Educational ills will need a generational remedy

Iestimate we need two to three generations of well-targeted, strategically sound efforts coupled with appropriate funding if we are to turn around New Zealand’s education woes.

This estimate will not sit well with politicians. For too long, we have allowed ideology, coupled with inexperience, to decide how we shape our education programmes. The public is tired of neverending reviews, but it feels like the ones doing the reviewing have stacked the committees with like-minded ideologues in an echo chamber.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the public doesn’t really understand the changes that have taken place in education over the past couple of decades.

If they did, there might be more pushback. In the case of health or justice, people better understand how decisions impact them personally because lives are at stake; drug costs, hospital waiting times and the likelihood of criminals being locked up have immediate, direct impacts.

I doubt people link death and being taught poorly. They will likely reason that we all went to school, we all had some poor teachers and the big picture suggests it didn’t do us any harm.

I have spent many years trying to get my head around why “the system” is not working. Why, for so long, has ideology trumped common sense and declining results?

If we put aside the natural variation that occurs between learners, why are so many students entering secondary school with poor numeracy and literacy abilities? The Ministry of Education/Te Tā huhu (MoE) is supposed to be the “steady hand on the tiller”, so we might wonder what has left us in this sorry mess.

According to MoE chief executive Iona Hofsted, politicians are partly to blame for the issues. I presume she is admitting the ministry is responsible for the remainder? Who should be held accountable for the 20 years of decline in education or the current building debacle?

I tried to find out if the MoE has an overarching vision, so I could get a sense of what success would look like in its eyes. The best I could find was “we shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes”, a statement that can be found in their Statement of Intent 2021-2026.

This document outlines their five highlevel focus areas, which include “quality teaching and leadership” and “barrier-free access”. At a first glance these seem reasonable objectives, but the supporting paragraphs didn’t give me any clues on the ministry’s plan to ensure that every child under 5 has a good start to their education or that every school has appropriately trained specialist teachers.

For example, if you dream of being a dentist but have limited access to specialist teachers and resources, that might force a change in your career direction. If you don’t appear in the unemployment or justice statistics, it is unlikely anyone would question “excellent outcomes” in your case. But, in fact, your options were limited right from the outset, which is definitely a barrier to access. I think a similar argument could be made for the rotting Sommerville special school that had been asking for help for 20 years.

Their Statement of Intent has focused on convenient themes that, on the surface, might feel right. There would be few in Aotearoa who disagree with the importance of lifting Mā ori and Pasifika achievement levels; the results have been poor for many decades and NCEA has helped fool many into thinking their children are doing okay.

Similarly, many would accept the rationale of weaning us off a Britishcentric assessment system and curricula to create something with a New Zealand feel to it. And I doubt anyone would disagree wellbeing is a worthy focus.

But with all the goodwill in the world, tens of thousands of our young people will still miss out. If we are serious about fixing this problem, the overarching strategy should focus on the front end. This is all about addressing the root cause.

In fairness to the ministry, they have no control over the socioeconomic environment, nor do they have endless money.

But far too much airtime has been given to “fixing” the back end of the education pipeline (secondary schools).

Teaching at the secondary school coalface where a lot of students have poor maths and literacy skills, I think is “ambulance at the bottom of the cliff” stuff, which is why I was excited about the focus on literacy and numeracy. But even this will engender struggles if we don’t ensure our young people get a good start in life.

About 30 per cent of 3- to 4-year-olds get less than 10 hours of formal early childhood education (ECE) each week and the number is closer to 50 per cent for Mā ori, according to the latest statistics.

Our number one priority should be preschool and primary school learners. The evidence suggests the first seven years are very important in terms of brain development, which is why music and languages are so much easier to learn when you are young.

Over the years, National and Labour have each spent hundreds of millions subsidising ECE, but if we are honest, their intention was to support working parents rather than ensure a good start in education for children.

We need to support caregivers in every way possible to help them help their children. Numerous studies have concluded parents and whā nau make the biggest difference in a child’s early education through positive interactions, reading, storytelling, playing games and learning to socialise.

One model that appeals to me is Playcentre, which has the motto “Whā nau Tupu Ngā tahi-Families growing together”. It provides everything I mentioned above as well as support for the caregiver. And relatively speaking, it is not an expensive option. But there is a weakness if both parents work.

If we bear in mind the saying “it takes a village to raise a child”, then with some pragmatism, we should be able to come up with an effective variation on the model, involving all the key stakeholders, not just those in Wellington.

Spending money to support parents getting children off to a good start is one way our country could invest in its future. We need to help those who, through no fault of their own, can’t help themselves. Otherwise, they often end up represented in some of the statistics society is not proud of; that is a real cost to the taxpayer, as is lost productivity caused by young people not reaching their educational potential.

We need to be honest about the size of our educational problem and accept it could take two or three generations to fix. We ran out of silver bullets a long time ago. It’s time to roll up our sleeves and settle in for some hard graft. Our young people are relying on it, and so is future Aotearoa.