Planning for good things in our schools

When I pulled up in front of Ngamatapouri School last Thursday I was met with half a dozen boys standing around before school. They were chewing the fat the way boys do in expectation that they will soon be men. The topic for the day was stock whips. There were at least three or four experts in the group and the valley echoed the reports of their whip cracking around the folds of the back country.

When all the kids were inside, there were 16 pairs of Red Band gumboots, in descending order, by the front door and everyone was ready for work. Then we chewed the fat, or at least we cross-examined each other.

They told me that when they weren't in school they were either riding ponies, building huts, eeling, hunting, on the farm or in the river. Not a single word about television or an Xbox.

I then tried to explain how my world as a Member of Parliament could possibly be relevant to their way of life. I'm not sure that I was all that convincing.

On a previous visit, when the children had been studying Parliament as part of a social studies unit, the students grilled me with their carefully crafted questions. One, from a 5-year-old, was: "Does he get mud on his gumboots when he goes pig huntin'?" I'm not sure he was impressed.

The kids are impressive and personalities in their own right. Everybody is allowed to be unique, have their special talents and is given the space to exhibit them. Of the 16 children, two had won age-grade, cross-country races at their inter-schools competition the week before, and I was left with no doubt about that when they ran three laps to the top of the hill behind the school before work started for the day proper. The staff are an impressive bunch, too, and there is obvious passion and commitment to teaching and learning, an expectation of, and reward for, effort.

When I visit schools across the electorate I often find good things going on. Parents are enjoying knowing how their children are doing, not only socially but academically.

In most schools they are encouraged to come in and talk to teachers about how their child is doing.

Out in the community, comparisons are made between children and their achievements on the sports field, in the school play and in exams and end-of-year results. These comparisons flow liberally, comparing schools and teachers, too. They are made justly and unjustly; not everybody is an expert but they are "customers" of the school and the Ministry of Education and have the right to hold a view.

Although teacher unions may not like to admit it, schools have been cajoled into more in-depth and transparent reporting to students and parents since National started agitating for National Standards. In recent years that level of reporting has increased markedly.

Yet this weekend the Labour Party has promised to wind that reporting back if elected at the next election. Some schools put on food for kids who need it but Labour has promised to give children Weet-Bix at the beginning of the day, like it or not, and regardless of whether the children have had breakfast before they come to school.

I wonder if David Shearer has ever been pig hunting or cracked a stock whip, and what he has for breakfast? I wonder what the kids at Ngamatapouri would think of that? They have a better chance of knowing how many sheep their farm runs to the hectare, the expected lambing percentage, what they'll get at the works for them and how many jobs that will create at the Waitotara meat works.

That is maths, science and home economics in their very real world.