Education

Early Childhood

Primary Schooling

Secondary Schooling

Parents and Community

Effective Teaching and School Leadership & Governance

Curriculum

Funding and Achievement

Safe Learning Environments

Boys Education

Special Education

Gifted Students

Tertiary Education and Student Support

Adult and Community Education

 

Early Childhood

Parents are the drivers of their children’s education, implicitly and explicitly, and we want to support them in this role, by giving them the skills to be their child’s first teacher. It means we will allow parents, and not the government, to choose the most appropriate provider of pre-school education for their child.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Encourage more men to join the teaching profession at all levels, including ECE;
• Support the concept of parents as first teachers and expand access to programmes like PAFT and HIPPY to families other than those deemed to be at-risk;
• Endorse the role of parent-led early childhood education centres, such as Playcentre, to empower parents to lead their children’s education and encourage the parent-child bond;
• Promote an increase of funding for early identification of children with special needs and disabilities with targeted systematic, intensive and high quality interventions;
• Ensure that government funding of early childhood centres is reflected in the fees passed on to parents by requiring them to disclose what proportion of fees are taxpayer-funded;
• Pilot the use of early childhood education centres as contact points for family support services, such as parenting courses, budget advice, health and counselling services;
• Simplify, with a view to reducing, the quantity and complexity of compliance requirements that early childhood education and care providers must fulfil.

Primary Schooling

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Increase funding for, and access to, Reading Recovery;
• Set a minimum number of hours for the core teaching of literacy and numeracy;
• Work towards reducing the teacher/pupil ratio, with a particular focus on reducing class sizes for Years 4-8;
• Work on introducing at least one teacher aide per primary school classroom to help with behavioural and developmental issues (beginning in low decile schools).

National Standards

UnitedFuture is broadly supportive of a system of National Standards as long as outcomes for children are the top priority. UnitedFuture wants to keep teachers, parents, schools and the Ministry of Education on task to ensure that the overall objective of improved primary education is kept at the forefront.

In keeping with this, UnitedFuture is particularly keen to improve the clarity of standards information provided to parents about their child’s performance.

Secondary Schooling

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Introduce a minimum number of standards for each subject that must be externally assessed;
• Investigate initiatives to address the problem of boys continuing to fall behind girls in achievement and completion rates for NCEA;
• Establish nationally consistent policies on internal and external reassessment opportunities;
• Ensure that the time allotted to complete externally assessed exams is appropriate to the number of standards that students are sitting;
• Support the raising of the school leaving age from 16 provided:
  • it is accompanied by a range of options for students to use their years 12 and 13 for more career-focused learning options like trade training; and
  • universities are prepared to allow students to attain first year university credits in year 13;

• Ensure that senior students have sufficient access to advice and information about career choices and opportunities for further education and training.

Effective Teaching

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Encourage more men to join the teaching profession;
• Ensure that entry requirements to teacher education are rigorous;
• Ensure that student teachers possess both the competencies and the disposition to work with children and young people before they can graduate;
• Clarify the processes available to Principals and Boards of Trustees for dismissing an incompetent teacher;
• Support changes to the Teachers’ Council (or the proposed ‘Education Council of Aotearoa New Zealand’) to give it greater powers to discipline and de-register those who are unfit to teach;
• Increase the amount of time student teachers spend in school-based placements;
• Expand Teach First NZ, a programme that takes top university graduates, puts them through short but intensive teacher training, and places them in challenging schools.

Engaging Parents and the Community

Research shows that families and whānau who monitor their children’s progress at school are more likely to have children who are successful learners.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Ensure that information about the characteristics, facilities and performance of all New Zealand schools is available to parents on the internet;
• Pilot programmes aimed at increasing parent involvement in schools literacy programmes;
• Target Maori and Pacific Communities for closer involvement in school life and student learning to improve achievement rates;
• Provide additional support to schools catering for extremely diverse communities to engage better with parents. Often schools positioned in the middle of the decile rankings are the most in need of this support.

Effective School Leadership & Governance

School leadership is a critical factor in determining the tone and effectiveness of schools. Principals and their senior staff oversee curriculum delivery, assessment, the professional development of staff, timetabling, reporting to parents and the wider community, the pastoral care of students and much more.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Assess whether the same governance structure for schools as small as 9 students in remote rural locations as for large schools of over 2000 students, despite widely varying needs and pools of potential trustees, is appropriate;
• Review the role and effectiveness of the Board of Trustees model, specifically succession planning, training, financial management, recruitment and retention, professional appointments, the development of special school characteristics and issues identified by managers during a statutory intervention;
• Offer more management training to primary teachers, to reflect the additional responsibilities beyond the walls of their classroom that many teachers carry out;
• Improve the provision of professional development for school leaders.

Curriculum

Success in the future will require people to be more adaptable to change both personally and collectively. Accordingly, United Future would like schools to have greater ‘all round’ education focus.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Ensure that years 7 – 13 at school take an integrated approach to life skills by establishing it as a separate subject, including segments on career planning, budgeting advice, and parenting skills;
• Enable industries and NGOs to work more closely with schools to develop educational programmes. For example, the fisheries industry and organisations such as Fish and Game could trial the development and delivery of programmes to teach children about fishing, sustainability and water safety;
• Enable all schools to have a regular outdoors education programme, where outdoor recreational experts and clubs can support teachers in educating students;

• Ensure that character education programmes, also known as values education and life-skills education, are established in full consultation with parents and staff and operate in all of New Zealand’s schools. Character education is about incorporating universal values such as honesty, respect for others and the law, tolerance, fairness, caring and social responsibility into a school’s culture;

• Ensure that assessment tools be developed that would provide teachers with greater clarity in observing oral skill development – not just students’ confidence levels when talking, but also their ability to negotiate, articulate and participate in conversations through effective listening; 
• Encourage the use and teaching of Te Reo in all schools;
• Expand the range of languages available for study at secondary levels, drawing on the resources of Correspondence School where necessary.

See also UnitedFuture Policy on Civics and Citizenship

Funding and Achievement

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Fund a base level of Support Staff salaries separately from schools’ general Operations Grant;
• Review funding available for ICT initiatives;
• Improve security options for school campuses;
• Prepare for the impact of changing modes of learning on school facilities (e.g. the use of flexible spaces for team teaching);
• Increase resources for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) programmes, to ensure that our newest residents can participate fully in education and integrate into our society as soon as possible after their arrival.

Creating a Safe Learning Environment

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Support restorative justice disciplinary programmes in schools to combat bullying and other misbehaviour, requiring the student to understand the implications of his/her actions, involving the parents, and arriving at a punishment (e.g. community service) that is an alternative to suspension or expulsion;
• Include parents where possible in developing and enforcing agreements between students with disruptive behaviour and the school prior to resorting to exclusions and/or stand-downs;
• Develop alternative education provision for suspensions longer than five days;
• Make discipline a key factor in evaluating school performance;
• Resource alternative education providers to work with at-risk youth who have dropped out of mainstream schooling;
• Work with schools to ensure that they remain drug-free by promoting treatment options in conjunction with punishment for drug offences;
• Undertake a campaign to promote academic role models amongst youth, but particularly targeted at boys;
• Expand the Social Workers in Schools programme beyond decile 1-3 schools.

Boys Education

Boys make up close to three-quarters of referrals for literacy help, speech/language therapy and behavioural difficulties. At the other end, women make up nearly 60% of our university graduates and this percentage appears to be growing.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Address the growing achievement gap between male and female students;
• Encourage more men to join the teaching profession at all levels;
• Investigate the use of single-sex classrooms within coeducational schools;
• Find other ways to adapt teaching methods and educational environments for boys without discriminating against female students.

Special Education

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Increase funding to the Ongoing Reviewable Resourcing Scheme (ORRS). Currently 1% of students receive some ORRS funding even though we know that one in five New Zealanders have some sort of disability;
• Review the guidelines used to determine if a student still qualifies for ORRS funding to ensure that future progress isn’t hampered by a reduction in allocation because the student has made progress; 
• Allow schools to transfer unused ORRS funding in a particular year to other students in need within the school;

• Develop compulsory content for all teacher trainees regarding teaching students with disabilities;

• Increase funding for Resource Teachers of Vision and Resource Teachers of the Deaf to improve teacher-student ratios;
• Ensure that the professional development of teachers and staff working with special needs students is funded separately, rather than having to come out of the Special Needs Grant to schools as this reduces the amount available for direct support for students;
• Review the workload of Special Education staff within the Ministry of Education and out-of school offices to ensure teachers and students are being appropriately supported;
• Promote an increase of funding for early identification of children with special needs and disabilities with targeted systematic, intensive and high quality interventions;
• Fund support staff such as teacher aides centrally rather than from operational grants.

Gifted Students

UnitedFuture acknowledges that gifted children may not be nurtured in the school environment due to the perception that they will succeed regardless.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Better educate student teachers and current classroom teachers on how to identify and respond to the needs of gifted children;
• Ensure that funding and resources for gifted children are regionally managed in collaboration with other schools, in recognition of the small number of affected children;
• Fund specialist education programmes for children assessed as requiring such provision, such as "One Day School";
• Provide regional resource teachers to support the learning of gifted students and their classroom teachers.

The Correspondence School

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Enable all New Zealand students to access and benefit from dual enrolment, so that those who are primarily Correspondence School students can take classes at local schools as well as the reverse scenario (e.g. where a school does not teach a particular subject);
• Offer Correspondence School students the chance to have face-to-face interactions and participate in  school camps, school days and/or workshops in order to develop co-operation, competition, physical & social skills;
• Fund the Parents Association annually through the Ministry of Education;
• Ensure that Distance & Itinerant students’ needs are ring-fenced and protected and open up funding streams such as ORRS for students with disabilities and special needs;
• Develop an NZQA qualification for teaching by correspondence;
• Review supervisor payment rates.

Tertiary Education

UnitedFuture proposes a bold new approach to tertiary education policy, which would see New Zealand finally offer free education to its citizens from the age of 3 years old, right through to university and beyond.

We propose a zero-fees policy for tertiary education in New Zealand in place of Student Allowances, accompanied by a push to increase the quality of tertiary education and protect the value of New Zealand degrees.

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Ensure that entrance standards remain high for universities to ensure they are internationally competitive. Australia has six universities ranked in the top 50 in the world, but we only have one in the top 100, and this needs to change;

• Promote greater awareness amongst young people of the opportunities afforded by vocational training, such as apprenticeships;
• Encourage all young people under 25 who are not at school to either be “earning or learning” (i.e. in some form of education/training or work) and support initiatives such as the Mayoral Taskforce for Jobs.
• Encourage networks and co-operation between tertiary providers and industry to ensure that skills taught are relevant and required in the future labour market;
• Ensure that tertiary education instructors undergo a minimum amount of training in teaching, and require teaching performance to be monitored and included as a factor in promotion decisions;
• Ensure that degree courses are taught by staff actively engaged in relevant research;
• Ensure that the intent of the University Act is not diluted by external audit of compliance areas, especially in non-relevant research.

Student Support

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Remove tuition fees for tertiary education in New Zealand, accompanied by a push to increase the quality of tertiary education and protect the value of New Zealand degrees.

The zero fees policy would mean that students would only borrow living costs, rather than the crippling loans which are currently being incurred to cover fees as well. A zero fees policy also addresses one of the illusions of the current policy, where it is assumed that tuition fees cover all or most of the costs of study, when in fact the taxpayer already covers the majority of tuition costs;

• Abolish the Student Allowance, as a way to help fund the zero fees policy. The student allowance system has become patently unfair, relying on means testing of parental income until a student turns 24, and enabling the wealthy to receive allowances where their parents are able to reduce their taxable income;
• Support the NZ Union of Students' Association's proposal for a “First in Family” scholarship, which covers living and course related costs for first year university students who are the first in their immediate family to undertake tertiary study. Additionally, the programme requires participating universities to extend support to secondary schools to select and encourage prospective First in Family applicants and support them to succeed once they are at the tertiary institution;

• Increase the focus on repayment compliance and monitoring of overseas-based student loan holders;
• Ensure all tertiary students unable to find work over the summer period have access to the Emergency Unemployment Benefit.

Adult Continuing & Community Education

It is UnitedFuture policy to:

• Develop a strategy for adult and community education that determines the most appropriate provision of learning opportunities in both urban and rural settings;
• Establish a network of ‘rural education posts’ to serve as adult and community education information centres and meeting places, utilising existing educational facilities;
• Increase funding for adult literacy programmes, including those in workplaces, and ensure that every community education centre runs such programmes;
• Increase funding for budget advice programmes, and ensure that every community education centre runs such programmes.