Examining Socio-Economic Influences on New Zealand Education System

This report examines the influence of socio-economic class on the New Zealand education system. It highlights that the education system in New Zealand, though ranked highly, is affected by socio-economic factors, with disparities in access and resources. The report discusses how schools may cater to specific social classes, and how working-class families may face hardships. It references the impact of financial constraints and how ethnic minority students may be disadvantaged. The report concludes that socio-economic culture significantly impacts the New Zealand education system, reflecting societal inequalities within the educational landscape. The report also includes references to support the claims.

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STUDENT DETAILS
SOCIO-ECONOMIC CLASS
AFFECTS NEW ZEALAND
EDUCATION SYSTEM

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Socio-Economic class affects New Zealand Education system
In 2016, according to the OECD New Zealand is counted among the world’s top 20
countries for providing quality of educations and for having appropriate key performance
indicators for tracking the performance of the school, colleges, universities and other
educational institutes (newzealandnow, 2019). All 8 major universities of the nations are
counted in the top 500 QS World University 2016-2017 (newzealandnow, 2019).
Each family in the nation is not entitle with the identical quantities of major resource
such as finance, education and social class. In NZ, the education system shows people the
abilities and information required to empower a person to carry out the responsibility
(McLaren, 2018). Talcott Parsons recommends that education is secondary socialization
where schools expand according to the targeted social class of students. For example: when a
new open school wants to target specific category of children, who belong from upper rich
class then they build infrastructure, school policies, indicators, etc (Siteine, 2017).
Socio economic culture affects the education culture of NZ because it accepts that
schools are a miniature version of society which prepares students for their adults' roles
(newzealandnow, 2019). In NZ, the education system has been observed as biased and
designed for white people which belongs from the middle and upper-middle class (Siteine,
2017). The education system of the nation is ignoring the need of the ethnic minority
students. Working-class people have to face hardship than other strong economic class people
because they are suffering from lack of money and other important resources (McLaren,
2018).
Children are treated according to their financial background. Even schools are divided
as per the standards of society. For maintaining the higher-standards of schools, their
administration automatically set high prices which discourages middle or lower middle-class

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families to send their children to such school due to their high fees. Thus, it can be concluded
that socio economic culture affects the education system of NZ.

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References
McLaren, I. A. (2018). Education in a small democracy: New Zealand. Abingdon: Routledge.
Newzealandnow. (2019). Education and Schooling. Retrieved from:
https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/living-in-nz/education
Siteine, A. (2017). Recognising ethnic identity in the classroom: a New Zealand
study. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 26(4), 393-407.