Kerre Woodham: The ideologues are responsible for the education mess

There was a headline in The Post: ‘Scathing survey results from teachers on NCEA level 1 roll out’. That was the headline. The story goes on: “A survey of teachers saw the vast majority indicate that the NCEA standards are poorly designed, changes have increased workloads, there's insufficient support from NZQA NCEA, and the provided exemplars often don't align with assessment specifications.”

So legitimate concerns. Teachers have been dealing with massive changes of curriculum and it's no wonder that many of them have thrown in the towel. In fact, it's a wonder more of them haven't thrown in the towel. So, this government, the clear implication is, has stuffed up right? Scathing survey results from teachers on NCEA Level 1 rollout. That's very, very clear in the headline that the teachers are furious with this government, that is what the story implies. Education Minister Erica Stanford was on this morning talking to Heather du Plessis-Allan and she said no, the fault lies with the previous administration.

“I get on very, very well with Chris Abercrombie and the PPTA. And to be fair to them, technically the grumblings that they're having at the moment is not with the curriculum, because there is no curriculum, it's with the NCEA changes to Level 1, and that is aimed at the previous government, and I agree wholeheartedly with them.

“When I came into office last year I saw some results that showed that well over half of schools felt not prepared or only somewhat prepared for next year's Level 1. This is in November I saw this. And then I started fielding calls from principals and teachers saying we don't know what to teach next year because there are no subject learning outcomes, we don't have any exemplars.

“So we had six weeks to scramble with the Subject Associations to write subject learning outcomes over Christmas — Associations did an amazing job— and push NZQA to get those exemplars ready, that weren't going to be ready till May. This was a disastrous rollout by the previous government of NCEA Level 1.”

Who do we believe? I mean, there were massive changes to the curriculum under the previous administration, absolutely massive, and I do not blame teachers for being fed up. The coalition government said we are going to correct a lot of those changes, the curriculum that was being rolled out is going to be drawn back in and we're going to rewrite it and get back to the basics.

There was very little guidance or support over the last six years, despite the huge numbers employed by the Ministry of Education. Remember the number of teachers employed by state schools rose by just over 5% from 2017 to 2022. In that same period, the number of full-time staff employed at the Ministry of Education rose by 55%. So the number of teachers actually at the coalface rose by 5%, the number of full-time staff at the Ministry of Education rose by 55%. There were 1700 more staff at the Ministry of Education than was employed in 2016, so they were undertaking huge projects. There was the building of classrooms, there was the new schools.

Then there were the changes to the curriculum, and it was a seismic ideological change, incorporating Te ao Māori into mathematics and into science and there was all kinds of debate going on, ideological debate about the relevance. The Royal Academy of Mathematics was, I think, furious. Not just sad, but furious. Te ao Maori has its place they said, in maths? No, no, no. Maths is maths, it's its own language.

So you have all of these people and the Ministry of Education, each with their own reckon and galloping along on their ideological stallion taking education in one direction. You had consultants up the ying yang, you had ten consulting firms that relied completely and utterly on the Ministry of Education for their funding, while they came up with their own reckons as well, they galloped off on their ideological stallions.

In came the coalition government who went whoa, come on, Tonto. No, we're pulling you in, come back - herded all the ideological stallions back into the paddock and then said right, we're getting on Dobbin the old cart horse and we're going to trudge along the field, and we're going to plough basic maths, and basic science, and basic English into our kids, this is what they need to learn to get them up the international standards.

And the teachers, they've been on the galloping horses. They've been going there and here and everywhere, and now they're back wondering what the hell was that? No wonder they need teacher only days. I hope the teacher only days involve lying on couches and having soothing compresses placed on their foreheads because they have been through a lot.

It's only when you go back and look through the proposed curriculum that was being laid out, especially under Chris Hipkins, as Minister of Education and then when he was Prime Minister, they were extraordinary. And there simply wasn't any underpinning to them to allow the teachers to teach. So, they were given these ideological concepts and very much left to their own devices to come up with their own kind of underpinning to teach it. And now it's all changed again.

If the teachers are confused, I'm not at all surprised. I don't know how you make this better and ultimately. You know, and I know that it's the kids who are suffering because it's you and I who are paying for the extra classes after school. Paying through the nose, finding money you don't have to shore up gaps in the knowledge because it's not the teachers. The ideologues are the ones responsible for the mess that education is in.

Kerre McIvor, is a journalist, radio presenter, author and columnist. Currently hosts the Kerre Woodham mornings show on Newstalk ZB - where this article was sourced.