The message was for parents - wake up! The absenteeism crisis is as much our fault as it is anyone's.
Chris Luxon didn’t say it in those exact words, but that was the inference.
While the previous Minister of Education Jan Tinetti blamed Covid and the cost of living and specialised in excuse making, the reality is we have no one to blame but ourselves.
The failure of our kids to pass exams probably sits a bit more with parents than many would like to admit as well, but at least a Government can play their part, and they may well have.
The idea of an hour of reading and writing every day as a policy in 2024 is one of the more bizarre things I have seen. It introduces what we used to take for granted and thought worked.
How far off track has a system gone when the failure rate speaks for itself, and you have to literally go back to basics the way they have?
It's part of the whole education debacle I have never understood.
For all those who argue we don’t want change and a phone ban is a bad thing and the absenteeism rate can be explained away and the NCEA pass rate is somehow fine, the facts tell a different story this isn't a debate about nuance.
Most kids don’t go to school. Literally a majority don’t go to school 90% of the time as required and a growing number each year, for the past three years, fail NCEA.
At the risk of sounding like a bit of a snob, having had five kids through NCEA, you have to be pretty behind the pace to fail it.
In other words, the fact it's so easy and the fact more and more can't even pass it is, I would have thought, a crisis.
It's no wonder we are a low wage economy. We don't educate kids, and when we don't, we find excuses for it.
Luxon said his lot are doing their bit at his school visit. Time will tell if it's enough.
I suspect it's not.
But part of his message, which in a wider context is way more reassuring, is to be found in his words to parents. Wake up.
The inference is at last we have a Government that is prepared to hold a few people to account and some of those people might well be us.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
While the previous Minister of Education Jan Tinetti blamed Covid and the cost of living and specialised in excuse making, the reality is we have no one to blame but ourselves.
The failure of our kids to pass exams probably sits a bit more with parents than many would like to admit as well, but at least a Government can play their part, and they may well have.
The idea of an hour of reading and writing every day as a policy in 2024 is one of the more bizarre things I have seen. It introduces what we used to take for granted and thought worked.
How far off track has a system gone when the failure rate speaks for itself, and you have to literally go back to basics the way they have?
It's part of the whole education debacle I have never understood.
For all those who argue we don’t want change and a phone ban is a bad thing and the absenteeism rate can be explained away and the NCEA pass rate is somehow fine, the facts tell a different story this isn't a debate about nuance.
Most kids don’t go to school. Literally a majority don’t go to school 90% of the time as required and a growing number each year, for the past three years, fail NCEA.
At the risk of sounding like a bit of a snob, having had five kids through NCEA, you have to be pretty behind the pace to fail it.
In other words, the fact it's so easy and the fact more and more can't even pass it is, I would have thought, a crisis.
It's no wonder we are a low wage economy. We don't educate kids, and when we don't, we find excuses for it.
Luxon said his lot are doing their bit at his school visit. Time will tell if it's enough.
I suspect it's not.
But part of his message, which in a wider context is way more reassuring, is to be found in his words to parents. Wake up.
The inference is at last we have a Government that is prepared to hold a few people to account and some of those people might well be us.
Mike Hosking is a New Zealand television and radio broadcaster. He currently hosts The Mike Hosking Breakfast show on NewstalkZB on weekday mornings - where this article was sourced.
3 comments:
Maybe Parents are ‘awake’ Mike.
“Public schools have become a weapon of Evildoers”.
Through the deliberate dumbing down and conditioning of children in “government education,” the forces of evil have radicalized youth to hate God, family and their country.
Instead of God-fearing and well-educated children, the schools are creating “global citizens,” ready to play their role as a cog in the machine of a totalitarian global society.
In addition to sexualizing children and teaching Marxist ideology under the guise of frameworks like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Social-Emotional Learning (SEL), public schools are ‘by design’ academically failing kids.
Good points Anonymous. Regrettably I doubt the home schooling alternative exists for most children. Just the raw muggery of life.
I am tutoring a friend's child. The family has two parents and own their own home.The child who is nine years old has dropped out of school because she is "so confused ' (her words) by the many ways of doing basic arithmetic manipulations like two figure multiplying. She used to like school but now she hates it. She also says the written work is impossible to understand.
These problems have arisen from the theory of constructivism which evolved from progressive education. Not only are children inflicted with destructive ideas as mentioned by Anonymous 11-28am but also pedagogy (methods) which just don't work. Turning this Titanic around is frankly unlikely to happen since the teachers , unions, Ministry and NZCEI are hopelessly entrenched in it. We are going to have to think of alternatives like online classes(already available) , well constructed workbooks, homeschooling groups shared by parents, after school charitable tutoring etc. Teaching basic old style arithmetic that works is not
beyond many adults and neither is phonic reading instruction. In the past parents were all involved in teaching infant reading at home thanks to nontechnical parent friendly readers.
My mother , Doris Ferry taught a 100 remedial reading students per week by instructing parents and using quality workbooks with explicit instruction. Even semi-literate parents could learn how to teach their own remedial children. Her students excelled way above the school's remedial programmes although these handled only a few dozen children a week.
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