Education requires less Act-ion, more home-grown solutions

New Zealand's education system is at a tipping point with every child likely to suffer if National carries on with its Act-driven agenda of fruitless experiments, Labour’s Education Spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta says.

“No one is arguing that more could - and must - be done for those Maori and Pacific learners who are not achieving and end up falling out of the education system altogether. But to use that reason to prop up policies that continue to fail those kids won’t address the real challenges ahead.

“If the Government was committed to lifting Maori and Pacific achievement, it would stop narrowing the curriculum and assessing children through the limited lens of national standards.

“The real emphasis should be on restoring equity to a system that continually disadvantages vulnerable learners. Such solutions require collaborative policies that also affect what happens beyond the school gate.

“Those solutions would go a long way to reversing the negative trend that prevails amongst our local schools.

“That the government is using low achievement of Maori and Pasifika to justify their proposal for Charter Schools is extremely disappointing.

“If change is really at the heart of the policy, then why are targets for achievement for these groups left out of the new Bill?
“It's clear that this ‘wolf’ whistling on Maori and Pasifika achievement is sheep’s clothing for privatising education profits, and from a failed model that has not worked conclusively in other countries.

“Alongside that we have the Secretary of Education, Lesley Longstone, using Maori and Pacific achievement to justify unsuccessful policies imported from the UK and USA.

“New Zealand does not need to follow this path of low expectation. Rather we need to engineer our own solutions, roll them out and continue to learn from a context that best supports models of learning for Maori and Pacific learners,” Nanaia Mahuta said.