- A semi-vacuum at Year 11.
- 4 out of 5 subjects to “pass” Year 12.
- 4 out of 5 subjects to pass Year 13. No clear guidance on University Entrance. The Minister, herself, predicting outcome declines in the early years of the changes.Consultation closing on the proposed NZ English Curriculum that, to me, appears highly restrictive and significantly boring – unless you are already over 60yo. https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2025/07/two_major_problems_with_the_proposed_nz_english_curriculum.html
– Marginal improvements in the 2024 leavers data for Lever 2 NCEA, Level 3 NCEA and UE.
– A decline in the NCEA Level 1 pass rates for leavers in 2024. This will set the trend for the next two years. 16% of all students who left the NZ education system in 2024 did not have Level 1 NCEA. For Maori that stat was 28%. To repeat 28% of Maori students who left the NZ education system last year (each of whom would have had at least 3,200 funded classroom hours) had no qualification at all.
– We are starting to discuss “norm-referenced” assessments again. This ignores much of the progress in neuroscience in the last 25 years. A teacher’s job is to significantly improve ALL students – like an athletics coach, dance teacher, music teacher, etc. Heading back to a School Certificate, 50% pass-rate, paradigm is like changing the length of the mile every time an athlete runs under 4 minutes.
– For Erica Stanford to be a good and effective Minister of Education – not just a populist – she has one job. She needs to imagine the outcomes of our school qualifications system as 100 houses and to ensure that – at each level – all are fit for purpose and excellent to live in. At present 16 houses of 100 at Level 1 are a mess. For Maori it is 28 out of 100. All of her changes so far do little except reinforce the position of the students who would achieve under any system. She appears to have been captured by a self-interested elite.
A truly effective society looks after those who need it the most. Stanford is significantly failing by that measure – and does not appear to have intent or strategy to change that trajecotory. If self-interest and the economy is important for many onlookers – what are the ongoing effects of 28% of Maori students leaving school with no qualifications at all.
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
– A decline in the NCEA Level 1 pass rates for leavers in 2024. This will set the trend for the next two years. 16% of all students who left the NZ education system in 2024 did not have Level 1 NCEA. For Maori that stat was 28%. To repeat 28% of Maori students who left the NZ education system last year (each of whom would have had at least 3,200 funded classroom hours) had no qualification at all.
– We are starting to discuss “norm-referenced” assessments again. This ignores much of the progress in neuroscience in the last 25 years. A teacher’s job is to significantly improve ALL students – like an athletics coach, dance teacher, music teacher, etc. Heading back to a School Certificate, 50% pass-rate, paradigm is like changing the length of the mile every time an athlete runs under 4 minutes.
– For Erica Stanford to be a good and effective Minister of Education – not just a populist – she has one job. She needs to imagine the outcomes of our school qualifications system as 100 houses and to ensure that – at each level – all are fit for purpose and excellent to live in. At present 16 houses of 100 at Level 1 are a mess. For Maori it is 28 out of 100. All of her changes so far do little except reinforce the position of the students who would achieve under any system. She appears to have been captured by a self-interested elite.
A truly effective society looks after those who need it the most. Stanford is significantly failing by that measure – and does not appear to have intent or strategy to change that trajecotory. If self-interest and the economy is important for many onlookers – what are the ongoing effects of 28% of Maori students leaving school with no qualifications at all.
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:
Crikey Alwyn. Stanford has reformed the nz education system in one year, using the successful back to basics UK system as a guide, producing a collective sigh of relief from parents who watched declining education standards and results over decades, whilst being hit with new incomprehensible marking systems and reports every few years, and all you can do is complain?
Are you advocating we stay with Mallard's disastrous education model which has overpaid teachers overseeing our children's (disproportionately our boys) slide down the international educational achievement tables?
As Stanford states....
"NZs international PISA [Programme for International Student Assessment] rankings, have tanked, but if you look at NCEA, it's gone up. Now, those two things cannot be both true.”
I agree with balanced . For decades parents have been asking for 'back to basics' . Now secondary principals are in despair at the poor level of numeracy and literacy in students coming out of primary school. Numeracy and literacy testing are essential. But Alwyn didn't mention any of this which I can't understand.
Where Erica has failed , for me . is in continuing down the path of considering Maori students as victims of colonisation or whatever and need their 'self esteem ' boosted by maorification of our entire education system . If Maori are victims it is because of a combination of self -destructive behaviours plus crazy constructivist ideologies in our education system . One of these ideologies is Marxism which notoriously never improves the lot of the under dog it is supposedly trying to help.
Having been involved for 40 plus years , in remediating underachievers in the basics , including Maori , I state with confidence and experience , the answer for Maori and the other unfortunates in our long tail of underachievement is old fashioned structured learning . This involves strict discipline , explicit instruction , high knowledge content , a work ethic , traditional morality and the teacher as the authority in the classroom . All these tenets are complete anathema to most of our present educational elites, a percentage of politicians and the population whom , I believe have been indoctrinated into progressive / Marxist doctrine .
Right from the beginning ( in the 1950s) progressive education , dismissed the basics as of lesser importance than socializing students.. My grandparent was a renowned educationalist then, and just one of my sources of knowledge confirmed by other historical evidence,
What I am saying is backed by cognitive and neurosecience research and English brave educationalists like Katherine Burbalsingh who are producing astonishingly high academic achievement in low decile schools. Our own excellent educational past , when we were the envy of the world also proves I am right. .
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