It seems paradoxical but, as an avid researcher of the New Zealand education system – particularly at a secondary school results platform – I am optimistic. The results for the system have never been worse but it is no longer covered up and everyone with half a gram of interest knows that things must change.
Going “back to basics” is always one of those terms open to derision. It reeks of boredom and old-fashioned rote learning. We need to look at “going back to basics” in a different light.
It means families getting up together – having breakfast and preparing for school – each and every day.
It means schools making learning challenging and worthwhile.
Children and their families must be inspired by the schools. If there is a negative or complaining element to any teacher, they need to go fruit-picking as working with our youth is a very great privilege.
Our attendance statistics have been appalling of late. Just over 20 per cent of our former decile 1 students were meeting the 90 per cent threshold. Hand on heart, if I was a 14-year-old, there are many of our high schools I would beg my parents not to enrol me in. I would double the number of schools I would not send my children to.
School quality, inspirational leadership and brilliant teachers are our pathway to the future.
How do we get there? Between Chris Hipkins, Jan Tinetti and Willie Jackson, there has been no effective educational leadership from the top in the past six years. That is not to say that the previous nine years were any better – they were not – statistics tell that truth.
Our Ministry of Education is inept, not open to sector review, and is also captured by fringe elements that lead our young people’s education on a range of tangents.
There are remarkable actors available to recreate a system of success.
John Hattie – now Melbourne-based – is treasured around the globe as one of the great education researchers and advocates for high-quality solutions. Nathan Wallis truly understands the needs of very young Kiwis. Nathan Durie and his Manakura team have produced a model school for Maori achievement.
The Duffy Books in Homes people get the need to read. Mike King knows that our kids need love and aspiration. The Catholic schools system – led by St Peters in Epsom and Baradene – show that we can keep kids in school, attending and achieving.
I really don’t care who gets the credit but 2023 needs to be the year that the New Zealand education system explodes into life.
Alwyn Poole.
If you are a parent, write a letter to your school tomorrow to say that you hope for the best education possible from them for 2023, that you will get your child to school every day (unless their leg has fallen off), and that you are available to help.
Good-to-great education is a matter of will.
In a superb book called The Smartest Kids in the World, Amanda Ripley notes that New Zealand was the one country in the whole world where parents reading to their children made the greatest difference.
Let’s make 2023 the best schooling year we have ever seen. It’s up to you.
-Alwyn Poole is on the Villa Education Trust and operates Innovative Education Consultants.
