A maths expert says a new Government action plan is a good step.
It's bringing forward a new curriculum to Term One next year, with twice yearly assessments - and a $20 million boost for teachers' professional development.
Massey University maths professor Gaven Martin chaired an expert panel asked in 2021 to improve student maths results.
He says the devil will be in the detail.
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Carywood of Morning's podcast from News
Talks d B National.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As you have heard, is unveiled a math's action plan
one year ahead of time. A new curriculum will be
rolled out a year early. Twenty million dollars will be
spent teaching it to teachers. Just twenty two percent of
Year eight students were achieving at the benchmark level last year,
a total system failure that was the catalyst for bringing
forward the new curriculum. According to the Prime Minister, We've
(00:36):
known there's been problems for years. As recently as twenty
twenty one, a Royal Society panel was called in by
the Ministry of Education to look at why our maths
results had hit a record low and the conclusion Massy
University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Gavin Martin, chair of the
panel that wrote the report, told the New Zealand Herald
ol math's education was in a god damn mess. Distinguished
(01:00):
Math Professor Gavin Martin joins me now and a very
good morning to.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
You late evening for me, it is true.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You are you've been terribly international. You're in London, aren't
you good evening?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, yeah, So I'm very visiting Imperial College here.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh fantastic. Do they do things differently over there, don't they?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Sorry? Oh here in England? Yeah, a little bit differently.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Now, you were concerned that any as part of the report,
you were concerned that any kind of tinkering with the
curriculum would be just that tinkering. It wouldn't address the
fundamental issues, which is the deficits in our education system
for our children. Will what National has announced be enough
to stem the plummet to the bottom?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Okay, So I think there's a little bit of confusion
about what's going on here. When people in education circles
talk about the curriculum, they don't just mean the content
the things that you have to learn, and they also
mean how you learn it, how you assess it, and
those sorts of things. So the way I am currently
(02:15):
seeing things that there's not a whole lot of changes
in what is expected to be learnt what we can
see by the data. And as Laxon said in his speech,
it's not that what we're trying to teach is not
good enough, we're not going far enough. It's just that
(02:36):
the kids never ever get there because of what's going
on in schools, and so the idea that we actually
get to the end of the curriculum and keep kids
at pace of the curriculum, I think is exactly what
we need. Whether or not it will be achieved, it's
different question. Ultimately, the devil's going to be in the details.
(03:01):
But I think that the proposals are a step in
the right direction for are I'm not convinced about the
levels of assessment that they have proposed, but I guess
that they've spoken to the right people and they feel
confident that this will also help move things along.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
One of the things you talked about in the report
was the fact that they could peck and choose from
a number of options for professional development and curriculum resources.
That appears to be something that's being addressed national or
the Coalition government has said there will be a more
prescriptive way of learning.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yes, I think that's a very good idea. I mean
a well resourced schools have the capability to peck among
the very best offerings and have the ability to make
the right choices for their kids. Poorly resourced schools are
unable to do that. They have to sort of make do,
(04:03):
and they perhaps don't have the experience to engage with
the companies offering these services to get the best one.
So trying to build a structure that operates as a
national system. And actually that's one thing that a lot
of people forget. These proposals are not about, you know,
(04:26):
what's best for an individual child. What's trying to be
accomplished here is a national system that works binized for everybody.
No such system is going to work for everybody, So
there will have to be backups and fell ins and
new strategies addressed for dealing with certain sorts of children
(04:48):
coming from different socio economic strategy, stratus and so forth.
And I think they've actually talked about that a little
bit too, so that a sort of reassuring.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's really what It actually really pains me that our
CA system used to be considered a very very good one.
But you've had about thirty five years now of people
coming through the education system, and you've got parents now
who were failed by the education system, who having children,
(05:21):
seeing them floundering, not being able to help them, not
being able to afford the after school tutoring that's very
effective but prohibitively expensive for most families. And further and
further behind. We're getting a families are getting into generationally,
unless they fluke it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, I'm not going to disagree with the single word
you said.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It just kills me. You know, that was the way out.
It gave children options having a brilliant education. So even
if they didn't start with all the advantages they could
with good teachers and a great education system, have options,
have choices, and they've just been denied them and have
(06:06):
been for years.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, that's true, But you know, I think part of
it one of the one of the major changes I think.
You know, I said that the actual curriculum, the content,
the things that they will or should be learning to do,
is not going to change dramatically. But what is going
to change dramatically, I believe, is the way things are taught.
(06:28):
So there'll be more direct instruction, you know, so teachers
talking to the whole class altogether, explaining what's going on.
And the advantage there is that the teacher keeps moving
the class through the curriculum. At least all the students
will have had an opportunity to see the curriculum. What's
(06:50):
going on now is that classes are getting further and
further behind, so that kids actually don't see the curriculum,
and you know, you test them on stuff they haven't seen,
you can't be surprised that they fail by life, right,
So what's going on as a nonsense? And you know,
(07:10):
one of the things that we identified in our Roal
Society report was this practice the teachers had of breaking
a class into small ability groups and then the teacher
wandering around talking to each ability group. So if you
have a class of let me just do some round numbers,
(07:33):
twenty five students and you break them into five ability groups. Yeah,
that ability group will in an hour only see a
teacher for a maximum of twelve minutes. So actually, in
an hour's matuition, these kids only see a teacher for
twelve minutes, and so the whole class moves basically at
(07:58):
the pace of the lower ability groups, and the whole
class gets dragged behind. So I hope that these changes
enable teachers to move classes through the curriculum so kids
can see it. I think that you know that New
(08:21):
Zealand kids are smarter than teachers give them credit for,
and that actually, if we start moving through the curriculum
and teaching things that need to be taught in the
ways that need to be taught and then we should
start to see an improvement. And you know, direct construction
(08:41):
is that. But another one of the pedagogical approaches, well,
you know, it's back to basics. You know, it sounds right,
you know, well I think I think it works. Yeah,
and that the problem is that it's derided as you know,
(09:02):
rote learning, and we encountered that looking at where we
are writing the report that you know, some groups will say, oh,
you know, those countries do really well, but they're just
rote learning and New Zealand actually does really well because
we don't do rote learning. We teach learning the standing
(09:24):
and then you actually look at what the outcomes are
you find we don't actually teach very much at all.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And then the other point is that the bright kids
are the ones that want the extra stimulus, that love
math and want to know more and want to explore
and go down avenues and be the scientists and the
great thinkers of the future. They're not getting any time either,
because we're all ploting through the curriculum.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah. Well that's the point, isn't it. I mean, the
system as it's currently shaped basically fails. Everybody apart from
those that can afford to send their kids to private
schools or buy into the best, very best school districts,
and that is just not fair. You know, there's it's
it's ridiculous to suppose that people and lower socio economic
(10:17):
groupings had kids that aren't as smart. That's just simply
not true. So given everybody the opportunity to succeeds a
big part of where I think we need to go.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
You know, one thing, one thing that I saw in
the announcement was that I think Erica Stanford announced that
there were some twenty five million dollars the teacher training
for new pedagogical approaches. I think that's a good start,
but almost certainly going to need more money to get
(10:53):
the teachers up the speed with these new approaches in
the sort of timeframe they're talking about. So, you know,
we have lost generations of kids and what has been
going on. But so I understand the need for haste
(11:14):
because you know, every year kids a year behind.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So I don't know what you're it's probably right, I
don't just in summary, Professor Martin, I don't know if
olds and stats are your specialty, but what are the
odds of this starting to address the decline.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well, I think better than fifty fifty. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's different. Yeah. Well, okay, I saw what was
going to happen before, you know, we had these parliamentary
change and the new direction set in the education portfolio,
(11:59):
and what I think what I saw was going to happen,
I thought was absolutely diabolical. So you know, this is
light years ahead of what Hopkins was saying about their plans.
So I saw those plans and I was just pretty angry.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well, good lovely to hear from you, Massy University Distinguished
Professor of Mathematics and knows a bittle too about maths.
Gavin Martin from London.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news talks that'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Carywood of Morning's podcast from News
Talks d B National.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
As you have heard, is unveiled a math's action plan
one year ahead of time. A new curriculum will be
rolled out a year early. Twenty million dollars will be
spent teaching it to teachers. Just twenty two percent of
Year eight students were achieving at the benchmark level last year,
a total system failure that was the catalyst for bringing
forward the new curriculum. According to the Prime Minister, We've
(00:36):
known there's been problems for years. As recently as twenty
twenty one, a Royal Society panel was called in by
the Ministry of Education to look at why our maths
results had hit a record low and the conclusion Massy
University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Gavin Martin, chair of the
panel that wrote the report, told the New Zealand Herald
ol math's education was in a god damn mess. Distinguished
(01:00):
Math Professor Gavin Martin joins me now and a very
good morning to.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
You late evening for me, it is true.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
You are you've been terribly international. You're in London, aren't
you good evening?
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Yeah, yeah, So I'm very visiting Imperial College here.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Oh fantastic. Do they do things differently over there, don't they?
Speaker 3 (01:23):
Sorry? Oh here in England? Yeah, a little bit differently.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Now, you were concerned that any as part of the report,
you were concerned that any kind of tinkering with the
curriculum would be just that tinkering. It wouldn't address the
fundamental issues, which is the deficits in our education system
for our children. Will what National has announced be enough
to stem the plummet to the bottom?
Speaker 3 (01:52):
Okay, So I think there's a little bit of confusion
about what's going on here. When people in education circles
talk about the curriculum, they don't just mean the content
the things that you have to learn, and they also
mean how you learn it, how you assess it, and
those sorts of things. So the way I am currently
(02:15):
seeing things that there's not a whole lot of changes
in what is expected to be learnt what we can
see by the data. And as Laxon said in his speech,
it's not that what we're trying to teach is not
good enough, we're not going far enough. It's just that
(02:36):
the kids never ever get there because of what's going
on in schools, and so the idea that we actually
get to the end of the curriculum and keep kids
at pace of the curriculum, I think is exactly what
we need. Whether or not it will be achieved, it's
different question. Ultimately, the devil's going to be in the details.
(03:01):
But I think that the proposals are a step in
the right direction for are I'm not convinced about the
levels of assessment that they have proposed, but I guess
that they've spoken to the right people and they feel
confident that this will also help move things along.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
One of the things you talked about in the report
was the fact that they could peck and choose from
a number of options for professional development and curriculum resources.
That appears to be something that's being addressed national or
the Coalition government has said there will be a more
prescriptive way of learning.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
Yes, I think that's a very good idea. I mean
a well resourced schools have the capability to peck among
the very best offerings and have the ability to make
the right choices for their kids. Poorly resourced schools are
unable to do that. They have to sort of make do,
(04:03):
and they perhaps don't have the experience to engage with
the companies offering these services to get the best one.
So trying to build a structure that operates as a
national system. And actually that's one thing that a lot
of people forget. These proposals are not about, you know,
(04:26):
what's best for an individual child. What's trying to be
accomplished here is a national system that works binized for everybody.
No such system is going to work for everybody, So
there will have to be backups and fell ins and
new strategies addressed for dealing with certain sorts of children
(04:48):
coming from different socio economic strategy, stratus and so forth.
And I think they've actually talked about that a little
bit too, so that a sort of reassuring.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
It's really what It actually really pains me that our
CA system used to be considered a very very good one.
But you've had about thirty five years now of people
coming through the education system, and you've got parents now
who were failed by the education system, who having children,
(05:21):
seeing them floundering, not being able to help them, not
being able to afford the after school tutoring that's very
effective but prohibitively expensive for most families. And further and
further behind. We're getting a families are getting into generationally,
unless they fluke it.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
Well, I'm not going to disagree with the single word
you said.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
It just kills me. You know, that was the way out.
It gave children options having a brilliant education. So even
if they didn't start with all the advantages they could
with good teachers and a great education system, have options,
have choices, and they've just been denied them and have
(06:06):
been for years.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, that's true, But you know, I think part of
it one of the one of the major changes I think.
You know, I said that the actual curriculum, the content,
the things that they will or should be learning to do,
is not going to change dramatically. But what is going
to change dramatically, I believe, is the way things are taught.
(06:28):
So there'll be more direct instruction, you know, so teachers
talking to the whole class altogether, explaining what's going on.
And the advantage there is that the teacher keeps moving
the class through the curriculum. At least all the students
will have had an opportunity to see the curriculum. What's
(06:50):
going on now is that classes are getting further and
further behind, so that kids actually don't see the curriculum,
and you know, you test them on stuff they haven't seen,
you can't be surprised that they fail by life, right,
So what's going on as a nonsense? And you know,
(07:10):
one of the things that we identified in our Roal
Society report was this practice the teachers had of breaking
a class into small ability groups and then the teacher
wandering around talking to each ability group. So if you
have a class of let me just do some round numbers,
(07:33):
twenty five students and you break them into five ability groups. Yeah,
that ability group will in an hour only see a
teacher for a maximum of twelve minutes. So actually, in
an hour's matuition, these kids only see a teacher for
twelve minutes, and so the whole class moves basically at
(07:58):
the pace of the lower ability groups, and the whole
class gets dragged behind. So I hope that these changes
enable teachers to move classes through the curriculum so kids
can see it. I think that you know that New
(08:21):
Zealand kids are smarter than teachers give them credit for,
and that actually, if we start moving through the curriculum
and teaching things that need to be taught in the
ways that need to be taught and then we should
start to see an improvement. And you know, direct construction
(08:41):
is that. But another one of the pedagogical approaches, well,
you know, it's back to basics. You know, it sounds right,
you know, well I think I think it works. Yeah,
and that the problem is that it's derided as you know,
(09:02):
rote learning, and we encountered that looking at where we
are writing the report that you know, some groups will say, oh,
you know, those countries do really well, but they're just
rote learning and New Zealand actually does really well because
we don't do rote learning. We teach learning the standing
(09:24):
and then you actually look at what the outcomes are
you find we don't actually teach very much at all.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And then the other point is that the bright kids
are the ones that want the extra stimulus, that love
math and want to know more and want to explore
and go down avenues and be the scientists and the
great thinkers of the future. They're not getting any time either,
because we're all ploting through the curriculum.
Speaker 3 (09:52):
Yeah. Well that's the point, isn't it. I mean, the
system as it's currently shaped basically fails. Everybody apart from
those that can afford to send their kids to private
schools or buy into the best, very best school districts,
and that is just not fair. You know, there's it's
it's ridiculous to suppose that people and lower socio economic
(10:17):
groupings had kids that aren't as smart. That's just simply
not true. So given everybody the opportunity to succeeds a
big part of where I think we need to go.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Absolutely.
Speaker 3 (10:32):
You know, one thing, one thing that I saw in
the announcement was that I think Erica Stanford announced that
there were some twenty five million dollars the teacher training
for new pedagogical approaches. I think that's a good start,
but almost certainly going to need more money to get
(10:53):
the teachers up the speed with these new approaches in
the sort of timeframe they're talking about. So, you know,
we have lost generations of kids and what has been
going on. But so I understand the need for haste
(11:14):
because you know, every year kids a year behind.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So I don't know what you're it's probably right, I
don't just in summary, Professor Martin, I don't know if
olds and stats are your specialty, but what are the
odds of this starting to address the decline.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Well, I think better than fifty fifty. Yeah, yeah, I
think it's different. Yeah. Well, okay, I saw what was
going to happen before, you know, we had these parliamentary
change and the new direction set in the education portfolio,
(11:59):
and what I think what I saw was going to happen,
I thought was absolutely diabolical. So you know, this is
light years ahead of what Hopkins was saying about their plans.
So I saw those plans and I was just pretty angry.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well, good lovely to hear from you, Massy University Distinguished
Professor of Mathematics and knows a bittle too about maths.
Gavin Martin from London.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
news talks that'd be from nine am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio
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