So here goes: Do you know how well your kids are doing in primary school?
Can they read, write and do maths at or even above their curriculum level?
Do you even understand what that means? (Your child's school report will vaguely tell you if they are within their year level or off the pace)
Or do you trust teachers, schools and the wider education system to get it right?
If you sit in the camp that doesn't pay much attention to any of this and just assumes they are getting it right then I have some alarming news.
New Education Minister, Erica Stanford, has told me more than half our primary school pupils turn up at college on the first day, well short of where they need to be academically.
In reading, writing and maths and so much more they haven't kept up.
Stanford says it's across all subjects and not just the basics.
'It's hard to sugar coat our dire achievement,’’ she says.
Fewer than half of our kids are prepared for the demands of college. More than half are not ready for high school in any subject.
And we make it worse by continuing to fund programs that no one is sure whether they work or not.
Too many sycophants have invaded the Ministry or the Minister's office, where they are placed on giant salaries to repeat the myth that we have a world class education system.
This new Minister does not appear to suffer these fools nor are they likely to get hired to run interference. The interference is the Minister herself.
And here's the uncomfortable truth - why allow students up to the next level when they just failed. Half our kids are in the wrong class. In short we fund and promote failure and hope one day the results will change. We are deluded.
Take Māori statistics and the numbers of college ready kids plummets further. Just 20% are match fit for high school - that leaves 80% of Maori children well off the pace at the tender ages of 12 and 13. Why?
And why hasn't that been the work of a hit-squad designed to turn these shocking stats around.
This isn't so much a ticking time bomb but I suggest it's already exploded and now comes the time to do something about the carnage.
If we don't try and turn this around our workforce into the future will be low paid, and the numbers on welfare long term will be high.
Officials recently claimed if a teenager goes on welfare in New Zealand they are likely to be trapped there for 24 years on average. That is no life and we need to move mountains to stop it.
Getting access to data about what works and what doesn't work with struggling kids is now the hard bit. The Education Ministry oversees a $20b annual spend on education - and it's rather galling to find out despite that level of investment no one can point to evidence based material that shows us what works.
Erica Stanford asked for the Ministry's line by line spending on everything they do and the associated analysis of how it impacts student achievement.
Remarkably I'm told the Ministry told the new Minister, sorry we don't have that kind of information.
Think about it - we spend $20b dollars of taxpayers money on all sorts of educational approaches and we can't say what the outcomes are. So it's likely we are embedding the issues by repeating failed programmes year on year.
Why has it taken until now for someone to shout about this state funded shambles?
Where are the previous Ministers of Education? Rewriting their version of history?
I say to Stanford that teachers need to look in the mirror because if our kids are failing then so are teachers.
She doesn't like that, and says teachers are exhausted and the system is to blame for their exhaustion.
Blaming a system still sounds like a cop-out. I ask her to explain. She highlights our flakey and waffley curriculum where the outcomes need to be the same but it's up to teachers how they teach it.
Or do you trust teachers, schools and the wider education system to get it right?
If you sit in the camp that doesn't pay much attention to any of this and just assumes they are getting it right then I have some alarming news.
New Education Minister, Erica Stanford, has told me more than half our primary school pupils turn up at college on the first day, well short of where they need to be academically.
In reading, writing and maths and so much more they haven't kept up.
Stanford says it's across all subjects and not just the basics.
'It's hard to sugar coat our dire achievement,’’ she says.
Fewer than half of our kids are prepared for the demands of college. More than half are not ready for high school in any subject.
And we make it worse by continuing to fund programs that no one is sure whether they work or not.
Too many sycophants have invaded the Ministry or the Minister's office, where they are placed on giant salaries to repeat the myth that we have a world class education system.
This new Minister does not appear to suffer these fools nor are they likely to get hired to run interference. The interference is the Minister herself.
And here's the uncomfortable truth - why allow students up to the next level when they just failed. Half our kids are in the wrong class. In short we fund and promote failure and hope one day the results will change. We are deluded.
Take Māori statistics and the numbers of college ready kids plummets further. Just 20% are match fit for high school - that leaves 80% of Maori children well off the pace at the tender ages of 12 and 13. Why?
And why hasn't that been the work of a hit-squad designed to turn these shocking stats around.
This isn't so much a ticking time bomb but I suggest it's already exploded and now comes the time to do something about the carnage.
If we don't try and turn this around our workforce into the future will be low paid, and the numbers on welfare long term will be high.
Officials recently claimed if a teenager goes on welfare in New Zealand they are likely to be trapped there for 24 years on average. That is no life and we need to move mountains to stop it.
Getting access to data about what works and what doesn't work with struggling kids is now the hard bit. The Education Ministry oversees a $20b annual spend on education - and it's rather galling to find out despite that level of investment no one can point to evidence based material that shows us what works.
Erica Stanford asked for the Ministry's line by line spending on everything they do and the associated analysis of how it impacts student achievement.
Remarkably I'm told the Ministry told the new Minister, sorry we don't have that kind of information.
Think about it - we spend $20b dollars of taxpayers money on all sorts of educational approaches and we can't say what the outcomes are. So it's likely we are embedding the issues by repeating failed programmes year on year.
Why has it taken until now for someone to shout about this state funded shambles?
Where are the previous Ministers of Education? Rewriting their version of history?
I say to Stanford that teachers need to look in the mirror because if our kids are failing then so are teachers.
She doesn't like that, and says teachers are exhausted and the system is to blame for their exhaustion.
Blaming a system still sounds like a cop-out. I ask her to explain. She highlights our flakey and waffley curriculum where the outcomes need to be the same but it's up to teachers how they teach it.
So Stanford stands out as the whistleblowing minister calling out her own department and officials. And successive Labour and National administrations cop an earful too.
She will make equal numbers of friends and enemies along the way as she pulls the Ministry apart and pushes for progress in our schools.
Some will hate the change and despise the brutal honesty. They will be exposed as part of the lost decades.
But this is some of the most courageous work and toughest talk I have seen from a Minister in 25 years.
She is making no apologies.
But what does this say about the senior leaders in the Ministry who never identified this or did but stayed silent? Have we laid off the right people?
They continue to turn up each day, pocket a massive salary and remain shaking like a church mouse for fear they may have to do something decisive or game changing one day.
To get real change, Stanford is going to have to move some of the current leaders out of the way otherwise it will prove impossible.
I hope she achieves her mission. She can do this alone or with our help. She needs students, parents, teachers, unions, principals, boards and officials to be on the same page.
The parenting bit is crucial. We need to be better parents..........The full article is published HERE
Duncan Garner is a New Zealand broadcaster and journalist.
She will make equal numbers of friends and enemies along the way as she pulls the Ministry apart and pushes for progress in our schools.
Some will hate the change and despise the brutal honesty. They will be exposed as part of the lost decades.
But this is some of the most courageous work and toughest talk I have seen from a Minister in 25 years.
She is making no apologies.
But what does this say about the senior leaders in the Ministry who never identified this or did but stayed silent? Have we laid off the right people?
They continue to turn up each day, pocket a massive salary and remain shaking like a church mouse for fear they may have to do something decisive or game changing one day.
To get real change, Stanford is going to have to move some of the current leaders out of the way otherwise it will prove impossible.
I hope she achieves her mission. She can do this alone or with our help. She needs students, parents, teachers, unions, principals, boards and officials to be on the same page.
The parenting bit is crucial. We need to be better parents..........The full article is published HERE
Duncan Garner is a New Zealand broadcaster and journalist.
3 comments:
"Have we laid off the right people?"
No. While the apologist for failure, Iona Holsted" and the 8 below her a still there, change will be impossible. They are the ones that claim we have a world class system but need to de-colonise it.
We used to have a recognized world class education system and the teaching methods and curriculum content in schools were entirely different from what we have now.
Here are some of the characteristics of a typical primary classroom now: general noisiness with disorderliness and slack discipline, many small groups which encourages chatter and discussion in trivial activities with little academic content or outcomes, teachers act as facilitators who do not 'teach' nor give out any information, facts are not to be memorized, there are books everywhere but the methods used to 'teach' reading are designed not to be ineffective, as are the methods to 'teach' arithmetic which is introduced in a random fashion with many long-winded strategies called algorithms, few students including often the teacher fully understand decimals and fractions well, grammar and spelling are largely obsolete so written work is shambolic with random punctuation, capitalization and sentence structure, some students have grasped cursive writing, many haven't, there is nothing rigorous or logical, work need not be completed and students learn little is expected of them. This leads many students to feel unfulfilled and their school day unproductive. Many know they are ignorant and barely literate as well as have dyslexia and ADHD. They develop psychosomatic disorders and stay home or simply find school too boring and unchallenging. The free school lunch is not tempting enough nor the play breaks with friends. May as well stay home and play on the computer or possibly learn school set topics from it.
This is what you get with Progressive Education, child centered ideology and combined with Marxism which has determined school is to be a vehicle for promoting socialism, instead of real education primarily focused on academic achievement as we used to have the middle and early last century.
You, like many Duncan, just haven't seen or appreciated this slow motion train wreck in progress. Our MSM needs to share some of the blame for that. The outcomes have actually been there for all to see for years, but as anon@8.42AM has stated, those that should be held accountable (Hoslted & Co) are still there sucking on the public teat with their huge salaries, while Rome burns around them. They immediately need to be gone, but will the Minister have the fortitude to do it? Unlikely - just like her Boss, Luxon, who fails to grasp the nettle that is dividing this country to its ultimate ruination.
Children are our future and we have let them down terribly. But until parents across the nation revolt and say, ENOUGH, I suspect the changes will be all too small and too slow in coming. I do hope I'm wrong, but something about the Minister and her Boss suggest to me that they haven't the kahunas to make real and immediate change. Getting us 'back on track?' One can only wish.
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