooms&period; However&comma; in New Zealand&comma; student behaviour and discipline in schools was not strongly linked with student resilience&comma; unlike in other countries&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;