Primary Education

Primary school education is the next set of policy to look at in our education series (you can find our first post, on early childhood education here).

In New Zealand, primary school education is compulsory from year 1 (age 5) to year 8 (age 12). For many New Zealanders, the state of the school system is a serious concern. Subjects such as grammar have fallen by the wayside. It is felt by many that, while rote learning of grammar rules isn’t the most interesting thing in the world, it is crucial that our children have that knowledge if they want to be able to string a coherent sentence together later in life. (Kerr, 1999)

This lack of solid grammar rules being taught in schools is not a new one. Emeritus Professor Wallie Clark of the University of Canterbury, in 1994, wrote that grammar has been neglected in our schools for the last 30 years (The Press, 1994, cited in Kerr, 1999). If this is true, then we now have a whole generation, or more, of teachers in our schools who were never taught the rules of grammar themselves.

To bring this back to our politicians, Kerr also quotes two previous New Zealand education ministers.

"Wyatt Creech [of National] told the Post Primary Teachers' Association (PPTA) principals conference in 1996: 'The fact is that New Zealand has a world class education system – other country’s [sic] envy us'. And, almost as if to underline the problems with literacy, Nick Smith [also of National] proudly announced the results of the literacy taskforce earlier this year, emphasising that it was the work of a group 'compromising [sic] mostly principals and teachers'." (Kerr, 1999)

If even our education ministers can’t use proper grammar – or the proper words – then we clearly are in trouble.

As for other subjects, a 1997 IEA (Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement) tested more than half a million children in 26 countries and found that our standard 2 and 3 (year 4 and 5) children were ‘well below’ the average among the countries tested. And it listed our form 1 and 2 (year 7 and 8) children as ‘mediocre at best’ (New Zealand Education Review, 1997). A 2003 IEA study showed that there has been a ‘significant improvement’ in maths and science in New Zealand since 1995.

I should point out that these deficiencies in our education system are not the fault of our teachers. I believe we have a very high standard of teachers in New Zealand and the real problem lies in the curriculum they are being told to teach.

Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find anything more recent than the articles I have referenced above. Well, nothing that isn’t government biased anyway. However, in my research it certainly does seem like our politicians have realised there is a problem. So let’s look at what each party is planning to do for primary school education.

Despite the election date being announced, Labour still don’t have their 2008 policies up. So we’ll look at what they have promised and achieved in the past. (And I’ll update once they announce their policies)

Labour realised prior to the 2005 election that things like in-depth grammar had been missing from our school curriculum for so long that our teachers themselves had missed out on learning it when they were at school. They promised to fix that problem by making it a compulsory part of teacher-training programmes.

They also promised to:

• Create stringent entry and exit criteria for teacher trainees, ensuring that only those with the attributes necessary for teaching can get in to training courses and only those who come out with a high degree of competence in beginning teaching will have their qualification awarded.
• Ensure teacher education is provided by people who are actively involved in research, so graduates emerge with a thorough knowledge and understanding of current pedagogy, curriculum and theories of teaching and learning.
• Focus initial teacher training on subject and year-level areas of greatest need and provide incentives to train in shortage areas, not in areas that are already over supplied.
• Employ around 1,300 extra primary teachers in Year 1 classes over the next three years to ensure that by 2008 there are no more than 15 students in a class.
• Carry out further research on the effect of class size on learning outcomes in other junior school years.
• Continue to implement existing teacher supply and hard-to-staff initiatives such as the Teach NZ scholarships and the Teach NZ promotional campaign, relocation and return-to-teaching grants, and the appointment of recruitment brokers.
• Introduce paid sabbaticals for teachers for full implementation by 2010.

Despite recognising that our future teachers had not received a thorough grounding in grammar themselves, Labour made no promises to re-insert a thorough learning of grammar back into the curriculum.

Their curriculum promises were:

• Extend the highly successful numeracy and literacy initiatives to reinforce the significant gains in the foundation skills of young students.
• Encourage multi-language learning from intermediate school level, to ensure students have more opportunities in an ever more globalised world.
• Explore the possibility of second language learning for primary aged children, including fostering teaching and learning of Pasifika languages.
• Work to encourage thematic learning rather than presenting curriculum barriers that fragment learning.

National want to increase the level of sport and physical activity in schools. They do not want to reduce any other learning to accomodate this increase in PE (physical education) hours required of schools, instead they want to encourage better PE by ensuring all schools have access to high quality sports equipment and encourage students to participate in organised sports outside of school hours. They also want schools’ sports equipment to be available to students during the lunch hour so that children are encouraged to get plenty of exercise at lunchtime.

In terms of the curriculum, National plan to:

• Set national standards in reading, writing and numeracy. The standards will describe all the things children should be able to do by a particular age or year at school. They will be defined by benchmarks in a range of tests.
• Require primary schools to use assessment programmes that compare the progress of their students with other students across the country. Schools will choose from a range of tests, but there won't be national exams.
• Give parents the right to see all assessment information, and to get regular reports about their child's progress towards national standards. Schools will also have to report each year on the whole school's performance against national standards.

This seems to be the extent of Nationals primary school education policy, or at least the extent of the policy they have released so far. However, the plan to set national standards in reading, writing and numeracy shows that they have recognised that there is a problem with our current curriculum and they want to work to address that problem. It will be interesting to see if they go into more detail about what they think the national standards should be.

New Zealand First do not have any specific primary school education policy that I can find. I will update if some becomes available.

The Green Party recognise the importance of Te Reo Maori to the New Zealand culture. They want to increase the number of Te Reo teachers in schools and offer incentives for future Te Reo teachers.

They also want to further improve the ratio of teachers to children in classrooms and support pay parity for early childhood, primary and secondary teachers based on level of responsibility and qualification.

Other Green Party policy for primary schools include:

• Provide adequate staff and resources to Reading Recovery Programmes, Group Special Education and to the Teachers of Learning and Behaviour Programme to address pupil difficulties and underachievement as early as possible and work with families (and any relevant social agencies) to attempt to alleviate the problems.
• Work with schools, parents and communities to identify ways to ensure that no student misses out on education through absenteeism or suspensions, and that absentee learners are promptly contacted and appropriate services are provided.
• Research, develop and increase the number of alternative programmes for absentee and suspended learners, such as the Otago Youth Wellness Trust, In-school Suspension Programmes.
• Ensure learners have the right to not wear a uniform without penalty from the school, and are able to choose their own hairstyle and jewellery, subject to safety requirements.
• Support the retention of rural and small schools and review school transport funding to provide better and safer transport services for rural learners.

The Maori Party want all education to be freely available in both English and Maori and for there to be Maori knowledge programmes available in all schools. They do not want this to be available just for Maori children (as it currently is in many schools), but for all children.

United Future do not agree with National’s plan to standardise testing. They disagree because they feel it would encourage teachers to teach the test rather than teaching everything that a student should learn. They also do not think that the current primary school assessment is in need of an overhaul so see the implementation of standardised testing as unnecessary.

United Future will:

• Support the widespread use of Asttle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) and ongoing development of tools like Asttle.
• Support the regular use in primary school of diagnostic pre-testing for literacy and numeracy as the basis for teaching, and support this information being made available to parents.
• Increase access to Reading Recovery.
• Set a minimum number of hours are established for the teaching of literacy and numeracy.
• Endorse intentions to drop the teacher/pupil ration for Year 1 Students to 1:15, and recommend that Years 2 and 3 be progressively dropped to 1:22 and Years 4-8 progressively dropped to 1:25.

Act's primary school education policy seems to lie in their scholarships for every child policy.

Under this policy Act plans that schools will treat each student as a customer rather than just a student. This means teachers and principals are more likely to bend over backwards to help a student, because they don’t want to lose that student’s business. With the scholarship policy each student will have a certain amount of money allocated to them each year by the government, whichever school they go to will receive that money. So, a principal will not want a student to leave – because then they will be taking their allocated money with them and giving it to another school.

Act also wants to replace the Ministry of Education with an Education Authority. Beyond likening their proposed Education Authority to the Reserve Bank, they do not explain what it will actually be.

Kerr, Roger. 1999. 'What Parents Should Know About Education'. Educ112 course readings. Victoria University Press.
New Zealand Education Review. 1997. Educ112 course readings. Victoria University Press.