from Newstalk ZB
Some principals are shocked by their students’ high failure rates in a trial run of new NCEA literacy and numeracy tests.
Year 10 students have trialed the tests, which will be compulsory in 2024.
Principals and teachers have told RNZ that all Year 10 students in at least one school failed the writing test and at others two-thirds to a half failed it.
Some also reported pass rates below 50 per cent for the numeracy test.
They said some of the schools with poor results had good NCEA pass rates and drew students from high socio-economic backgrounds who were expected to do well.
Overall results from the June trial of the online tests were expected to be published later this month but a smaller trial last year saw failure rates of two-thirds for writing and one-third for both reading and numeracy.
In the meantime, the results of individual schools have alarmed some principals and teachers because from 2024 students must pass all three assessments before they could be awarded any NCEA certificates.
Principals warned that some might never pass and others would need several attempts.
Indoctrination = education
Me personally never liked school.
Looks like these dudes knew about education
Albert Einstein Quotes About Education
“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
“Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits.”
“Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking.”
R. Buckminster Fuller Quotes About School
https://www.azquotes.com/author/5231-R_Buckminster_Fuller/tag/school
I believe it would be a mistake to consider covid to be the only cause of the poor secondary school literacy and numeracy results in school tests,mentioned in this article.
For this century NZ literacy and numeracy results on international tests have been declining at an appalling rate.
From top in reading comprehension in 1970 ,we now rank 24th out of all 26 participating O.E.C.D.countries.Also ,according to PERLS and TIMMS, international tests we lag behind in all comparator English speaking countries.
Between years 2000and 2018,there was a big drop in N Z 15 year olds maths students who had lost the equivalent of nearly a year and a halfs worth of schooling.
The real cause of this decline is the wrong philosophy of education,NZ has adopted for many decades. It is a Dewey ,child-centered ,constructivist theory, which includes discovery learning,problem solving and emphasis on skills rather than acquiring knowledge and being socially involved.
All this is described in a recently written booklet , free as a pdf, called “The NZ Education Delusion’ by Briar Lipson. Few are writing about this crucial topic.
However structured Literacy which is a return to explicit and intensive phonics ,of the past, has featured sparingly in the media . This teaching practice has been adopted by about 10%of NZ primary schools,in the last few years. It replaces whole language aka balanced literacy.This W.L. has dominated NZ literacy for more than 40 decades and aligns with the defective philosophy mentioned above.
Democracy is dependent on a literate and numerate population who not only can read well but discern written material in depth.
Refernce ‘The NZ Education Delusion’ By Briar Lipson