Education standards will increase with great parenting - Alwyn Poole

Much of the information around NCEA as a qualification is so complex, Sherlock Holmes would struggle to find anything elementary. Photo / 123RF

OPINION

It is with all justification that education was a significant part of the election campaign in 2023.

Not only are high-profile international measures showing a decline in the performance of New Zealand students, but we have many internal indicators showing major issues. We have more than 10,000 students not enrolled at all.

In term three of 2023, only 47 per cent of students were regularly attending school (40 per cent for Years 9-13). For Māori and Pasifika, it was 34 per cent.

We have great disparities across socio-economic levels. The top 30 high schools have their leavers graduating with University Entrance at 87 per cent. The bottom 30 schools have their leavers graduating with University Entrance at 3 per cent.

Principals are frequently in the media bemoaning that lack of quality teachers and also made that clear in the Pisa surveys.

From 2017 through to 2021, the number of first-year university students coming from decile one to five schools declined from 38 per cent to 28 per cent.

We have had the Ministry of Education grow from 2700 employees in 2017 to 4200 in 2023 in an inverse trend to the performance of our schools and students.

With the re-emergence of Partnership Schools, the PPTA has immediately come out and said there is no need for them as there is already choice available in the New Zealand system. They are right if you’re discussing students and families in Epsom and affluent areas of Wellington and Christchurch. It is a great paradox when a union protects the status quo for the wealthy.

While there is potential for the Government to improve the education system, measures will have only marginal effects without a huge improvement in the parenting of our children and families truly understanding, and being welcomed into, their role in education.

As brilliant and inspirational New Zealand neuroscience educator Nathan Wallis notes, children do not come with a manual.

However, what we have learned in the last 25 years about brain development during pregnancy and in the first three to five years provides insight that every parent needs to know. As a society, we need to create information portals that ensure all expecting and new parents have a “manual”.

Standford neuroscientist David Eagleman notes in The Brain: The Story of You: “Without an environment with emotional care and cognitive stimulation, the human brain cannot develop normally.” That deserves to be read over and over again.

In 30 years of being involved in teaching and research, I have never met a parent who does not love their child and want the very best for them.

However, I have met many who do not know how to create the best environment, who are overwhelmed and stressed by parenthood and who are completely baffled and feel fenced-out by the education system and often by the school their children are attending. From a ministerial level, words like “pedagogy” and phrases like “the science of learning” are thrown around.

School reports are full of jargon or are impenetrable waffle and colour charts. All of which creates the appalling sense that “education” is better left to the experts - who are often protecting an industry. Much of the information around NCEA as a qualification is so complex, Sherlock Holmes would struggle to find anything elementary.

The great C.S. Lewis said: ”Don’t use words too big for the subject” - which is a profound lesson for anyone involved in education in New Zealand.

It is almost impossible for a school to do well with a child without supportive and knowledgeable parents. Therefore, the great education imperative for the Government is not phonics, back to basics, or banning cellphones (all of which may create marginal improvements).

It is creating an environment where parents from pregnancy until the end of high-school (at least) are fully informed, fully involved and treated as the first and most important educators throughout that time.

This includes breaking the perceived link between parenting and wealth. The exceptions disprove the “rule”. There are clearly great parents with very little money and failing parents with plenty.

My first child’s sleep-space for a year was the wardrobe of our one-bedroom flat. He has done okay, as have the next two - who were hardly born into affluence. Books are not expensive through libraries and op-shops (plus the great work of organisations like Duffy’s).

Every child in New Zealand being read to every night would do more for our education than any possible impact from curriculum reform. We also have so many amazing experiences here that cost little or nothing. Good parenting does not require a lot of money.

The only sure way to improve New Zealand’s standing in international measures like Pisa as well as our internal education struggles is through making New Zealand the country in the world with the greatest parenting.

My suggestion is an information-based ( not intervention or ideological) Crown Entity for parenting. Schools will thrive when parenting thrives.

· Alwyn Poole of Innovative Education Consultants was a co-founder of Mt Hobson Academy Connected, South Auckland Middle School and Middle School West Auckland.