Richard Prebble: Improve education for the sake of our children - and our country

National's focus on schooling is driven by what matters, not by the polls, writes Richard Prebble. Photo / 123RF

OPINION:

Policies that Labour claimed were vital are now being dropped because they do not poll well. In contrast, National has announced that it will campaign on education because it is vital.

In February’s Ipsos issues poll, education does not register as concerning voters.

So you can feel Christopher Luxon is sincere when he said at the party’s education launch: “Since coming to politics, the systemic failure in New Zealand’s education system is what has shocked me more than anything else”.

“Two-thirds of secondary school students failed to meet the minimum standard in reading, writing and maths, while 98 per cent of decile one year 10 students failed a basic writing test.”

What Luxon says is correct. This generation of school pupils will not read as well as their parents.

The decline has been going on for 20 years but has accelerated under this Government.

Educationalists will always be able to say the huge and growing gap between public and private schools’ exam results is explained by socioeconomic reasons.

But it is hard to learn if you do not go to school. There is chronic absenteeism.

It is hard to learn to read, write and do arithmetic if schools do not teach it.

The curriculum is now stuffed with subjects like “managing self” and “relating to others” that educationalist Dr Michael Johnston says are best learned outside the classroom.

How is it possible to go to school for 13 years and not know the basics? The answer is that too many are not at school. Those who are at school are not being taught.

Real learning takes time and lots of practice. Studies of people who are very successful reveal that mastering any worthwhile skill requires 6000 hours of practice. To be world-class requires 10,000 hours. It is lack of practice, not lack of natural ability, that is the reason young drivers have so many crashes.

There have been huge advances in understanding how humans learn. Put simply, our rational brain with which we learn has very limited storage. Learning must be transferred to our subconscious brain. It takes time to know, without having to consciously think about it, that seven times seven is 49.

To competently read, write and do arithmetic, the basic knowledge has to be transferred to the subconscious part of the brain. If you want to know more about what science has discovered about learning, I recommend Dr Barbara Oakley’s book Learning how to learn.

Knowledge comes in layers. In maths, if you do not know the previous layer you cannot grasp the next.

It may seem simplistic for Luxon to pledge that “National will require all primary and intermediate schools to teach an hour of reading, an hour of writing and an hour of maths, on average, every day”, but he is right.

A classmate became a primary school principal. When he was appointed, the school’s maths results were very poor. There were teachers who did not like maths and were not teaching the subject. He insisted all teachers teach for the recommended time. Results improved. He then doubled the time teaching maths. The school’s maths results became outstanding.

“No one from the ministry was interested,” he told me. “Instead, they criticised the school for not spending enough time on cultural activities. My pupils have one chance to learn maths; they can spend the rest of their lives exploring culture.”

The improvement was permanent. There are three contributing schools to the local high school, all with a very similar socioeconomic background. Two-thirds of pupils from the other schools dropped maths as soon as they could. Two-thirds of the pupils from his school took maths through to Year 13. His pupils had far greater career choices.

His pupils loved maths because we tend to love what we are good at.

Luxon is also right when he promises a “standardised, robust assessment of student progress in reading, writing and maths at least twice a year every year from Year 3 to Year 8.” One of the most important maxims from management is: “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”.

Why wait until pupils are 15 before discovering they have not learned the basics?

We need other improvements such as teaching reading using research-based techniques. Teacher training needs improvement. A woke history curriculum will not solve Māori educational achievement.

If we care about child poverty, then we must give every child an education to equip them for life.

We must pay schools for the pupils they teach, not the pupils they enrol. We must require schools to teach reading, writing and maths for the time it really takes to learn.

The record of parties that ignore the polls and campaign on what matters is not good. But then, the record of nations that neglect to educate their young is even worse.

- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.