1. Enrolments in Te Kura (formerly the Correspondence School) are now at 31,000 – a 32% increase since 2018. The achievement levels of this school are very low with 8.7% of leavers having UE.
2. Our attendance statistics remain in an incredibly poor state:
– full attendance (90%) for all ethnicities in Term 4 2024 was 58%
– full attendance for Maori was 44.1%
– full attendance for Pasifika was 42.4%
3. There is a massive amount of students not enrolled anywhere at all …
“Figures released under the Official Information Act to Newstalk ZB show nearly 10,000 5 to 13-year-olds were not enrolled in the official school system as of 2022 – a significant jump from slightly more than 6300 reported in the year before.”
Please note that the figure is just primary school students.
4. Home-school figures remain very high.
“At the middle of last year there were 10,757 children in home-schooling, about the same as in 2023 and not much less than 2022’s all-time high of 10,899.
Prior to the pandemic, homeschooling enrolments were increasing by 200-300 each year and in 2019 there were 6573 enrolments.”
National are treating all of these problems with their heads in the sand and only making incremental changes that will have marginal effects – at best.
5. Retention until 17yo continues to diminish.
In 2023, 79 percent of school leavers remained at school until their 17th birthday. This is the lowest retention rate since 2013. Retention of senior students has dropped 6.4 percentage points since the peak rate in 2015.
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 published HERE
2. Our attendance statistics remain in an incredibly poor state:
– full attendance (90%) for all ethnicities in Term 4 2024 was 58%
– full attendance for Maori was 44.1%
– full attendance for Pasifika was 42.4%
3. There is a massive amount of students not enrolled anywhere at all …
“Figures released under the Official Information Act to Newstalk ZB show nearly 10,000 5 to 13-year-olds were not enrolled in the official school system as of 2022 – a significant jump from slightly more than 6300 reported in the year before.”
Please note that the figure is just primary school students.
4. Home-school figures remain very high.
“At the middle of last year there were 10,757 children in home-schooling, about the same as in 2023 and not much less than 2022’s all-time high of 10,899.
Prior to the pandemic, homeschooling enrolments were increasing by 200-300 each year and in 2019 there were 6573 enrolments.”
National are treating all of these problems with their heads in the sand and only making incremental changes that will have marginal effects – at best.
5. Retention until 17yo continues to diminish.
In 2023, 79 percent of school leavers remained at school until their 17th birthday. This is the lowest retention rate since 2013. Retention of senior students has dropped 6.4 percentage points since the peak rate in 2015.
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 published HERE
2 comments:
There is very little that could be called education in our schools .It would be better to call it out for what they are -centers for indoctrination into social engineering .
To have improvement is nothing to do with money spent but rather cancelling out all the ideologies , cults and other educational nonsense masquerading as schooling.
Among the worst ideas are :
Arithmetic ( primary maths) is taught chaotically , making it impossible for children to master it. Essential rote learning of basic facts and algorithms is still not acceptable. Memorizing is scorned discouraging children from retaining information. Primary teachers are frequently incompetent in arithmetic.
Flawed reading instruction is used based on guessing . The WL ( Whole Language) readers class texts are still geared to this even if some phonics instruction is given and some phonic readers are used. .
Constructivism is injected into every course ie children teach themselves by 'reinventing the wheel '.
Group learning is everywhere enforced discouraging independent thinking. The ineffective method of learning project work dominates.
Handwriting is not taught even though this skill helps with reading . writing, and vocabulary and more . Key boarding prevails and too much time is spent in front of screens.
Spelling , grammar , comprehension and daily written work is lacking preventing the development of fluent accurate written work.
Standards are kept low , precision disdained, sloppiness tolerated , ignorance accepted. Little of children's school work is completed, marked or corrected. There is no homework.
Self -esteem is relentlessly pushed in giving rewards certificates , stickers etc for bad jobs .
Then there is the frightful class behaviour of bullying , rudeness and other brutish behaviour towards the teacher and other students. The noise in many classes rooms is intolerable.
This is without the mentioning of all the indoctrination which others mention - transgender and explicit sexual material, the climate cult, Critical Race Theory, warped history , no geography , Mataurangi Maori Science and religious cults., Te Reo which can confuse English literacy acquisition because of very different pronunciation of vowels. .
Why would any responsible parent or sensitive child eager to learn want anything to do with a NZ school particularly at the primary level. ?
I attended primary school in the early 50s. It was definitely phonics. (When young work colleagues asked how to spell I answered in phonic alphabet; a mystery to them). We spent hours on holding pencil/pen and fluid cursive writing. Arithmetic was assisted by "borrowing and pay back" which I still mentally do, and other dubious "rules". Because it was so ingrained, teachers (and parents) knew from their own pupil days what they had to teach; just had to refine delivery and class control. Did not require years of pedantic university study. Marking was severe (may have been moderated for the little able). My father's books of the 1920s much more so. Teachers had a simple syllabus; fixed matter which they could easily master in full. Years of academic university pondering an irrelevant waste of time and misdirection of effort. Just fosters obscure modern academic style expression. All reports ranked achievement in class number order, preparation for the reality of the real world. On RNZ recently some school rebuilt after damage ditched shared classrooms for single rooms; the teachers were overjoyed. My wife used to relieve teach. She loathed schools with a strong maori emphasis as the forever reverbrating haka and kapahaka constantly distracted. She was also a Reading Recovery teacher spreading the bewildering Marie Clay gospel. Apart from all other drawbacks it does not enable children to build words for writing.
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