Certainly, Erica Stanford’s bigging up the new focus on structured learning. A press release out from her office says, as schools start back for 2025, there will be a relentless focus on teaching the basics brilliantly so all Kiwi kids grow up the knowledge, skills and competencies needed to grow the New Zealand of the future.
A world leading education system is a key driver to economic growth. Our future playwrights and songwriters need to have a mastery of literacy and numeracy as much as our future mechanical engineers, doctors and electricians, and so on and so forth.
It's kind of a call to arms for teachers and parents from Erica Stanford.
There's also an op-ed piece from a math's and statistics teacher in the Herald this morning, Peter Wills. He says, and he's looking at the failure rates for NCEA Level 1, the news that Kiwi kids did poorly in NCEA comes as no surprise.
Last month, NCEA results came out and we saw that in 2024 30% of students failed Level 1, slightly under a third of our kids could not pass basic numeracy and literacy tests associated with NECA Level 1. That was this 18% in 2023. Erica Stanford said the results were expected, that there’d be a high proportion of students who would not pass because they were putting in minimum standards.
Now most countries we compare ourselves to - United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore, the US and Australia all have numeracy and literacy tests and these have been introduced because we know it's bad, but we need know how bad it is. 30% couldn't pass NCEA Level 1 last year.
So: If you don't have NCEA level 1, it's really difficult to get a decent job, to enter any kind of training. Just by passing NCEA Level 1 on average, a student earns $12K more a year and is significantly more likely to get a job and enter training. They’ve got more choices. You get an education, you have more choices. You don't have to be a brain surgeon you know, but you are still going to need basic numeracy, basic literacy to get any kind of job you want.
Getting students to pass the CAA S, which is the literacy and numeracy test is a top priority for schools across New Zealand, Peter Wills says. Mercifully, though he doesn't advocate dropping standards, which you can imagine other administrations might opt for to allow more young people to pass. He says maths teachers are adamant that the standard not be lowered to compensate for low pass rates.
You teach better, you teach differently. You give the kids the basic skills they need to pass. What we had before wasn't working and you know that, employers know that, parents know that.
That's why so many parents are spending thousands of dollars per child every year to shore up the gaps in their children's knowledge with private tuition, or sending them to private schools. They know the state education is, and has been, sub-standard, and it's not the fault of the teachers, it's the policy wonks in the Ministry of Education, whose half baked theories? Formulated over dinner parties in Kelburn, inexplicably and inexcusably made it into the classroom.
And for decades now our once world-famous education system has degraded to where it is now. 30% of kids last year not passing the most basic secondary school exam. So as we start the school year as we with a call to arms from Erica Stanford and structured learning is going to be the saviour – and let's hope it is.
When it comes to employers, what are you seeing coming out of our schools at the moment? According to Peter Wills, it will be seven years before we see any benefits from structured learning.
We've got concerns about our productivity, we’ve investors as you heard this morning, travelling New Zealand looking for bright young things with startup ideas. Where the hell are those bright young things going to come from if we don't embrace the structured learning and reclaim our world class education.
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.
It's kind of a call to arms for teachers and parents from Erica Stanford.
There's also an op-ed piece from a math's and statistics teacher in the Herald this morning, Peter Wills. He says, and he's looking at the failure rates for NCEA Level 1, the news that Kiwi kids did poorly in NCEA comes as no surprise.
Last month, NCEA results came out and we saw that in 2024 30% of students failed Level 1, slightly under a third of our kids could not pass basic numeracy and literacy tests associated with NECA Level 1. That was this 18% in 2023. Erica Stanford said the results were expected, that there’d be a high proportion of students who would not pass because they were putting in minimum standards.
Now most countries we compare ourselves to - United Kingdom, Ireland, Singapore, the US and Australia all have numeracy and literacy tests and these have been introduced because we know it's bad, but we need know how bad it is. 30% couldn't pass NCEA Level 1 last year.
So: If you don't have NCEA level 1, it's really difficult to get a decent job, to enter any kind of training. Just by passing NCEA Level 1 on average, a student earns $12K more a year and is significantly more likely to get a job and enter training. They’ve got more choices. You get an education, you have more choices. You don't have to be a brain surgeon you know, but you are still going to need basic numeracy, basic literacy to get any kind of job you want.
Getting students to pass the CAA S, which is the literacy and numeracy test is a top priority for schools across New Zealand, Peter Wills says. Mercifully, though he doesn't advocate dropping standards, which you can imagine other administrations might opt for to allow more young people to pass. He says maths teachers are adamant that the standard not be lowered to compensate for low pass rates.
You teach better, you teach differently. You give the kids the basic skills they need to pass. What we had before wasn't working and you know that, employers know that, parents know that.
That's why so many parents are spending thousands of dollars per child every year to shore up the gaps in their children's knowledge with private tuition, or sending them to private schools. They know the state education is, and has been, sub-standard, and it's not the fault of the teachers, it's the policy wonks in the Ministry of Education, whose half baked theories? Formulated over dinner parties in Kelburn, inexplicably and inexcusably made it into the classroom.
And for decades now our once world-famous education system has degraded to where it is now. 30% of kids last year not passing the most basic secondary school exam. So as we start the school year as we with a call to arms from Erica Stanford and structured learning is going to be the saviour – and let's hope it is.
When it comes to employers, what are you seeing coming out of our schools at the moment? According to Peter Wills, it will be seven years before we see any benefits from structured learning.
We've got concerns about our productivity, we’ve investors as you heard this morning, travelling New Zealand looking for bright young things with startup ideas. Where the hell are those bright young things going to come from if we don't embrace the structured learning and reclaim our world class education.
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.
2 comments:
I have had a bad time in the last few days being subjected to MSM news items on Education. This was after reading Alwyn Poole's harsh attack on teaching subject matter in a structured way in his article on chartered schools although these I do commend , TVNZ selectively describing the superior Singapore maths as problem -solving based when it is actually highly structured , with rote learning , incorporating drills , revision and rote learning of tables in arithmetic with only one method of doing arithmetic algorithms ( like subtraction with two digits) and to add to this was K. Gurunathan's article in today's 'The Post' titled "Despite Mounting , there is No
Holding Back on the Maori Renaissance'. The usual Marxist -CRT narrative on coloniisation being the cause, featured greatly in this article.
Both Gurunathan and Poole were in today's 'The Post' and quoted the awful Maori statistics on education , crime and welfare which I agree needs to be known.
My problem is with their solutions which I believe staunchly are quite wrong. A return to our Traditional Education when we had a world class education which used highly structured methods is what is needed. It was aggressive atheism and Marxism thinking put into schooling which has resulted in the educational fiasco we have now.
If the Maori Renaissance means more 'science' like whale oil and songs to cure kauri die back disease and personification through animism of rivers and mountains. then heaven help us. Te Reo , incidentally is taught in a very structured way with grammar , chanting and repetition which is not how English basics of reading and maths are taught yet in most schools
We have ashamedly ,the longest tail of underachievement in the developed world and sadly Maori make up one third of this . But where is the concern for the other non Maori low achievers ? Complete selfishness. We need a renaissance that benefits everyone in NZ.
You're quite right Kerre. Much of the blame can be laid fairly at the feet of Iona Holsted, and her cabal of like-minded ideologues, including the likes of Rose Hipkins et al. It'll be a long, slow path back up from the bottom, while the remnants of their kind of thinking remains.
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