We’re all in trouble when education fails our children
If the 8600 children lost to the school system never return, they’ll become ghosts in the machine, unable to read or write or hold down a well-paying job.
If you subscribe to Dutch humanist Erasmus’ view that ‘‘the main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth’’, then Aotearoa is facing a catastrophe.
In a pilot study to assess NCEA reading, writing and numeracy standards, almost two-thirds of the 554 Year 9-10 students who sat the writing test failed. Of the 590 who sat the reading test and 1000 who were tested in maths, a third failed in each.
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault dismissed the pilot as ‘‘not a reliable measure’’ of future success, insisting that the trial was simply testing the mechanics of the test, not ‘‘the driver in the car’’. But the results matter because, in 2024, NCEA students will have to pass those same tests if they’re to receive their qualifications.
While education authorities may dismiss the results, there’s plenty of evidence to show literacy and numeracy rates have been declining since the turn of the millennium. A 2020 Unicef report found that more than third of the country’s 15-year-olds struggled to read and write, with 64.6% having only basic skills in reading and maths. In March, the Education Hub, a not-for-profit, did a study that found literacy had dropped to ‘‘deeply worrying’’ levels, which it attributed to a ‘‘systemic failure’’ in how children were taught to read and write.
Education Minister Chris Hipkins’ answer was to acknowledge the problem and introduce a literacy, communications and maths strategy. It would introduce new assessment measures that were, according to associate minister Jan Tinetti, ‘‘not a return to National Standards’’.
Four months after the announcement, it’s too early to assess its success, but this week’s pilot results show the breadth and depth of the failure.
It’s a failure that’s been exacerbated by the long arc of the pandemic and a growing headache for teachers of truancy – or to use the Ministry of Education’s term, ‘‘non-attendance’’. If Covid has jolted us, the Big Kids, off our axis, imagine what it has done to the Little Kids – from children to teenagers alike. Normal rites of passage were first delayed, then denied, depriving children of natural milestones from playdates, to sitting exams in person, to school leaving balls.
Figures this week showing that the number of students missing from the education system has almost doubled since October 2021 reveal how pervasive a predicament it has become. There are now 8600 children aged from 5-16 missing from the education system. Principals recount teachers checking on students only to find their houses empty and emergency contact numbers not working.
The fact that fewer than 60% of the country’s schoolchildren attend regularly (that’s defined as nine days out of 10 every fortnight), and chronic absence (missing at least three days a fortnight) is rising, with 8% of students in that category, and the issue becomes not just a community problem but a national one. One that began not just with the pandemic but has been declining since 2015.
The education and workforce select committee recognised that last year when it conducted a truancy inquiry.
The ministry’s report to it acknowledged truancy was worst in primary schools, especially in Years 1 and 2 and among Ma¯ ori and Pasifika students in low-decile schools. It received evidence of children becoming phobic about going back to school, with rising home-schooling applications.
Hipkins accepted the select committee’s findings, implementing all 13 of them, and set a new student target of 70% attendance by 2024 and 75% by 2025.
Will it be enough to stop kids getting full-time jobs stacking supermarket shelves at night, while trying to study during the day? If it’s not, then Hipkins will be hoping that the $88 million allocated from this year’s Budget will be. That includes $40m over four years to ensure kids are going to school, $18.4m for a positive behaviour and learning programme, and a $7.75m boost for Ma¯ ori and Pasifika communities.
If $88m is illustrative of the Government’s determination to solve the issue, it’s less clear whether it will be enough to ease the double whammy of crippling poverty and Covid anxiety. If it doesn’t succeed, the consequences are dire; for every child who misses two weeks of school a term, that equates over their entire schooling to two years of lost learning. For every student who’s an hour late to school each day, that’s 200 hours they won’t be able to get back.
The risks of the catastrophe turning into a crisis increase even more if the 8600 children lost to the school system never return. They’ll be destined to become ghosts in the machine, unable to read or write or hold down a well-paying job.
If we owe our children anything, it’s the right to an education, with its inherent ability to teach them to express themselves and to comprehend the world around them. If we don’t, the hope of this nation will be lost.