Primary Schooling
National Standards
UnitedFuture isbroadly supportive of a system of National Standards, however the current system has been poorly conceived, inaccurately portrayed, badly communicated and hastily implemented.
This has generated no small amount of animosity and mistrust among the numerous stakeholders.
Amid all this, outcomes for children must be 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, when taking the important step of implementing a system of National Standards.
Student Learning and Achievement
It is UnitedFuture policy to:
- Increase access to Reading Recovery.
- Set a minimum number of hours for the teaching of literacy and numeracy.
- 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.