Back to basics

Megan Brownlie (‘‘How do we help kids succeed’’, Focus, March 4) cannot put her finger on why the literacy and numeracy standards of young students have significantly

deteriorated over the years. The answer is simple – they have not been taught.

It is time to revert to teaching times tables by rote in maths and to teach sentence construction in English. These were ingrained in me by the age of nine and never forgotten, and remember, we had to learn 12, 14 and 16 times tables to cope with imperial weights and measures. We also had to cope with converting pounds, shillings and pence (including farthings) into decimals and vice versa.

It must be easier now with the metric system but the important thing is to instil the basics of maths and language at an early age.

Peter Krafft, Auckland

We need 3000 more teachers right now especially in Auckland, as low salaries against high housing and rent costs are causing a drastic shortage. By 2030 it will be tens of thousands of vacancies as older ones retire with few joining the ranks. Imagine the terrible impact on the next generation.

Not so long ago their pay matched MPs’ salaries. So either lift them to MPs’ salaries again, or conversely immediately drop MPs’ salaries to teacher level, retrospective to the last election.

Why not? Surely if we can’t get new teachers on the ladder that’s fair?

Murray Hunter, Auckland