Editorial Tuesday July 29, 2014

Peter Jackson, Editor, The Northland Age

IT passes all understanding that election after election we find ourselves debating the public education system. Once again we are hearing about so much that is wrong with it, and how yet more hundreds of millions of dollars will fix it.

Every political party claims to have the answer, but some haven't even diagnosed the disease. And the proposed cures often have more to do with what they hope will attract votes than effecting a cure.

Despite all the analyses, all the statistics, the fact is that there isn't a lot wrong with our public education system per se. When all the stars align, kids in this country get a pretty good education. The problem for some is getting the stars to align. And the key to that lies far beyond the power of any school, any teacher, any principal, even any Minister of Education. The key is the child's home environment.

Just as the police and courts are basically powerless to do much that is constructive to curb crime, schools are generally powerless to teach children who don't want to learn, who don't turn up and/or don't have parents who want to see their children succeed. We hear again and again and again that children who start school as happy, confident, inquisitive 5-year-olds do well. Those who are hungry, unhappy, insecure, frightened, emotionally stunted, unmotivated and lacking the stimuli that they should have received in their pre-school years will generally not flourish. And for all the supposedly good intentions of politicians and teacher unions, there is bugger all that either can do to prepare children for what should be one of the big adventures of their lives. There's not much the school can do either to make up for the poor start.

Money won't fix it. Hone Harawira can feed kids at the taxpayer's expense until the cows come home, but that's not going to undo the damage done to children by parents who are so poorly organised, so selfish and/or so lacking in understanding of their fundamental obligations to their children that they don't feed them. Hungry kids are a symptom of a much greater malady. In fact feeding children at someone else's expense only exacerbates the problem, and absolving parents of their responsibility will never achieve the desired result.

Meanwhile stimulating a child's intellectual and emotional development needn't cost a brass razoo. That is something that politicians don't seem to understand. Surely some of them have children. And surely some of them remember how they raised their own children to prepare them for school.

The most important things any parent can do to stimulate their child's development is talking to them, listening to them, and giving them experiences that they enjoy, that will open their eyes to the world around them and will pique their interest.

That doesn't have to involve cost, and it certainly doesn't have to involve technology. In fact there is good cause to argue that children should be prohibited from encountering so-called educational technology at least until they enter secondary school.

Talking and listening to your kids, extending their vocabulary, teaching them to read people, encouraging questions and lighting their imagination will do them many more favours than access to any digital device.

The so-called 'tail' that we are told our schools are producing, great swathes of children who are fundamentally failing in terms of basic numeracy and literacy, is unlikely to be docked by any educational policy that has been announced so far this election campaign. Labour has promised to reduce the average class size, by three. Is that going to miraculously make a non-achiever receptive, and capable of absorbing what his teacher is trying to teach him? A class of say 25 children would obviously be preferable to one of 35, but plenty of experienced teachers have been quoted over recent weeks as saying that, all things being equal, class size counts for little, if anything, in terms of achievement.

In any event, Labour's 2000 extra teachers equates to fewer than one per school, the great majority of which, one suspects, won't see any extra staff, or indeed the extra classrooms that have not yet been mentioned, but will presumably be needed should a large school have three students shaved off every class.

Labour has also undertaken to ensure that every Year 5-13 student at every school has access to a portable digital device, for use in the classroom and at home. Of what earthly benefit will that be to a child whose parents don't give a hoot about his education? Given that Labour will chip in $100 per device, it also seems that the taxpayer's largesse will have to be matched, several times over, by parents, including those who are supposedly so poor that they can't even feed their kids.

Under Labour, of course, parents will at least be spared the cost of school fees. That might not be a bad idea, but if schools are levying compulsory contributions, euphemistically referred to as voluntary donations, to make ends meet then politicians should be looking at whether their basic funding is adequate. Every school should be funded to a level that enables it to do the job it needs to do, without all sorts of add-ons and subsidies here there and everywhere.

Meanwhile Labour will dispense with national standards (which appear, to this layman, to simply provide a means of identifying which kids need help in core subjects early enough to help them before they lose more ground than they are likely to recover), which least rewards the teacher unions for their loyalty.

And it's promising to extend free early childhood education to 25 hours a week, while the Greens want to give it to 2-year-olds. If the former is cynical, the latter is loopy. This newspaper challenges the Green Party to produce any research showing that a 2-year-old child benefits from pre-school education provided outside the home (day care). All the research this newspaper is aware of strongly supports the view that a 2-year-old is infinitely better off at home with a parent. Research has found that children who come from dysfunctional (for want of a better word) families may benefit from day care, but only because it beats life at home. For those who are not already at a huge disadvantage, day care at two has been found to do more harm than good.

The problem we have is with politicians who promulgate policies on the basis that they might attract votes. This is a prime example of that. If the Greens genuinely wanted to better the lot of some New Zealand children it would be looking to improve their lives at home rather than packing them off to day care before they're even house trained.

The Greens insult our intelligence again by promising to spend $20 million on subsidising solar panels for 500 schools, which they say will save those schools $41 million over 25 years, the life span of the panels. That equates to $3280 per school per annum, which they might spend on toast and jam for kids whose parents won't feed them, or subsidised tablets that will never make up for what some kids have missed out on long before they start school.

If educational achievement is to improve across the board we need policies that will encourage parents to prepare their kids for school, and life. That's a bit harder than doling out cash though. And that's why we won't be getting them.