Education was a major battleground in the lead-up to the election – and for good reason.
Data has shown a steady decline in the quality of our education system over the last two decades, with literacy and numeracy rates falling steadily.
“The main measure we use internationally is Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) testing,” Newstalk ZB journalist Shannon Johnstone tells The Front Page podcast.
“That’s the measurement of 15-year-olds in reading, maths and science. And New Zealand’s achievement in those tests has been declining for the past 20 years or so. At the start of the century, New Zealand was one of the top countries in these tests, but by 2018 we were just above the OECD average. There’s been a long-term decline.”
National and Act in particular campaigned hard on improving these statistics and has already promised to start rolling out measures to stop the decline.
Under the new Government, all schools will be obligated to require an hour a day each of reading, writing and mathematics.
“This was a key policy we saw from National on the election campaign as part of their ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’ policy,” says Johnstone.
“It’ll apply for primary and intermediate students … National said there was too much variation in how long schools were spending on those subjects and that was embedding inequality. Their policy also included twice-yearly standardised assessments in those subject areas.”
National has also drawn a definitive line in the long debate between structured and balanced literature.
“A big policy of National is to mandate structured literacy and require schools to teach that approach,” says Johnstone.
“It will also require teachers to learn how to teach that in initial teacher education training. It’ll be interesting to see if we do see this policy come in. When they announced it, there was a little bit of opposition from some teachers and principals who were against mandating how teachers teach.”
Act also got an education policy across the line in the shape of charter (or partnership) schools making a comeback.
“[Historically], these schools received government funding like state schools, but they were subject to fewer regulations from the Ministry of Education. They could make more decisions themselves around curriculum and pay rates for teachers. They were run in partnership with sponsors like iwi or not-for-profit organisations.”
But not everyone is a fan of what the new Government is proposing in this space.
Mark Potter, president of the country’s largest education union (NZEI Te Riu Rua), called the revival of charter schools “destructive” and “weird”.
“Potter said the model didn’t work previously and he thought that having partnership schools undermines the idea that public education needs to be funded properly,” Johnstone said.
“Chris Abercrombie from the PPTA also told me it was disappointing that partnership schools were such a key focus of this coalition agreement. He called it an expensive distraction from public education. He said charter schools are effectively private schools with public money and are not accountable to the state and regulations.”
So will these plans work when put into practice? Is the new Education Minister Erica Stanford ready for the challenge that lies ahead? And what will be done about the ongoing blight of absenteeism?
Listen to the full episode for more details on the fight to improve education standards in this country.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. It is presented by Damien Venuto, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
'Police cannot rule out the possibility of further arrests and charges.'