Education reforms and how they affect those in Hufflepuff

"C’S get degrees" was a comment I heard from a student 20 years ago.

My reply was "Only if you want to be in Hufflepuff". The Harry Potter reference was not taken well, and I was accused of being judgemental.

One of the criticisms of the NCEA qualifications is that it allowed students to settle for mediocrity where some just did enough to pass rather than extend themselves and aspire for excellence.

One of my daughters was in the first cohort to go through NCEA, and she would reassure me that she was doing enough to pass, but merely passing was not what I wanted for her.

I thought she was smarter than me and so I wanted to see how she could be extended to achieve her potential. A little unfair, as how many of us do achieve our potential?

Life is much too interesting to spend all our energy on schoolwork.

In the AI environment it may be the right thing to bring back the focus on external exams.

However, it is not always the best way to ensure students have understood important concepts or are able to construct a coherent argument.

I started attending university in my mid-30s and my internal marks were always high.

However, when it came time to sit the exam it would usually knock me back. It was a little disheartening knowing that even though I understood the material well, my discomfort with exams meant that my grades would always drop.

I remember the last exam I ever sat, a masters paper on epidemiology and biostatistics where I sat paralysed for the first 20 minutes. Just as well it was a three-hour exam.

I have been around long enough to have taught students who have been through both the old School Certificate and NCEA.

I haven’t noticed a major difference in the ability of students to think about, understand, write and engage with the material I teach.

One big change I have noticed, particularly in recent years, is that students tend to be a lot more confident.

They are better able to do group and solo presentations, with less hesitancy and embarrassment than students from 25 years ago. I think NCEA contributed to that.

One of the problems with the new structure is that it reminds me of when I started high school back in 1975 when we were sorted into two streams. An academic stream for those doing French or Latin and a general stream for those doing more vocational subjects like woodwork, metalwork and agriculture.

The problem with these vocational-type streams is that you are asking 12-year-olds to almost set in stone their future vocational path.

I am worried that the new curriculum will not give people a wide enough education to be able to change careers. Many people change careers every few years — I changed careers five times in my first 20 years after leaving school.

While we are on education, the removal of the book At The Marae from schools because it has too many Māori words is astounding.

The Māori words in question are, marae, karanga, wharenui, koro, hongi, karakia and kai. Most children will go to a marae and I don’t know how you can talk about going to a marae without using Māori words.

Having looked at the book I noticed it also had words derived from French, Latin, Norse and Old English/German. We have so many words in the English language derived from other languages that the inconsistencies are a mine field of pronunciation — take the letters "ough" in tough, trough, though, thought, through.

What a pleasure it must be for beginning readers to come across Māori words where all the vowels are consistently pronounced.

My children went to te kōhanga reo and then a total immersion Māori language school, although English was the primary language at home.

My 5-year-old was so used to picking up Māori books and reading and understanding them that she decided she wanted to teach herself how to read English.

The Māori language is a far easier language to learn to read than English because the vowels are always pronounced the same way. My daughter had gained the skills and confidence to read in Māori.

Because she could speak English she picked up the book Are You My Mother?, published in English and Māori and proceeded to teach herself to read English by going back and forward between the two versions.

The confidence in reading Māori words dramatically increased her ability to read English.

There seems to be a dismissal of many things Māori in this coalition government, relegating Māori language and aspirations to the second-class status it had when I was growing up.

Disappointing when they can actually benefit all.

— Dr Anaru Eketone is an associate professor in the University of Otago’s social and community work programme.