Kate Gainsford: Secondary Principals Council Chair on NCEA result improvements

Concerns we're narrowing the focus too much in the push to improve literacy and numeracy rates.

Small improvements were seen on last year with 57% of NCEA students achieving the numeracy standard, 61% achieving the reading standard and 55% achieving the writing standard.

Secondary Principals Council Chair, Kate Gainsford told Andrew Dickens the focus hasn't been spread across other important subjects like science or languages. 

She says we need to ensure we don't neglect other parts of the curriculum while also looking at the basics.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We've got some good news on the education front. For once,
the amount of kids passing NCA co requisite tests is
slowly improving. Now, these are the exam students must pass
in order to pass the year level move on up.
Fifty seven percent of students achieve maths up from forty
five percent. Sixty one percent pass reading up from fifty

(00:22):
eight percent, so just three percent there. Meanwhile, writing stayed
unchanged at fifty five percent. So Kate Gainsford is the
secretary principal's council chair. She's also a principal. She's the
principal at a college. And she joins her. Now, good
morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Kate, good morning, how are you today?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Very well, so fifty morning, it is a Tuesday morning.
Thank you, Thank you, principal, and don't give me detention.
So a fifty seven percent pass rate for maths is
not great, but it is up, so I guess you'll
take that. Well.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, it's really happening to see that after all of
the effort that has gone on into it. So what
we need to see, of course, is that effort continuing.
You know, there's been some things that have come together
very nicely around this. There's been cross party agreement on
the need to focus on these things, and we haven't
seen that for some time, so that has lent some

(01:19):
continuity to things. That's great. We've seen we've seen the
government and other agencies really listening to teachers and schools
and they feedback about some earlier poor performance of the
digital platform and even some of the assessments themselves, and
that's seen some improvements. And of course we've seen a

(01:39):
little bit of extra resource in some schools to pay
for some additional tutoring and support, but we've got a
way to go yet to improve that.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
So the funny thing you say, cross party supports you know,
everybody's supporting this, but reading, writing, and arithmetic was always
the very basis of our education. Why do we let
it slip?

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Well, it hasn't been resourced in this way, certainly in
the primary schools with a common practice model and then
the structured literacy and their approach to maths. It hasn't
been resourced in anything like this way before with the
all of the rest of the professional development that seaches
have received. So it certainly has been a significant investment

(02:22):
of money and that does make a difference. If you
put more into a system you get more out of it.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
So is it the resourcing or is it the government's
new curriculum?

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Well it is as I said, this government and the
previous government had reached agreement on some approaches to literacy
that I think are proving to be fruitful. So the
curriculum focus is useful. What we have to make sure
we don't do is make sure that we neglect other
parts of the curriculum. We have too much of a

(02:58):
focus on its narrow so that we because the focus
has not been spread across other areas like science and
technology and languages and so forth, and those are also important.
Of course access to those is helped if you had
illiterate and numerate. So looking at the basics as useful.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
Well, well done to the teachers because all the past
all the rates are over the fifty percent pass rate.
But we can do better and we still get a
long way to go, and that is Kate Gainsford's Secretary,
Principal's Council Chair and principal at our Tear College. For
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