She told The Front Page that in the past 20 or 30 years, we had seen literacy rates dropping and that could be traced back to the fact we had been teaching kids the habits of poor readers.
“What we really needed to be doing was what we used to do a long time ago, which I remember well when I was at school, which is teaching kids to decode words using phonics and phonemic awareness and having a structured, explicit approach to teaching,” she said.
Ministry of Education data has found about 85 per cent of all primary schools and at least half of all junior primary school teachers have already begun to use this structured approach to literacy and their teaching.
“While many schools have picked it up over the past two to three years, not every school has. And we know, the evidence shows us, that 90 per cent of kids will learn to read using structured literacy.”
The shift to structured learning is part of Stanford’s wider work on a curriculum she’s called “vague, inconsistent, unclear, and waffly”.
She’s promising a knowledge-rich stimulus written with a science-backed approach.
“We’re bringing together experts from around New Zealand to get this written. In fact, they’re already together. I believe they’re already getting writing on literacy and numeracy.
“The key for them will be making sure that they are underpinning it with the science of learning, that it is clear every single year what the knowledge is that must be taught in which order.”
Stanford said schools will be given a yearly curriculum - and then teachers will bring the magic.
“It’s really important for us so that we have a clear guide of these are the things that are being taught this year. What we used to have was a sort of a three-yearly band. So, teachers would decide what they would teach each year and it wasn’t consistent across the country and there might be things that are missed out because it’s not clear what should be taught every year.
“And it’s a lot of work for teachers to develop a curriculum as well. So we’re trying to give teachers a tool that will make their lives easier
“I think most parents will be shocked to find that our curriculum is so high-level vague, and devoid of content. I’ve looked at other curricula across the world and when I go to print them out, it breaks your printer. They’re thousands of pages long. Our entire curriculum is very, very small,” she said.
Stanford admits the previous Labour Government had realised the same thing and was on the path to fixing it.
“So, the previous Government started this work. Some of it, like the maths curriculum, was pretty close. Some of it, in my perspective, was very, very far away. And we have to do a lot of work to get it up to standard. But I think we’re on the same page, that we have to have a clear, knowledge-rich, concise curriculum that supports teachers.
“If we can implement structured literacy being taught in every school in the next couple of years, I will retire a very happy politician because that is monumental.
“We will be the first country in the world, as far as I’m aware, that has done that. And it is going to be game-changing.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more about the Education Minister’s plans for the school curriculum and how banning cell phones in schools is already working.
The Front Page is a daily news podcast from the New Zealand Herald, available to listen to every weekday from 5am. The podcast is presented by Chelsea Daniels, an Auckland-based journalist with a background in world news and crime/justice reporting who joined NZME in 2016.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
