Kerre Woodham: Investment in our children's education is an investment in our country

Finally, finally, a political party is grasping the nettle and telling it like it is.

This education system is failing our children and it's been failing it for two decades.

Parents and teachers have been saying this for years. The kids themselves are voting with their feet. They're simply not turning up for school. And why should they?

I've been saying for years, as have others, that it is inconceivable that a child should turn up its secondary school functionally illiterate.

They have had five to seven years at primary school and come out of it unable to read, to write, to do basic maths, far less anything else. How can this possibly happen?

It's not the fault of the teachers. There are many, many fine teachers who are doing their level best with an incoherent curriculum with many, many kids with multiple and diverse needs in big classrooms. It's not the same as it used to be. They are doing the very best they can, but you've seen the level of their frustration.

Now, National has announced its Teaching the Basics Brilliantly policy.  

I am so sick of our young people being let down on so many counts.

Nathan Wallis the educator and psychologist says the first three years are absolutely vital. If you have $100,000 to put it towards a child's education, he says, don't save it for university. You put that into the first three years, after that it's the next five years and after that it's basically toast.

You're done and dusted. You either got a child with an inquiring mind, a child who believes that they can do whatever they want to do, that they can read, they can write, they can create their own worlds with their own imaginations.

They can see the magic and numbers they can see the magic in learning. That's what teachers live to do, and so few of them are given the opportunity to do that.

We have got to draw a line in the sand when it comes to our children's education.

I cannot recall how long I've talked about this, ever since the figures first started coming out. That we were slipping and we were slipping further behind and the answers were all ‘tests aren't everything you know. You've got to let these children evolve at their own pace in their own time’.

Sure, if it was one-on-one teaching, perhaps that would be so. But right now you've got overcrowded classes with children, with so many diverse needs that cannot possibly be met by one teacher.

They are doing the best that they can. They need the support of the community, they need the support of a country that cares and understands that an investment in a child's education is an investment for the country as a whole.

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