Hon Hekia Parata
Minister of Education

4 June 2015

Speech to the New Zealand Initiative launch of Un(ac)countable: Why millions on maths returned little, Wellington

Tēnā koutou katoa.

Firstly I’d like to acknowledge Oliver Hartwich and Rose Patterson. Thank you for inviting me to the launch of the New Zealand Initiative’s report on maths education, I think.

As the Minister of Education speaking at the launch of a report that is critical of the education system I confess to feeling a little like Marie Antoinette approaching the guillotine.

From the outset I would say there are some findings I agree with your researchers on, and some about which I possess less certainty.

The things about which we agree include the critical importance of young New Zealanders getting a good education, and needing to do a better job of giving our young a solid grounding in mathematics.

Whatever we end up doing in later life, basic maths is a skill we all need – for those my age to balance our cheque books, for the younger generation to reconcile the incomings and outgoings in their online bank accounts, to pay the power bill, to do the weekly shopping, and so on.

Our hope and expectation is that many of our young who develop these basic skills will go on to develop higher level skills that will lead to rewarding careers for them and the creation of job opportunities for their fellow New Zealanders.

Research shows that those are exactly the skills that the majority of young New Zealanders leave school with. However, a series of reports including PISA and our recently released National Monitoring study have shown that the system is failing a minority of our students.

Your report attributes much of that failing to a change in the way maths was taught about 15 years ago. That change, which was in line with international thinking at the time, saw teachers devote less time to drilling the so-called “basics” of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division and more time to mathematical thinking and problem solving strategies.

As someone who grew up singing the times tables in class I have some sympathy for that point of view. I can’t explain the theory of relativity, but I can calculate the cost of half a dozen tins of tomatoes and work out how much change I should be given when I buy a book.

However, attractive though the Initiative’s thesis is to people of my generation, a couple of things need to be borne in mind.

One is that this is a continuation of an age-old debate in education between those who believe in rote learning and those who place a higher value on critical thinking.

The same debate is apparent in reading between those who advocate the use of phonics and those who champion whole language learning and in writing between those who stress the importance of structure and those who think nothing should be allowed to constrain students’ creative processes.

The other is that the impact of de-emphasising the importance of role learning strategies is not clear cut.

Yes, the performance of New Zealand students in international maths assessments has declined slightly in recent years. But the data shows that students whose teachers participated in the Advanced Numeracy Development Programme achieved significantly better in the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) than students whose teachers did not.

The truth is that basic subtraction, addition, multiplication and division should not be a barrier to solving more complicated mathematical problems. Like changing gear with a manual shift, multiplying seven by eight or subtracting 11 from 20 should be something we do without conscious thought.

But we also need to help our students develop problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. In today’s world it is not what you know that is important, but how you apply that knowledge that has value. The trick is striking the right balance between rote learning and higher order thinking. That is not easy.

The good news for me as Minister is that thanks to National Standards we now have a much clearer picture of our students’ accomplishments and needs.

Instead of saying that 18 year olds have a problem with maths, we can now say that Johnny, aged six, in room 12 at Te Aro Primary, has a problem with maths. And, most importantly, we can do something about it before Johnny becomes convinced that maths is not for him.

That is why we, as a government that is committed to lifting the achievement level of every child, are gathering evidence of what works and what doesn’t, investing in successful maths programmes, investing in the professional development of teachers, making information for parents and whānau more accessible and easier to understand, and making it easier for schools and teachers to share mathematics expertise by facilitating the creation of communities of schools.

It is also why we have charged the Education Council, the new teacher professional body, with raising the status of the teaching profession.

As you will know not all of these measures are universally popular. But one thing we do know for certain is that if we continue to do exactly what we have always done, we will achieve exactly what we have always achieved. In an education system in which less than seven out of ten 18 year olds had NCEA Level 2 when we took office that is not acceptable.

Since then we have lifted the achievement rate for 18 year olds from 68 to 81 per cent, but there is much more to be done. This government is committed to raising achievement levels for all students, both for their benefit and for that of the whole community. When kids do well we all do.

I would like to thank the Initiative for the invitation to be here and for a provocative and interesting contribution to a debate that is of vital importance not just to our children, but to all of us.

ends

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