Lucy Naylor: Auckland Primary Principals' Association President on the errors found in new Ministry-funded maths books

One school principal is not phased by mistakes being found in a Ministry maths resource book. 

18 errors have been found and fixed - including incorrect sums and a Te Reo Māori typo.

Auckland Primary Principals' Association President Lucy Naylor says it's not ideal, but the resources only make up about five percent of what's taught.

She points out they didn't cost schools.

"Given the maths resources have been given free to schools by the Government, it kind of outweighs the errors."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There are mistakes in the new math's workbooks from the
Ministry of Education. Some of these were quite frankly absolute clangers.
A question for the year sevens incorrectly referred to rectangles
as triangles, and one answer in a book for the
year fours was listed as Ony twenty four when it
was supposed to be nine eight hundred and seventy five.
Lucy Naylor is Auckland Primary Principals Association president who's met

(00:22):
with the Ministry today to discuss this. Hey, Lucy, hi head.
Some of the stuff sounds really dumb, but eighteen errors
in workbooks for six different year groups probably isn't that bad, right.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Look at I think it's a small number of errors
given that you're dealing with four providers across eight years
of learning. There's no doubt that those er shouldn't have curred.
But I also think it's probably reflective of the pace
of change that the providers had to produce the resources.

(00:55):
The other point I would say as well is that
given the math resources have been given free to schools
by the government, it kind of outweighs the errors. Yeah,
you know, the additional support definitely outweighs the number of
erarors at this point. Another point as well is that

(01:15):
the math resources a very small part of a math
program roughly, but it should be about five percent of
your math program is made up of views in the resource.
So look, while it's you know, obviously not ideal, I
don't think in the long term it's going to make
a massive amount of impact. I think there've been minimal

(01:38):
long term impact of this, and I believe I think
I'm right in saying that the errors have been corrected already.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yeah, so you had a meeting today with the Ministry
of Education. What was the point of that?

Speaker 2 (01:49):
That was actually a meeting around reporting to parents and
unpacking different aspects of reporting to parents.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Okay, how fast did these guys have to prepare these
books if they made such you know, basic errors.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
I couldn't. I don't know the specifics of the timeline,
but the IRIFP was put out in about November last year,
so it was quite a quick turnaround. And if you
think of the volume that those providers were having to publish,
that's a lot of books. Yeah, so I guess what,

(02:26):
are we surprised there's a few eerrors? Probably not, but
I do think that look it is reflected to that
pace of change, but across the volume of resource that
was produced, it's fairly small and yeah, the minimal there'll
be absolutely minimal long term impact for those children.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Lucy. Thanks very much, Lucy Naylor, Auckland Primary Principles Association President.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
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