New entrants 'lack basics'
By KAY BLUNDELL and REBECCA PALMER - The Dominion Post
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Education
Too many children are starting school without basic skills, including knowing how to hold a pencil and washing their hands, educators say.
Principals in rural areas and small towns say some parents are not giving their children enough support to develop key literacy and life skills.
Horowhenua Mayor Brendan Duffy who is on the district's education forum said he had surveyed principals and new entrant teachers at eight local schools. He asked them to rate the readiness of their new entrants on a scale of one to 10 10 being the most prepared. The average score was just four, a figure he described as "sad".
The factors schools considered included a child's ability to recognise colours and their own name, knowing how to hold a book the right way up, and being able to hold a pencil.
"The message is pretty clear if they are not being read to at home, given basic tools, they are not going to get a good start in life. There is plenty of data showing this leads to some pretty sad outcomes, including falling into a life of crime.
"It puts enormous pressure on teachers to get [pupils] up to a standard where they can progress."
Foxton's Coley St School principal Richard McMillan said about 80 per cent of this year's new entrants did not know how to hold a pencil, had no letter knowledge, poor book knowledge, and did not know how to look after themselves.
"Some do not even have basic life skills like eating properly and washing hands."
The school provided special remedial support programmes, while other schools used teacher aides.
"There are too many young parents lacking basic parenting skills not reading to their children, not talking to them, teaching them basic hygiene."
He believed the problem was more prevalent in lower socio-economic rural areas.
New Zealand Educational Institute president Frances Nelson said new entrants' readiness varied across the country. Children who had not had early childhood education tended to be less prepared.
"Unfortunately, it's increasingly in [poorer] low-decile areas where access to preschool education is not so easy to come by."
Principals Federation president Ernie Buutveld also said access to early childhood education was likely to be a factor. "It may also suggest families need two incomes, and probably there is less time being spent doing some of those things being done in the old times."
But he added that families in which both parents were working were more likely to send their children to pre-school.
His own school, in the Marlborough Sounds, noticed several years ago that many of its new entrants were ill-prepared. It had successfully lobbied for funding for an early childhood centre.
Hawera Primary School head Neryda Sullivan said new entrants were increasingly not meeting basic benchmarks described in the Education Ministry's Literacy Learning Progressions. Many were missing early indicators, "like reading from the front to the back of a book and realising illustrations relate to text".
Deputy principal Shevaun O'Brien said 19 of 36 of the school's new entrants rated below average last year. "People are under a lot of time pressure everyone is so busy."
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Matthew(#65) has a good point. We all learn at different speeds. However the school system is limited in how many individuals it can handle and thus needs to treat kids as a herd. I'm not blaming the state or teachers, this is just a reality of school.
To cope in such a system requires that everyone in a class be at a certain level.
Unfortunately many kids, particularly boys, are not ready for fine motor skills by age 5. They should really not be in school yet or should be learning through play - preferably outside - rather than sitting at desks. However, for most parents, school is daycare, so it is of to school ASAP!
We have been able to dodge this by homeschooling. Homeschooling provides a lot more flexibility for teaching at the kids' speed. As Matthew says, this seldom holds a kid back. Our one child wanted to learn to read at 5 and the other only at about 9. The child that started to learn to read at 9 was self motivated to learn to read and was soon reading complex books.
I don't for a minute suggest that homeschooling is suitable for every family, but it does provide flexibility.
Karen Chisholm #64: Good on you for providing this service, but it is very sad that people need this. It is quite sick that people want TV and the internet to entertain and "educate" their kids.
Come on parents! Get involved with your kids, read to them, involve them in learning life skills etc.
Zee (#61). There are obvious exceptions to children with learning disabilities and you obviously do your best. The issue is able children not being taught. There will always be some proportion of children that for various reasons will be impaired learning. The problem is that there are many more children than this not learning.
Michelle (#62). That's not showing your age at all. I'm 22 and agree with you. So would most of my friends my age (mostly university students).
JacquelineAnn, I totally agree.
I am now a solo mum, and I work full time. But my 2 year old can read quite well, can write her name, can write others names, knows all her letters and can count past 20. She knows all her colours, can hold out a decent conversation with children and adults. She's super clever. All because she craves information, it's not forced on her at all.
I worry that when she gets to school she'll be left at the back of the class bored - and then probably get into trouble and turn into a naughty kid or a highschool dropout. All because the teacher is too busy teaching other kids how to hold a pencil because their parent's couldn't be stuffed to spend time with them.
Fortunately I spend a lot of time reading with my daughter, but she does attend kindergarten and it's more like play center. It's attached to a D10 school, it's quite an upmarket kindy. And they don't do any reading, writing, learning or planned activities. It's just playing the entire time she is there.
I'm not surprised at these statistics if even kindy doesn't teach children what letters and numbers are anymore.
I wish people would spend more time with their children teaching them how to write and read, baking, brushing teeth and washing hands.
When I was [recently] a student teacher, I spent considerable time with a new entrant class, and was pretty much distraught at the total lack of fundamental skills I observed in some of the children. As many have commented before me, I think it's obvious that if you have children, then you have a RESPONSIBILTY to give them the best possible start in life that you can; this doesn't have anything to do with being rich. Reading to your child, teaching them the alphabet, 1-20, how to hold pencils/crayons effectively - how can you not give your children these things?? In response to Alby [comment 4] - your attitude towards the role of teachers is laughable. God forbid you spend 15 minutes actually being interested in your kids, and miss Shortland Street !!
Overreaction.. Seriously I couldn't hold a pen at 5, It doesn't matter. Everyone learns at different rates, and its makes NO difference to your later education (which is what counts) - I still managed to get a BCOM.
It would be worrying at year 11 with exams etc..
Perhaps people are trying to grow kids up too fast.
I have a web based storytelling service and I provided amateur storytellers for a Hamilton event on National Children's Day; it was an opportunity for them to get some experience. The children that listened enjoyed it but sadly some of the adults thought it was 'funny' to see a mature women dressed as a fairy reading to children! Not a good message for the kids! She has cancelled her session at the Balloon Festival.
It is amusing to see people blaming political parties for the state of parenting in NZ. Clearly no policy in the last decade has made a significant impact on the way adults have been parenting over that time. We don't just sit there and wait for politicians to tell us what to do - or not to do. Parenting skill come from a lifetime of experience. How we have been parented informs how we parent. so it is a generational problem. there were bad parents 50 years ago and 500 years ago. Helen Clark may have been responsible for some things, but not this one. sorry - time to blame someone else!
Turn the TV off.
When we were kids (showing my age here) TV did not start until 6 pm. We played outside, learned about worms and dirt, on wet days we baked cakes, played board games and even card games.
Our time is the best thing we can give our children.
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We solved all these ridiculous problems of schools not teaching, bullying and uncivilised children influencing our own over 20 years ago...we simply never sent them away. None of our 8 children, aged 29 down to 3, have ever been to these schooling institutions. We just have fun teaching them ourselves and enjoying projects and outings together. It is the parental involvement everyone talks about. Our income is close to poverty level, my wife had terrible schooling and I was a university dropout. None of our children ever got so much as school cert or NCEA. Yet so far we have a Marketing Director son with a multi-million dollar American firm; a legal executive daughter who quit the law firm to help us at home for free and do some cottage industries on the side, which enabled her to take $28,000 into her marriage; an Avionics Technician son in the RNZAF who got the trophy for Academic Excellence at boot camp; a multi-talented daughter who had the freedom to pursue excellence across many areas of music, performance, craft and trade skills who is currently in the USA at the invitation of a dance festival to coach and call for English Country Dancing; and a teenager ready to get his solo fixed-wing flying license. Home schoolers don't miss out on anything, I can assure you...except the bureaucratic bungling, negative peer pressue and headlice infestations of schooling institutions.