Angus Fletcher: Education more vital than politics

Photo / Richard Robinson

Our performance levels in literacy and numeracy are topical at the moment with media and community attention being given to the Government's policy and introduction of National Standards into schools.

The National Party focused on numeracy and literacy in the lead up to last year's election. The appalling statistic they quoted was that 20 per cent, or one in five, kids are leaving school at the earliest opportunity, uneducated.

What is worse, and this is a personal reflection, they are likely to have no aspiration for learning; no concept of the opportunities derived through education and continued learning. Most have no goal or ambitions. Once you mix drugs and alcohol into this mind-set you get kids that lose their sense of hope.

Now one wonders how this appalling situation has been allowed to develop. But it will remain where you get political and bureaucratic denial. Full credit to the incoming Government for at least elevating this issue into the public consciousness.

But the question now is - what set of policies will the Government introduce to correct this situation?

If you go to the Ministry of Education website all the attention is focused on the introduction of National Standards. The key objective is that from 2010 parents of children at primary or intermediate school will receive regular school reports showing how their child is doing against the national standards in reading, writing and maths.

Can the minister and Ministry of Education honestly represent that this will deal with the 20 per cent "failure tail" in education? I can see how this policy appeals to a political party at election time - it is promoting the prospect of better academic performance information to parents, even the prospect of better educational outcomes to middle New Zealand.

But you can assume for quite a high proportion of the 80 per cent the level of information provided by schools to parents probably is not too bad. Yet from next year, irrespective of how the pupils and the school are performing, all primary and intermediate schools are going to have to meet these compliance standards developed, imposed and monitored by the Ministry of Education.

The programme on literacy and numeracy should be directed at the problem - at the 20 per cent and not the 80 per cent. This failure rate represents an enormous problem for Auckland. About 52 per cent of New Zealand's decile one students are in the Auckland region. There are 159 low decile schools (that's decile one to three) in the region. In decile one schools in the Auckland region there are 29,800 kids on the funding roll and of that number, 27,700 are Maori or Pacific Islanders.

I am on the board of a trust which has an educational programme directed at children in the transition from pre-school to primary school and involves the parents.

It's a joy as we engage Maori and Pacific Island parents in taking responsibility for their children's future, but our tutors are going into houses in which there is no conversation. There is noise - television as the third parent. But there is no talking.

There is generational illiteracy and the Ministry of Education thinks sending a report is going to change this. I think our standard of literacy and numeracy in schools is cause for national shame. We will get to the end of the three-year electoral cycle and there will be no measurable improvement in literacy and numeracy. National Standards may be good politics but its bad education policy.

Arguably the problem is even now greater than what the education sector can deal with alone. We need teachers that can handle these dysfunctional classes and kids. The schools need to be properly resourced, including putting support staff alongside the teachers in dysfunctional classes. Teachers in low decile areas must be properly selected and remunerated for what is a hugely demanding task - but the remuneration must be based on performance, not on service.

To the naysayer that queries the cost, let's put that in a context. We must be spending at least $100,000 now on each and every one of these kids over their school years only for them to leave education at the earliest opportunity, uneducated.

While the Ministry of Education heads off in the wrong direction, it will continue to be up to the not-for-profit sector to introduce the new and innovative educational programmes. However, although these non-government programmes are numerous and effective they are not designed to replace classroom-based teaching.

Hopefully the not-for profit programmes will continue and let's hope the Government undertakes a reality check on their policies around National Standards and instead focuses on dealing with literacy and numeracy issues.

* Angus Fletcher is chairman of The Fletcher Trust (which looks to support new educational initiatives).