Even I was astounded to hear a PPTA Executive member – Austen Pageau – absolutely minimise problems of the education system (which the union is highly complicit in) especially for Maori, Pasifika and poorer students. His claim that we have “plenty of schooling choice” is true … if your family is wealthy or Catholic.
Zoning is now all about keeping challenging students out of “good schools”. The PPTA has abandoned those in need. The political Left should see them as “class-traitors”.
More evidence of our HUGE problems.
The Beginning
Reported at RNZ:
More evidence of our HUGE problems.
The Beginning
Reported at RNZ:
More than a quarter of teachers in schools in poor neighbourhoods said most of their pupils had oral language below the level expected of them, compared to just 3 percent of new entrant teachers in schools in rich neighbourhoods.
School teachers said some children could not talk in sentences of more than four or five words, spent a lot of time on devices and had little interaction with books.
"I have been teaching for 24 years and have never seen this low level of oral language."
We have a massive parenting crises in NZ and much of it is based on the FACT that many parents – especially those young and single – do not know how to parent and have very little understanding about all of the things that need to be done (or avoided), from conception through to 5 years old, for a child to start school well.
My take is that we need a carefully defined (i.e. ideology free and protected as such) Crown Entity for Parenting to ensure that EVERY parent and grandparent is fully informed about what it means to be a good parent and how to do it.
The Middle
Our attendance remains in deep crisis.
We also have 10,000 children enrolled nowhere and, in the last two years, The Correspondence School (Te Aho o Te Kura Pounamu) has gone from 6600 students to 8600 students.
In Term 4 of 2023 Sixty (yes 60) NZ High Schools had less than 30% of their students fully attending.
There is some good news. In Term 1 of this year, 60 reduced to 14 schools with below 30% full attendance. There is a caveat to that good news though.
In Term 1 2024, overall attendance (including Primary) was 61.7%. In Term 2 it was down below Term 4 2023 at 53.2% (down 0.4%).
Schools now operate under an Equity Index Number. The Ministry has decided to publish data in “EQI Bands”. For those still thinking in deciles, “Fewest” is close to what high decile schools were – “Most” is synonymous with low decile. Attendance is anonymized. It is the only major statistic that is, and I cannot think of a good reason why. This is the breakdown by band:
Click to view
There is a huge need to get the young people who need it the most to school. As stated above, in the main assessment term, 60 high schools had less than 30% full attendance. The impact of these abysmal statistics on our country is immense. But now that Charter Schools are back on the table the PPTA are trying to tell anyone who will listen that they have things under control.
The End
Each year I do a data process for the LEAVERS of every high school in NZ. I get the raw data in August and have just completed the process. Schools can see exactly how they stand against every other NZ school. They can then set goals to progress against a range of measures and also seek high performing schools to collaborate with.
Just one statistic will blow your mind.
University Entrance is a key qualification as it is the one that gives students the most choice. The top 40 schools in NZ had an average of 87% of their students graduate with UE. The bottom 40 schools had an average of 2.7% of their students graduate with UE.
NB: For those who want the full data-process/set I do for the LEAVERS of every high school in NZ by achievements – please email me on alwyn.poole@gmail.com
The End
Each year I do a data process for the LEAVERS of every high school in NZ. I get the raw data in August and have just completed the process. Schools can see exactly how they stand against every other NZ school. They can then set goals to progress against a range of measures and also seek high performing schools to collaborate with.
Just one statistic will blow your mind.
University Entrance is a key qualification as it is the one that gives students the most choice. The top 40 schools in NZ had an average of 87% of their students graduate with UE. The bottom 40 schools had an average of 2.7% of their students graduate with UE.
NB: For those who want the full data-process/set I do for the LEAVERS of every high school in NZ by achievements – please email me on alwyn.poole@gmail.com
Alwyn Poole, a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system, he founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. This article was sourced HERE
3 comments:
One of the problems with identity politics is that education is no longer considered the path to success. If you can't talk coherently, if you didn't regularly attend school and if you have no qualifications you can still run the country (or your local authority) just because of who you are.
>"There is a huge need to get the young people who need it the most to school."
But that's only if those kids and their parents see the relevance of schooling to them. It is a matter of who is saying, "You need this".
The expansion of vocational education within the traditional school system is one way to get recalcitrant teenagers interested. The need for a mixed schooling experience including conventional subjects such as English, Science and Maths alongside vocational subjects to attain formal qualifications is a huge shot in the arm when it comes to bringing the stragglers back into the fold.
This is not just speculation on my part - I have published a few papers in academic journals about school-level vocational education NZ, Aus and Lebanon. It works, but it has to be done properly so that it does not emerge as a second-best consolation prize for 'thick' kids.
Vocational education at school level particularly addresses the problem of underperforming and disinterested teenage boys.
You forgot to mention the large increases in homeschooling as well.as well. But this is probably mostly taken up by middle class people not the underclass who are the ones desperately in need of improvements in education.
My ancestor was an educationalist who back in the 1940s in NZ pioneered vocatiional training at secondary school. Incidentally why were the old technical colleges closed down?
One big difference between now and in our excellent educational past is the destruction of teaching the basics well. Just this week my hairdresser , in exasperation, explained how the young hairdressers couldn't work out 1/4 of 20ml in preparing hair dye. Also at the pharmacy. I observed the pharmacist had to use a calculator to find the answer to 4x6 ! My 'neighbour's child doesn't want to go to school because he has developed maths anxiety because he doesn't Know his times tables and is confused by all the different algorithms.for simple arithmetic manipulations.
Here is , definitively the problem : lack of effective teaching of basics instead of the current methods which from my perspective are purposely ineffective. That we have the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world is no accident Progressive Education was never an educational improvement but an ideology hell bent on indoctrinating our country into socialism and Marxism. Having a great number in the underclass of Maori and others serves Marxism well in reinforcing their ideology of the oppressed and oppressor with colonisation the supposed cause.
Of course the teachers unions , being left leaning will never accept their socialist Progressive Education is to blame .
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