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Kyle Brewerton: Auckland's Remuera Intermediate Principal on only a quarter of Year 8 students achieved curriculum writing · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

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  Speaker 1: Going with education. Only a quarter of year eights that's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: age eleven or twelve can write at the level the
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  Speaker 1: new curriculum expects, which is pretty bleak. Sixty one percent
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  Speaker 1: more than a year behind. Education Minister Erica Stanford's plan
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  Speaker 1: well fund a teacher in every school to upskill on
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  Speaker 1: structured literacy. Question is is that going to be enough?
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  Speaker 1: Will it work? Kyl Brwton is the remy Wear intermediate
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  Speaker 1: School principle on the phone this morning. Kyl, good morning,
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  Speaker 1: Good morning Ryan. Pretty shocking numbers.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, as a sector, we're struggling to make sense of
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  Speaker 2: those figures. At the moment. We obviously have a relatively
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  Speaker 2: new curriculum. We're still transitioning to the new curriculum. We
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  Speaker 2: don't have access to the specific metrics that they're using
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  Speaker 2: to assess that writing, and we don't have exemplars of
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  Speaker 2: what that writing looks like. So it's hard for us
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  Speaker 2: to really sort of have confidence in those numbers. We're
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  Speaker 2: not disagree necessarily, but it's just really hard to have
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  Speaker 2: that confidence. Who so, you know, well, it's done through
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  Speaker 2: a study basically that's been run for many, many years
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  Speaker 2: and teachers, if you like a trained up they go
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  Speaker 2: into this into the study, they go into schools, they
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  Speaker 2: work with kids, and then they take that marketing that
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  Speaker 2: that work back and then they market. But as I say,
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  Speaker 2: the sector as a whole doesn't see that marketing schedule,
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  Speaker 2: doesn't see the exemplars that that's been aligned against.
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  Speaker 1: I think we're all mean told you that there does
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  Speaker 1: that mean cale that you teachers have never seen that before,
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  Speaker 1: so then you've never trusted them or never known the
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  Speaker 1: detail on the numbers.
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  Speaker 2: We've known that there's an issue in literacy, and no
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  Speaker 2: one's disagreeing with that, it's just the degree of that
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  Speaker 2: need that's been sort of highlighted. To your point about
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  Speaker 2: the marketing schedule or the you know, whatever you want
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  Speaker 2: to call it, No, we don't have access to that
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  Speaker 2: particular one because it's an evaluation study that's done across
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  Speaker 2: the country, so to give it sort of so's they're
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  Speaker 2: sort of trying to avoid people, almost like if you like,
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  Speaker 2: teaching to a test, but without knowing exactly what it
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  Speaker 2: is that is being sort of measured against it. As
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  Speaker 2: I say, it's just hard for us to be able
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  Speaker 2: to align what we're seeing at our schools with what
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  Speaker 2: we're being told.
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  Speaker 1: How is it that you can be kids are almost
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  Speaker 1: going back, which you've got forty one percent of year
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  Speaker 1: three students that expected curriculum benchmark, thirty three percent in
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  Speaker 1: year six, and then just twenty four percent in year eight. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, the bottom line is, if those numbers
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  Speaker 2: are accurate, and that is indeed the case, there's a
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  Speaker 2: pretty compelling reason for it. When you look at the
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  Speaker 2: way our school system is designed. We put the least
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  Speaker 2: amount of resource and we have our highest class sizes
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  Speaker 2: in years four to eight. So we start off reasonably
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  Speaker 2: well and then we suddenly ramp everything up. We have
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  Speaker 2: these big classes, we have very little in the way
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  Speaker 2: of staffing, and then sort of we get to the
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  Speaker 2: high school and think, oh my gosh, we need to
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  Speaker 2: sort this out, and we start to increase all our
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  Speaker 2: staffing again, reduce the class sizers, and we put a
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  Speaker 2: lot more resource in. So common sense would suggest that
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  Speaker 2: if this has been a long standing issue, why are
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  Speaker 2: we not keeping our resourcing quite high in those junior years,
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  Speaker 2: getting that foundation rock solid, getting those kids to where
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  Speaker 2: they need to be so they can really really thrive
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  Speaker 2: in high school.
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  Speaker 1: Cayle, appreciate your time this morning. Carl Briton remu Era
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  Speaker 1: intermediate school principal.
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• 3:26
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• 3:29
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