Education

Critical to the health and future of any community is the education of its citizens. United Future promotes policy to enable universal access to all levels of education.

Early Childhood Education

United Future believes that parents have the primary responsibility for their child's education, and we want to support them in that role, by giving them the skills to be their child's first teacher.

United Future's position is to:

  • Support the concept of parents as first teachers and encourage the expansion of credible programmes like PAFT and HIPPY to families other than those deemed to be at-risk.
  • Support the idea that 3 and 4 year olds should have 20 hours early childhood education per week heavily subsidised, but include Play-centre, Kohanga Reo and Pacific Language nests as well as teacher-led centres.
  • Proactively recruit more men into Early Childhood Teacher education courses to address the current situation which sees less than 1% of early childhood teachers being male. United Future believes that there are many positive role modelling opportunities lost with current staff ratios.
  • Support the further development of Te Kohanga Reo and Pacific Island language nests as a means of increasing participation in early childhood education amongst Maori and Pacific Island pre-schoolers.

Primary Education

United Future's position is to:

  • Increase access to Reading Recovery
  • United Future supports the notion that a minimum number of hours is established for the teaching of core subjects.
  • Pilot programmes aimed at increasing parent involvement in the schools literacy programme.
  • Endorse intentions to drop the teacher/pupil ration for Year 1 Students to 1:15, and recommend that Years 2 & 3 be progressively dropped to 1:22 and Years 4-8 progressively dropped to 1:25.
  • Expand the provision of training and resources for all teachers working
  • Encourage more men to join the teaching profession at all levels through scholarships, incentives and bonuses.

NCEA

Opposition politicians have been quick to publicise problems with NCEA, but solutions have been slow to emerge. There is no doubt that the legitimacy of the new system is under threat, yet almost all political parties agree that NCEA should continue.

United Future offers some specific, constructive solutions to the problems besetting NCEA:

  • Introduce a minimum number of standards for each subject that must be externally assessed.
  • Engage in a public education campaign to ensure that parents, students and employers understand the NCEA system
  • Look at initiatives to address the problem of boys continuing to fall behind girls in achievement and completion rates for NCEA

Character Education

United Future encourages all schools to implement an integrated character education programme.

At a time when evidence clearly demonstrates higher rates of school suspensions due to a prevalence of disruptive behaviour, violence, risk behaviours and dishonesty, United Future believes we can no longer pay lip-service to the need to be more deliberate about who children are becoming, not just what they are learning.

Truancy

United Future's position is to:

  • Establish a national student database to track children's enrolment and attendance in school.
  • Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling.
  • Encourage all schools to implement an integrated character education programme.

Special Education Services

United Future's position is to:

  • Support the decisions of parents of special needs children who wish to enrol them in regular settings, units attached to schools or special schools.
  • Support the development of higher qualifications for those teaching special needs students.
Education