Yes, there is a welcome funding boost for early intervention and learning support, but it is accompanied by several new budget lines that will grow the testing culture and narrow the curriculum in schools and early childhood education (ECE).
In the first year of school, children are already subject to two phonics tests; now maths tests await them in the following years. But even before children have made it to school, a new oral language development tool is proposed for ECE.
The thing about testing is, once you have produced information about what children do and do not know and can and cannot do, you’re obliged to act on it.
But growth in this direction seems woefully inadequate. A promised 143 full-time maths intervention teachers, 32 more structured literacy teachers, and a "digital tutoring solution" nationwide just doesn’t add up.
Teachers are already capable of assessing children’s language, literacy and numeracy capabilities without the unnecessary costs of new testing regimes. Qualified teacher numbers, better teacher to student ratios, and smaller class/group sizes are more warranted for growth than these.
Yesterday’s announcements are revealing of government priorities in other growth areas too. There will be increased policing of children’s and young people’s school attendance. But we wonder if anyone in government has considered how other decisions, like testing, affect children’s and young people’s satisfaction and attendance at school?
So it’s all about the C word - choices.
In last year’s Budget, this government chose to give tax breaks to landlords and tobacco companies, and this year to overseas investors. But what matters to us is the education choices we make for children’s and young people’s futures.
Ms Willis seems obsessed with fiscal debt, but not future debt. We face future debt whenever there is under-investment in children and young people.
Many of the investments made today are headed in the wrong direction. We advocate for growth in quality learning and teaching so the young have good reasons to go to school.
■ Karen Nairn and Alex Gunn are professors at the College of Education, University of Otago.
