Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 6/12/24

Today’s Friday – which means Winston must be in Auckland, sorting out the world’s problems with the Aussies

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has been earning his keep. Yesterday he announced he had completed his visit to New Caledonia, New Zealand’s closest neighbour. Today he has been engaged in talks with Australian big-wigs.

His trip to Nouméa took place this week following the postponement of a planned visit in May due to civil unrest.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Private Charities, Tutors & Mathematics Challenges are Beating the State on Maths Education.....

Back to Basics: Private Charities, Tutors & Mathematics Challenges are Beating the State on Maths Education.

Those of us in the trade have long known that the quality of maths education in NZ was in decline, before it became news headlines and a political issue. So years ago, a Charity I help run started awarding prizes for Maths teachers. Good Maths teachers have a big range of employment opportunities outside teaching - making the salaries they receive in schools often unattractive. The least we could do was offer them Best Maths Teacher Prizes. In 2017 we gave our inaugural Kalman Teacher Excellence Prize to Subash Chandar at Ormiston Junior College in South East Auckland. Today he features on the front page the NZ Herald:

Dr Michael Johnston: Emergency measures for maths education

As an education academic, I taught the quantitative component of a research methods paper for the Master of Education programme. Most of the students undertaking that qualification were mid-career teachers.

Many had a mild panic response to the very idea of learning even rudimentary statistics. Sometimes, the panic was more serious. Occasionally, there were tears.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 5/8/24

Seymour keeps count of truants while his colleagues are counting on being able to halt the slide in Kiwi maths results

Our leaders in the past few days have focused on education and what they are doing – or will be doing – to improve the schooling of our children.

Associate Education Minister David Seymour is braying about school attendance improvements over the first two weeks of term three, brandishing data to show “that when the government takes education seriously, so do New Zealanders”.

Rt Hon Christopher Luxon, Hon Erica Stanford: Government transforms maths education

The Government will transform maths education to tackle New Zealand’s chronic problem with maths and set kids – and New Zealand – up for success, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford say.

New data from the Curriculum Insights and Progress Study (CIPS) shows just 22 per cent of Year 8 students in New Zealand are at the expected curriculum benchmark for mathematics. It shows just 12 per cent of Māori students are where they should be and that 63 per cent of the overall Year 8 cohort are more than a year behind.