Kiwi kids flunk maths
Experts scramble as survey puts us with worst in the world
Maths has this gatekeeping role to higher-paying jobs . . .
Gaven Martin Massey University distinguished mathematics professor
An expert panel has been called in by the Ministry of Education to improve students’ maths results, which have hit a record low. The decision to seek advice from a Royal Society of NZ panel looks likely to foreshadow a major shakeup of the curriculum and the way teachers are trained and supported across all subjects.
The rethink is starting with maths because the latest Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study ( TIMSS) survey found Kiwi students’ maths knowledge in the first year of high school is now below that in all other English-speaking countries and the lowest it has ever been.
Massey University distinguished mathematics professor Gaven Martin, who will chair the Royal Society panel, said: “If these sorts of results continue on with this trend, we’ll be looking at Third World results.”
“A lot of high-paying jobs in important sectors are going to be data — and analytically driven — at a time when we are failing to achieve at OECD levels. So there is a real disjunct there,” he said.
“Maths has this gatekeeping role to higher-paying jobs, by and large, so decisions made by teachers, by students, by parents even early in a child’s lifetime have pretty significant impacts further down the track.”
The ministry has called in the Royal Society after the NZ Principals’
Federation wrote to ministry head Iona Holsted last week calling for urgent action on maths.
Federation president Perry Rush said there was a “void” of leadership in maths education and schools were lost in a “soup” of competing maths programmes.
As well as the international study, he said the ministry’s own National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement ( NMSSA) showed that only 45 per cent of students in Year 8 were achieving at the expected curriculum level in maths in 2018, and only 20 per cent achieved the expected level in science in 2017.
“That is a shocking statistic,” he said.
“For us in the federation, the question really is, where is the conversation around how can we do better for young people in terms of maths, because it appears that every year we have seen a growing concern around our achievement results, and we do not have a response.
“There is no response. We tolerate it. The question from our national executive is, where is the leadership to develop the appropriate approaches that are co-ordinated, nationally agreed and that attack this issue?”
He said teachers needed help with maths but were not getting it.
“One of the problems is the number of new [primary teaching]
Kiwi teachers coming home from Covid-torn parts of the world have dramatically eased New Zealand’s teacher shortage as the new school year starts this week.
The Ministry of Education says the number of teaching vacancies in primary and secondary schools dropped by a third from 349 last January to 233 last month.
Secondary Principals’ Association president Deidre Shea said the staffing situation was “better than it’s been for many years” — due to Kiwi teachers not going overseas, many returning and, ironically, jobs teaching overseas students that have evaporated because the border is closed.
“A majority of secondary schools will have reduced their total staff for 2021 because of fewer international students,” she said.
Her own school, nehunga High School, has cut its teaching staff by six even though it usually has fewer than 40 long-term overseas students, because it normally hosts short-term study tours.
But it is also one of many schools that have gained from returning Kiwis, picking up music teacher James McCaffrey, who has come home from Japan with his partner, English teacher Anna Williams, who has a job at Glenfield College where she has taught before.
The couple went to Japan in December 2019 to teach English, and would have stayed overseas longer if it wasn’t for Covid.
“We had briefly discussed somewhere in Scandinavia as a possibility,” said Williams, 31.
Williams’ sister is married to a Japanese and has a family there, and the couple were looking forward to experiencing a different culture. But when all schools closed last February, they found themselves confined to their apartment in Tokushima on the island of Shikoku.
There was a huge relief when we got on that plane to Auckland.
Anna Williams
“It was very difficult to participate fully in the culture of Japan because everything had been cancelled,” said McCaffrey, 38.
Neither of them could speak Japanese, and when the borders closed they felt isolated.
“When you go away there is that idea at the back of your mind that if something goes wrong you can just come home. Having that taken away was really quite difficult, quite isolating,” he said.
“We were isolated because it was very, very difficult to meet people, and it was very, very difficult to come home, so we were kind of stuck in this limbo.”
They watched the NZ election results from Japan worried that a new government might shut even New Zealanders out. They came home in December.
Williams said: “There was a huge relief when we got on that plane to Auckland, just knowing we were not going to be stuck somewhere because there was constantly this underlying fear.”
Shea said a survey at the end of the year found that 60 per cent of secondary schools were fully staffed for this year. The other 40 per cent had vacancies mainly in the always-hard-to-staff subjects of te reo Māori, technology, maths, chemistry and physics.
The Education Gazette listed 271 teaching vacancies in schools on February 1, down from 370 on January 23 last year.
Only 60 of Auckland’s 550 primary and secondary schools listed vacancies, or one in nine — down from 82, or one in seven, last year.
The Ministry of Education said the biggest gains were in secondary schools, where new vacancies listed in January plunged from 245 last year to 141 this year, including a drop from 83 to 45 in Auckland.
New primary vacancies listed in January dropped from 104 last year to 92, but rose slightly from 27 to 28 in Auckland because of continued population growth.
Auckland Primary Principals’ Association president Stephen Lethbridge said 50 out of 132 schools surveyed last week said they were more confident about staffing this year, 67 said the situation was unchanged and 14 said they were less confident this year.
“It’s more buoyant,” he said. “But there are pockets where we don’t have enough teachers because people are not wanting to move or travel long distances on motorways.”