Schools need to get back to basics, too - Alwyn Poole

The last few years have seen significant growth in teacher-only days. Photo / 123rf

OPINION

Schools need to get back to basics, too.

The new Government has made much about their “back to basics” of an hour of reading, writing and maths a day for every school child from years one to eight”. There is merit in much of it - depending on implementation at both the national and school level. When we add to that the ERO report placing NZ at the bottom of the OECD for student behaviour and changes needed it is obvious schools will continue to be facing huge burdens. There is also, apparently, still considerable work going on to improve the high school qualification pathways.

There are questions about these curriculum changes though, and three broad ones are coming up most frequently. In a five-hour teaching day, when will science, technology (i.e. STEM), NZ history (compulsory), social studies, exercise, languages, art, music and health be taught? How are the back-to-basics changes to be prioritised for teaching and support staff when they are also being pushed to a high level of welfare involvement (e.g. feeding children), dealing with the OECD’s worst-behaved children, trying to get children to school and then - on the occasions that they are there - trying to catch them up? They are also dealing with an increasing number of students with learning needs. Is our primary teacher workforce well enough qualified and trained to teach maths and literacy well (let alone science) – especially with the changing methodologies being imposed?

A huge part of the solution is that schools, with the full support of parents and the Ministry of Education, need to get back to basics too.

Schools need to be fully open every day of the school year. While bemoaning having to work hours in the evening, weekends and holidays - like most salaried workers on the planet - teachers have 12-14 weeks holiday a year. If you drive past your local school, there are also a lot of empty parking spaces at 3.30pm.

The last few years have seen significant growth in teacher-only days (anathema to “every day/hour counts”) and schools choosing to hold their parent interviews during school hours and sending students home to allow it. These practices are a huge imposition on families involving them taking leave and having their children unsupervised or with paid carers. For the working poor who are likely to have less than four weeks of leave a year, it is simply crass. The collective agreement includes call-back days from within the holidays for professional development, etc, – they should be used as opposed to sending children home. Add in last year’s teacher strikes and all of the lost time from the government’s Covid response and it is easy to see how no child/family thinks the sector believes “every child counts” and it is why we have an attendance crisis.

For students and staff, minimising pointless assemblies and form times can be effective. No one genuinely likes downtime in the school days and listening to principals bang on endlessly is very 1970s.

If we take it as a given that the vast majority of teachers are dedicated and conscientious then allow/insist they get a high proportion of their work done within the school day and week. From a ministry level, there should be a huge reduction in the administration and busy work imposed on principals, management and teaching staff. Within schools, principals need to ensure that long, tedious, morale-breaking staff meetings simply never occur. Of the thousands of staff meetings I have attended over the years my best guess is that 10 per cent of the content was relevant to me for improving my teaching work. Encouraging teachers to stay at school and get their tasks done up to 4.30-5pm will also reduce that holiday load. To alleviate the stress of many principals, it can be important to recognise that they are trained educators and not business people or resource managers. Having a genuine business manager alongside principals in schools can free them to do their real job.

The government has proposed to review the Ka Ora Ka Ako healthy school lunches programme. Photo / NZME

If a school is in the school lunch programme, then there should not be a single student, teacher or teacher-aid out of class for a minute of any day preparing or organising the meals. Recent data and evidence show that the $324 million spent is ill-directed, having almost no effect on attendance, and has significant waste (some of which teachers are eating, food banks are receiving, and even pig farmers receiving). If the programme is not heavily re-defined and very closely attached to educational attainment taxpayers will be feeding the children and grandchildren of the current cohort. It is also beyond ridiculous that parents are not allowed to send lunches for their children if the school is in the school lunch programme. This is clearly about making it profitable for providers – as is the fact that they make lunches according to the school roll and not how many children are there.

Co-curricular activities need to be outside of classroom hours – including sports and cultural clubs (e.g. kapa haka). That is not to minimize their value but to keep things academically fair for those students involved. When teaching Economics at a school with a bi-lingual unit I saw the students involved in that just over half of the time. Many sports fixtures cross over the school day and a relatively recent development is the “tournament week”. When the high-profile boys Super 8 schools are putting so much emphasis on sport but achieving University Entrance for leavers at a low rate, it is clear that the balance has gone wrong.

There is much schools can improve on that is already in their decision-making power.

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