A lot can change in a year, particularly in education. The new coalition government was sworn in on 27 November 2023 and immediately decided to implement a phone ban in high schools across New Zealand. Since then there have been a raft of changes and re-prioritising in the education sphere.
The new government has been very vocal in relation to attendance announcing a ‘stepped attendance response (SAR)’. As part of that SAR, David Seymour said that after 15 days of absence, “steps to initiate prosecution of parents could be considered as a valid intervention”. I wonder what he has in mind here.
I have also been vocal about attendance in my time as Principal and this features regularly when I talk to students. My speech normally says “… if you are at school and in class, you have a better chance of success”. And I have collected lots of data to verify this assertion and I show this to students. However, I also know that attendance is more complex than that and when I speak about it, I know I am talking to a majority that can get to school ok.
Another assertion that could be made in relation to attendance is that if a student is happy they are more likely to attend school. Research in the UK has found that “many of the children and young people who do not attend school regularly have moderate or severe mental health problems. There are parents, often of children on the autism spectrum or with anxiety disorders, who, try as they might, simply cannot get their children into school. They are particularly vulnerable families. Many have received repeated fines and threats of prison.” (1) Is this really what we want to happen to our most vulnerable members of society?
In a 1News article about the Stepped Attendance Response, published on 26 September, NZEI Te Riu Roa President Mark Potter said that such measures “… won’t help parents or teachers get children into school. What helps is food, housing and health security.” (2) If this is the case, why has the Government made cuts to the school lunches programme?
Another focus for the Government has been on ‘back to basics’ – making sure our students have good literacy and numeracy skills to help them as they travel through life. I think everyone agrees that this is important but the announcements around this were very worrying. Newstalk reported Christopher Luxon’s comments in relation to this on 6 August: “We are focused on outcomes: achievement in maths and reading and getting kids to school. That may well mean we’re going to defer our arts and music curriculum for now. But we’re going to do everything to get those jobs done.” (3) If everything means excluding our arts curriculum then the government needs to do more research before making this decision. The value of the arts curriculum to cognitive development has been the source of much research over the years. In more recent times, The Houston Education Research Consortium released findings (reported in Edutopia in 2020) where they “… tracked over 10,000 students in Texas as they participated in arts programs, concluding that they performed better on state writing tests, were better behaved, had more compassion for fellow students, and were more engaged in school.” (4) So what do we think we will achieve if we cut our Arts programmes?
In line with the Government’s thinking, The Creatives in Schools programme was discontinued on 1 July 2024 to save approximately $3 million a year. The programme allowed schools to partner with creatives who were able to share their specialist knowledge with schools. In our context this meant that performers from the Royal New Zealand Ballet tutored our He Kākano students. It also meant that specialist creatives connected our students with the history and meaning of kōwhaiwhai, mentorships in electronic music mediums, and using theatre as a medium to explore performance and harness confidence to help students as creatives in any discipline. The Creatives in Schools programme exposed a wide range of students to the Arts and Artists in ways that are not possible without the funding.
The timing can’t have been accidental for the next bombshell. The week after our wonderful Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori celebrations, the Government announced the end of funding for Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori. Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori means the future pathway of Te Reo Māori for improved Te Reo Māori proficiency, acquisition and use across the education sector. It also provides opportunities for Te Reo Māori to be normalised, and Māori identity and culture to be shared and embraced. The programme was piloted in 2019 and 2020 and on the basis of an evaluation report, was rolled out across the country in 2021. Our school was able to access the programme in 2023 and 2024 with over 50 staff taking part in courses. However, in the announcement on Thursday 26 September, Erica Stanford stated that $30million in funding was being redirected from the Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori towards resources for teaching mathematics. In her words, “… an evaluation of the programme found no evidence it directly impacted progress and achievements for students. The review also couldn’t quantify what impact the programme had on Te Reo Māori use in the classroom.” (5)
The New Zealand Herald obtained a copy of the evaluative report with findings including:
- “The programme is “very popular” with “outstanding engagement from the sector” – one provider has a waiting list twice the size of their annual allocation.
- 87% of participants said the programme helped them build the confidence they needed to use te reo Māori in the classroom.
- 97% would recommend Te Ahu o te Reo Māori to others.” (6)
I have worked in New Zealand schools for 24 years and this programme was the most effective and engaging intervention that I have seen to improve teachers’ use of Te Reo. The main reason for this is that tutors came onto site and ran classes immediately after school. Staff learned together in an inclusive wānanga setting and it didn’t require teachers to travel across town to evening courses when their families need to take priority.
The most recent change which has the potential to have a profound effect on education in New Zealand, is the proposed changes to section 127 of the Education and Training Act 2020. The change is to reprioritise a school board’s objectives moving Te Tiriti, which at the moment is one of the Board’s four primary objectives, to merely a contributor to the Board’s new primary objective of educational achievement. Given that not long after Minister Stanford took office, she listed her government’s six Education priorities, and none of them made any reference, explicit or otherwise, to Te Tiriti or Māori learners, this move is not surprising. There was a very brief consultation period that has closed and the change is yet to be passed into law.
When you consider collectively the cuts to school lunches, the ending of Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori funding, the changes to s127 of the Education and Training Act 2020, alongside the select committee reading of the Treaty Principles Bill, despite assurances from National and New Zealand First that it will be voted down, it is hard to conclude that we are not experiencing cultural terrorism. And quite apart from that, if we are trying to save money then why did we spend $14billion on tax cuts? Amounts such as $3m for Creatives and $30m for Te Ahu are a drop in the ocean compared to that amount.
There are probably too many unanswered questions in this post, but I came to New Zealand 24 years ago and I immediately became aware of the beautiful bi-cultural partnership that exists in this country. It is a tāonga and we must do everything we can to protect it.
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1 “Prosecuting parents for truancy: who pays the price?” by Sarah O’Flynn, School of Education, University of Roehampton (2024)
2 “Govt reveals new plan for getting kids to school: here’s how it will work” published on 26 September, 2024 on 1News
3 “Luxon says schools can defer arts, music as teaching comes under microscope” published on 6 August, 2024 on Newstalk ZB
4 “New Studies Underscore the Value of the Arts” published on 7 Fepbruary, 2020 by Edutopia
5 “Te Reo Māori teacher training cut by $30m to fund maths resources” published on 26 September, 2024, by RNZ
6 “Te Ahu o Te Reo Māori: Inside the report used to justify cutting $30m from a te reo course for teachers”, published on 1 October, by the New Zealand Herald