The government, predictably, hailed the initiative as a game changer, but it will take quite some time — and quite some attention to detail — before that bold claim can be substantiated.
Every child learns at a different pace, not every child makes uniform educational progression, and not every child has the same propensity towards mathematics. The proposed new test will need to take this into account as it is rolled out.
Also, it will need to be clearly understood what the absence of knowledge in some areas might actually mean — there could be fault to be found with teaching, course materials, the pupil themselves, or other extraneous factors. It has always been a weakness of tests or exams that they capture the mental processes of that time of a particular day, rather than representing the test subjects’ actual capabilities.
That said, even if it may potentially be a blunt instrument, a test is a useful tool which parents and pupils alike can understand. It may not be a panacea to the perceived ill of low numeracy skills in New Zealand, but it may at least be a way of identifying pupils who may otherwise miss out on much needed help.
Teachers have argued that the government’s new proposal introduces yet another test for children who are already comprehensively tested — and even more so since the government introduced literacy testing. They make a reasonable point that the efficacy of that testing has yet to be assessed but a similar regime is now to be introduced without proof of concept.
They also argue that teachers are best placed to assess which pupils are in difficult and act accordingly.
There is some validity to that but it depends on both the teacher’s professionalism and there actually being the resources available to help both teacher and pupil.
This is where the rubber is going to hit the road on the government’s well-intentioned plans.
It is all very well to say children will get extra numeracy assistance, but it is quite another for the vaunted early intervention and targeted support to manifest itself, for the pledged professional development and specialist support for teachers to actually be available, and for the purported 143 new full-time maths intervention teachers to actually appear in classrooms.
Low as well, if not more so than, high decile schools will need access to these teachers. So will rural as well as urban schools.
The principle, that every child will have every chance to maximise their potential, is inarguable. But the action now needs to match the rhetoric.
An uneasy calm
The world can breathe a sigh of relief — for now — that the shooting has seemingly stopped between India and Pakistan.
Of all the world’s trouble spots the border between the two countries is the most combustible, and any conflagration along it runs the grave risk of being accompanied by nuclear attack.
Calm heads have always prevailed it the past when trouble has erupted and they appear to have done so again, albeit that India’s prime minister has couched his acceptance of a ceasefire deal as being a "pause" in its military action rather than a holstering of arms.
New Zealand, which has many people of both Indian and Pakistani origin living in this country and maintains friendly relations with each nation, can only be distressed at this outbreak of violence and hope that the United States — which acted decisively in cooling tensions — can broker a deal to maintain peace.
Such a deal is vital: the consequences of all-out war in the region would be incalculably severe for the whole world.
Leaders in both India and Pakistan now need to tone down their rhetoric, take this religous melting pot off the boiling point, and calm down all concerned.
