Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Andy England: Darfield High School Principal on the number of students passing NCEA numeracy exams

Transcript

Andy England: Darfield High School Principal on the number of students passing NCEA numeracy exams · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Let's go to school barely half.
• 0:01
  Speaker 2: Just fifty two percent of students past the NCAA Numerous
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: the exam this year. That's down from fifty seven percent
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: last year. But better news on truancy, sixty four percent
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: of kids attended school regularly in term two. That's the
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: highest level since twenty sixteen. Andy England, Darfield High School,
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: principled me this morning. Andy, Good morning, well man, Ran,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: how can we be going to school more and getting
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: worse results?
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: What I'm expect of that question, Ryan, it's actually not
• 0:28
  Speaker 3: littar relationship to quite a numerosy term, but the with
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: a maths one, with the numeracy one. I believe that
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: the curriculum that we're now teaching is not quite so
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: aligned with those cias the COREQ exams that were the
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: students have just been taking. And I actually don't think
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: we should read too much into that bit of a drop.
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: Improvements are happening across the country and in the teaching
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: of maths, and standards are lifting, but it's not easy
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: and we've got a long way to go in terms
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: of raising those standards. And yeah, I think we're got
• 1:00
  Speaker 3: a bit of a depth, but the general trajectory is up.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Okay, even though the number is down.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the general trajectory, I'd be surprised if next year
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: it's still down.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Further.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Put it that way, Remember, this is the first exam
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: that year ten students are taking. They've got another one
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: towards the end of this because in most cases it's
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: year ten students, not year eleven, and they actually don't
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: need this until they're in year eleven either or even
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: year twelve, and they just have to pass this to
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: pass NTA. So they've got another crack at it in September.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: They've got another crack next year in most cases, and
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: another crack at the end of that. Whether it's a
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: good tool or not, that's a different question, but it's
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: what we have for an for this year and next year.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Andy, what about reading and writing at your school? What
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: are you seeing?
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: Oh, I actually just had a big congratulations session yesterday
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: with our team. We've seen really big lifts in both
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: of those as well as numerously. So, yeah, the writing
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: has always been the hard one. Reading has generally been
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: reasonably good, but we or a really big lift in
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: our writing stats around about the same sort of sixty
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: seven percent initially, What.
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: Specifically, Andy, are you putting that down to. Is it
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: just now that we have a focus on it and
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: there's a bit of a vibe shift and people are saying,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: up fix it, that it can change.
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, Ryan, you know, I can be a
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: critic of quite a few things that are happening, but
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: actually I think there's a really good stuff happening in
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: terms of just attention on the need to achieve, the
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: need to attend school. They are linked and it is
• 2:30
  Speaker 3: making communities students take school more seriously. So I think
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: that helps. But there's a lot of additional work going in,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: particularly in not reading a writing space. We've employed an
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: additional teacher just to focus on that and she's having
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: an amazing effect. English and our social science departments are
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: working together so that students get this regular, very clear
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: teaching about sentence structures and what literacy actually is. So
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: that sort of explicit teacher is having an impact.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Excellent stuff. Andy England, Darfield High School Principal.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: to News Talks it Be from five am weekdays, or
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.