Alwyn Poole: The future of education and why NZ needs to be there first

We are continuing to build new classrooms based on a model of education that is already outmoded. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

There is a seismic shift in education happening around the world, whether traditional authorities, bureaucracies, schools and teacher unions like it or not.

People have noted for decades that the industrial revolution model is dated but there was no clear alternative. There is now.

Around the world, the Covid response of many governments included shutting down schools, masking children, and mandating out many teachers. During these lockdowns, many students, and their families, took a long look at teacher quality, content being taught, use of time, and effective socialisation.

It was like looking for a good potato at the bottom of the bin.

Suddenly, parents had to take much more responsibility for how their children were being taught and what the quality of the learning experiences were. It wasn’t pretty and across the globe, including New Zealand, there has been a significant move towards different modes of learning/school and better pathways to credentials.

New Zealand is currently leading the way to failure. We are building more bricks and mortar classrooms. We have a “curriculum refresh” that is a slow train wreck. We have an incredibly dated teacher training system that has huge loss of income barriers to highly-qualified, career-experienced adults who might otherwise look to teaching as a second career.

Young people are voting with their feet and failing to fully attend (even the stereotypical diligent Asian students are down to 58 per cent). They are not coming back.

We have tried to recreate respect for our system through new NCEA credits in numeracy and literacy but completely failed to lead into it. Testing then showed that our NCEA level 1 failure rate could well climb from 13 per cent to over 50 per cent (and 90 per cent for low socio-economic students).

So, the changes have cumulatively been set back four years.

Finding truants and returning them to school is another role police are tasked with. Photo / Michael Cunningham

Schools are looking to set up their own diplomas.

Teacher unions are clinging to the face of the cliff through 1960s-style strikes, and the Minister of Education looks like a rabbit in the headlights while attempting to steer not only an ailing system but an out-of-control education bureaucracy that has swelled from 2700 employees to 4200 in just five years, in a remarkable inverse performance to that of our system.

So, what is the revolution and the system?

Firstly, the best of developmental neuroscience and what you could term “the art of parenting” is no longer in doubt, but we have a crisis in applying it in New Zealand.

We need a massive societal change in this area and fast. Becoming the leading nation for parenting is an imperative.

Secondly, we need a much-improved and more highly-qualified primary school workforce that includes a second adult support in many classrooms.

Teachers have to be willing to train, or retrain, in key areas such as teaching reading, maths and science. They need to be aspirational for every child - regardless of background or any fixed ability thinking. No excuses.

Thirdly, our curriculum needs to be simplified - not “refreshed” - where key subjects match the best on offer internationally.

Alwyn Poole.

Moves like combining biology and chemistry and significantly reducing entrepreneurial areas such as business and economics are simply misdirected.

We should be tapping into the world’s best curriculum and content writers, not restricting ourselves to a very small New Zealand pool that has many with ideological and not academic leanings.

Then we need to quickly understand that the traditional state secondary school - as a mode - is over.

Virtual classrooms are emerging as highly effective academic and social mechanisms with significant time efficiencies for students and families.

And here is the kicker: the very best teachers of skills and content in the world are now available, often for free, for students to both access and interact with. People want more and better-qualified teachers for our schools. They already exist but not in the traditional form the unions and the ministry are desperate to protect.

In the vast majority of our high schools, the role of a classroom teacher needs to morph into someone who can aid students to access these teachers and then tutor, support, and motivate.

For schools that are perpetually struggling to get highly-qualified teachers, this is a huge solution, and AI mechanisms will increase the rate of change.

Our secondary teaching workforce is likely to halve and the Ministry of Education should shed 90 per cent of its staff.

It is an incredibly positive future for students and for people who are genuinely good at working with young people.

Will New Zealand lead this, or keep paddling the canoe up that creek with a paddle that was fashioned prior to 1900?

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