A maths programme lifting results for Māori and Pacific kids has been cut as the government pursues a standardised approach.
In a South Auckland school, a group of Year 8 students are doing maths. They’re covering basic algebra but it’s delivered in a uniquely New Zealand way that’s won attention internationally.
Today, Koru School teacher David Ahlquist has set a challenge: the class must “organise” a kī-o-rahi tournament (kī-o-rahi is a fast-moving ball game, similar to touch rugby, that’s popular in schools). Ahlquist divides the mostly 12-year-olds into groups. Each must figure out how many games each team must play in order to play everyone in the class. They’re enthusiastic, taking turns to present their answers on a whiteboard Ahlquist has set up in the school library.
“There can be wrong answers, but the group is often self-correcting,” says Koru deputy principal Bronwyn Jones as Ahlquist writes a formula on the board that sums up the exercise. Jones and Ahlquist are old hands at this pedagogy, known as “Bobbie maths”.
More formally called DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities) Intervention, the system of teaching was created by teacher-turned-education-academic, Bobbie Hunter MNZM, who is of Cook Islands descent. Concerned about the falling rates of achievement and lack of engagement in maths by Pasifika children in Kiwi schools, she devised a programme based on real-world examples and group learning, rich with cultural context. These include, say, problem-solving while planning how to build a waka or design a tīvaevae quilt.
The system works for any group where references familiar to the children from their everyday lives are part of the teaching, be they country kids, migrant children, Māori or Pasifika.
Bobbie maths has produced results. Jones published a study of Koru’s achievements in the Education Gazette in 2020. It noted that a Ministry of Education report in 2014 found just 11% of Year 8 Pacific students were achieving at the appropriate curriculum level for maths. Four years after Koru School introduced Bobbie maths, almost 24% were at this level.
Mataura School, in Southland, reports that pupils’ average scores at the end of each DMIC maths unit taught improved from around 50% to 85% in six years after it introduced the programme in 2017.
Contract cancelled
Bobbie maths was launched more than a decade ago by the Key government and Labour boosted funding in 2019 to help its expansion. It has now been taught in more than 140 schools, with educators learning how to teach it via professional development from specialists at Massey University.
But in December, Massey was advised its contract for DMIC teacher training was not being renewed. The Listener sought clarification from the Ministry of Education and was told its focus is now on the new mathematics curriculum launched in January. It attached its professional teaching summaries in which there is nothing targeted at Pasifika or Māori.
Kiwi kids’ achievement – or the apparent lack of – in maths, and the way it’s been taught for the past few decades, have concerned parents, baffled employers (and those taught long division on paper) and annoyed politicians for some time.
In 2023, the University of Otago and NZ Council for Educational Research conducted the first “Curriculum Insights and Progress Study” for the Ministry of Education, designed to monitor student achievement and progress in Years 3, 6, and 8. It found just 22% of Year 8 students – the last year of primary or intermediate school – were at the expected curriculum level for maths.
The review’s release last August prompted Prime Minister Christopher Luxon to summon education officials to his office to discuss the findings, which he described as “shocking but probably not surprising” and suggestive of “total system failure”. Not long after, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced a new maths curriculum would roll out this year, and that $30 million budgeted for teachers to learn te reo Māori would be diverted into mathematics education instead.
Early feedback in February was that the new curriculum is a lot harder than the old one.
The government is also seeking proposals for a new standardised, twice-yearly testing system for reading, writing and maths for Years 3-10. Principals are worried the new assessment model may be developed by a foreign company with no knowledge of New Zealand schools and culture; the ministry says existing tests of numeracy and literacy are no longer fit for purpose.
No evidence of decline
Charles Darr, chief researcher at the Council for Educational Research, urged caution on the interpretation of the Curriculum Insights review at the time of its release. On average, he said, students scored about the same in 2013, 2018, 2022 and 2023.
“What we’re seeing in mathematics is a change in curriculum and a new benchmarking process, rather than a change in achievement. At Year 8, there has been no statistically significant change in [New Zealand’s] mathematics achievement scores since at least 2013 … we’ve been tracking student achievement in mathematics at Year 8 for more than 10 years, and in that time, there has been no evidence for improvement or decline.”
Professor Jodie Hunter, Bobbie Hunter’s daughter, specialises in mathematics pedagogy at Massey University’s Auckland campus. She was a Fulbright scholar to the US before completing her PhD at Plymouth University in the UK – her thesis was about teaching algebraic reasoning at primary school. Seeing schools that use Bobbie maths achieve measurable results has been the life’s work of the mother and daughter team.
Jodie Hunter despairs of the apparent one size fits all approach to learning maths of the current government. There is not really a problem with most kids’ performance in maths, she says. But there has been and still is a problem with Pacific and Māori kids’ achievement.
She says the ministry will offer no specialist programme to replace Bobbie maths, and specialist teacher training has also been cut.“There are no longer any tailored PLD [professional learning and development] approaches for schools or anything for Pacific or Māori students.”
Today, Bobbie Hunter is professor emeritus of mathematics education at Massey. She says New Zealand schools have never really had a problem with high achievers’ maths performance, but there’s work to be done to “lift the tail” of achievement.
“Many primary school teachers have poor maths knowledge and poor ability to teach mathematics,” she says. “That’s not just Pacific Island and Māori teachers – it is all primary school teachers.”
The NZ Institute of Economic Research last year published a study that found a quarter of all new teachers employed at primary schools between 2017 and 2022 had failed NCEA level 1 maths – “the compulsory maths [level] required of 15-year-olds in New Zealand”.
Breaking barriers
Bobbie Hunter says before her programmes, Aotearoa’s schools relied mostly on imported textbooks. “If it’s one size fits all, it doesn’t work. Every group of children has a different place where they come from.”
Where Bobbie Hunter came from can translate into the algebraic equation of ability + determination + education = achievement. Her mother, Eileen Wood, left her home on Aitutaki in the Cook Islands during World War II to work in domestic service in Wellington. She was just 18.
“The truth is, there was no food,” Eileen would later tell her daughter on why she left her tiny island home. In Wellington, she married Fred Cavanagh, a Kiwi-born son of an Irish plumber. Bobbie was the fourth of their 10 children. Fred’s work – timber milling and scrub cutting – saw them move often and the Cavanagh kids regularly changed schools.
Despite the itinerant lifestyle, Bobbie loved learning, but faced racial prejudice. She recalls, “[One day] we had to sit an IQ test, the teacher asked, ‘Who did you copy off?’” A better teacher spotted her ability and suggested Bobbie train as a teacher.
“I think she even filled in the form for me and posted it in.”
To Eileen’s delight, Bobbie qualified and taught both in Auckland and London. “Mum was ultra proud of me. She would introduce me to people by saying, ‘This is my daughter, she is a teacher.’” (Eileen lived to be 92, seeing both Bobbie and Jodie formally receive their doctorates.)
If it’s one size fits all, it doesn’t work. Every group of children has a different place where they come from.
From Fred came a love of reading and Bobbie’s next step was to complete a BA, mostly by distance learning while she taught and raised two children in Pt Chevalier, Auckland, with husband Leslie. Her son David has a PhD in philosophy and teaches ethics to Australian medical students.
Bobbie completed a master’s in education at Massey, focused on teaching about decimal concepts.
In the classrooms of West and South Auckland schools, Bobbie had noticed that Pacific and often Māori students were lagging in maths achievement. She reckoned that improved group participation, and making examples culturally relevant, could be the key. As she began to research and test theories on better ways to teach this cohort, she found support at government level.
“Basically, it came from the Pasifika ministry desperately wanting to counter some attitudes that were present in society,” she recalls. Old tropes such as the “warrior gene” in Polynesians put up a barrier to learning.
Ministry encouraged
The precursor of DMIC began in 2008 when Bobbie Hunter developed a participation and communication framework for teaching maths to Pasifika students as part of her PhD research.
“The ministry said, ‘You’ve shown that if these kids are given a chance, they will achieve. So, we want you to pick a group of schools and we’ll give you the funding.’”
Bobbie stayed on at Massey – working for several years with her daughter to to extend DMIC around the country – and in 2017 was promoted to professor.
With Bobbie now retired, Jodie has taken the reins. A primary school teacher for two decades before becoming an academic, she has a deep interest in professional development for teachers.
“Primary school teachers are not content specialists,” she says. “Some need to learn how to build both their own knowledge, and to develop self-confidence about it.
“Algebra underpins all mathematics. If kids miss out on it, this can affect their success at secondary school.” For example, some primary children “don’t necessarily understand that 4 x 8 also equals 8 x 4”.
Though formally retired, Bobbie coaches all four of her grandchildren in maths. “We play maths games in the car, things like that,” she says. “And during the lockdowns, I was helping them every day with their online learning.”
Both Hunters agree the initial challenge is convincing Pacific and Māori students to believe they can succeed at maths. A crucial step is encouraging Pacific children to ask teachers questions.
“They are showing respect by listening,” Jodie Hunter says. But by the same token, students need to know they “can easily ask a question in a classroom setting, including to a group. And by asking about an idea, the student is showing respect to both the teacher and the group”.
In recent years, political currents have also raised awareness of culturally responsive teaching: the Black Lives Matter movement brought about a wave of international interest in both Bobbie and Jodie Hunter’s work helping ethnic minorities to lift achievement. “Suddenly, editors of academic publications became interested in Pacific Island kids,” Jodie Hunter says.
Sticking with Bobbie
Despite the cancellation of ministry funding for DMIC teacher training, she says many of the 94 schools teaching Bobbie maths in December 2024 are sticking with it, some using iwi funding to train teachers. Others will use the resources Massey provides for free on its website and on Facebook.
“The ministry could have spent a fraction of what it’s spent on [imported] textbooks on Massey’s New Zealand-developed resources, which it could have had for free,” she says. Bobbie adds there are five different imported textbooks to choose from.
Koru School has opted to stay with teaching Bobbie maths and won’t be buying the new textbooks from overseas. “[Dropping Bobbie Maths] is a huge loss for maths teaching in New Zealand, and in particular for Maori and Pasifika students,” says deputy principal Bronwyn Jones.
Mataura School will do the same, says principal Susan Dennison. Massey will continue to supply resources to both schools, but they will have to fund their own teacher training.
Ministry figures provided to The Listener show the DMIC programme received $3.05 million excluding GST a year from January 2019 to December 2023, totalling $15.25 million. In 2023, 126 schools were using the programme.
With the ending of the contract in January, Massey’s 12 Bobbie maths educators were made redundant (one has moved on to work with the ministry).
At her inaugural professorial lecture, Bobbie Hunter spoke about her life’s work. She quoted a student who she believes illustrated perfectly what she has achieved.
“When maths is about us and our culture, it makes me feel normal, and my culture is normal,” she read out. “With this maths, we have more power. The teacher gives us the problem, but the problem is about us – our reality is that we have to figure it out. We are responsible for our own learning and others’ learning, too. We have control.”
