20 Sep 2017

National and Labour respond to claims that arts education is being degraded

From Upbeat, 1:10 pm on 20 September 2017
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Photo: Chris Hipkins and Nikki Kaye

Arts education is a core part of the New Zealand curriculum from years 1 to 9, but for the past 10 years there has been no one at the Ministry of Education whose primary responsibility is the Arts.

According to teachers working in primary schools the focus is squarely on fulfilling the demands of National Standards; they were introduced in 2010 to measure competencies in numeracy and literacy for all primary school pupils.

Teachers, and others working in the education sector say that fixation with testing is having a detrimental effect on Arts and Music education and should be scrapped.

The National Party’s education spokesperson Nikki Kaye says although National Standards aren’t perfect, they are working and if National gets in for a fourth term “National Standards Plus” will be introduced.

This will allow parents to track their child’s progress via an app in a diverse range of areas including arts and music along with numeracy and literacy.

Labour’s Chris Hipkins says it’s counter-productive. “The obsession with measurement has become over the top in our schools. We assess our kids more than any other country we compare ourselves to,” he says.

Hipkins says many arts and music teachers are quitting the profession “burnt out” by the workload; and itinerant music teachers working part time are required to pay $4000 every four years to be recertified.

Nikki Kaye admits the government has failed to stop teachers leaving, and says more attention needs to be paid to attracting and retaining teachers and reducing their workload.

National intends to introduce mentoring programmes for teachers, and provide incentives including offering to pay relocation costs. She says the lack of time spent on arts and music training for teachers would also be addressed.

Chris Hipkins says the Labour Government put in place programmes to attract new teachers, including the TeachNZ programme, but he says funding for that has halved under National. “They have decided that tax cuts are more important than ensuring we have enough teachers in classrooms to teach kids,” Hipkins says.

The National Party has also pledged about $40 million towards education, with the Digital Technologies curriculum - which contains an element around design and visual communications - benefiting from that.

But for teachers to stay and for education to flourish, Nikki Kaye would like to see a 10-15 year cross party/government agreement to support teachers.

But this election, it’s about National Standards. Should they stay or should they go?

Labour’s Chris Hipkins agrees with the NZEI, MENZA, The Greens and New Zealand First that National Standards need to go. “Let’s scrap the standardisation obsession and let’s put some creativity and flexibility into the school system. Let’s give teachers that opportunity to engage and have the spontaneous teaching moments,” he says.

Nikki Kaye says if she becomes Minister of Education again, National Standards will stay, “National Standards Plus” will be introduced and she’ll be asking the Education Council for innovation planning for initial teacher education in creativity and the arts.

“I think it’s totally irresponsible to come into this election … saying you’re going to scrap National Standards when it’s helping vulnerable kids know where they are and invest in areas  like numeracy and literacy and not be clear with what you’re going to replace it with,” she says.