Schools are welcoming the Government’s $100 million maths initiatives but some in the education sector are raising concerns about finding staff for the roll-out.
The initiatives include $56 million for the equivalent of 143 full-time maths intervention teachers, $40 million for intermediate students who aren’t meeting curriculum expectations to receive tutoring and $4 million for a maths test for students at the end of Year 2 to determine if they need additional support.
“It is a quality investment so long as… there are hard-to-staff areas and I just don’t know what what they’ll do to make this accessible,” Cambridge Middle School Deputy Principal Tagget Christophersen said.
Christophersen has overseen the school participating in the Ministry of Education’s small group maths tutoring trial, with more than 100 students involved.
She said the 12 week trial has been “amazing” so far with students happy to leave their main classroom to take part, acknowledging the work put in by the relievers they found to fill the tutor roles.
“It will be great to look at the results cause we are very interested to see.
“I mean we can tell you that from a student voice perspective engaging kids to feel confident and to be happy and willing to join mathematics is a huge goal.”
Students 1News spoke to referenced the tutoring being the best part of their schooling so far this year, that it was “fun,” easier to focus in a small group and that they felt more confident to put their hand up to answer questions.
“When I started I couldn’t just answer like a simple question but now I can do like division, percentages, fractions all pretty easily,” one boy said.
Researcher: ‘Expert math teachers have jobs already’
Auckland University maths researcher Dr Lisa Darragh questioned how schools would find staff to fill the 143 full-time equivalent maths intervention roles.
“If they’re expert math teachers, they have jobs already.
“So where are they going to get them from? And what are they going to take them from?
“Are they going to be taken from the classroom, where they’re doing great work with their own classes?”
Darragh welcomed the funding boost for maths education, saying it had been 20 years since the last funded intervention.
“Overall, I think it’s good that money is coming but I wish that the money would be directed slightly in different directions.”
She said interventions such as withdrawing a student for tutoring attach a problem to an individual child.
“What we really want is solutions that work inside the classroom and work to help upskill the teachers and give the teacher the sort of support to be able to provide for all of the children in the classroom.”
Stanford: ‘Staff will have to be found’
Education Minister Erica Stanford said teacher support was also a focus, with an internationally-comparable maths curriculum that makes it clear which learning was expected for each age group.
She said maths classroom resources and professional development for teachers were already implemented as part of the Government’s maths action plan.
Stanford said staff would have to be found for the intervention initiatives as the country is dealing with a “maths crisis.”
“Usually they’re not new teachers, they might be coming back from maternity leave or retirement or they’re teaching already and they’re being released to do this work,” Stanford said.
In a statement, Ministry of Education acting curriculum leader Pauline Cleaver said a model for determining the primary schools with the greatest need for the 143 full-time maths intervention teacher staffing entitlement was being developed.
“This will consider factors such as student progression, school or kura size, and the level of need in maths and pāngarau.
“The goal is to target additional teaching resource to support learners who are not currently meeting curriculum expectation, and to maximise the impact of the initiative.”
Cleaver said the intervention teachers would be qualified, registered teachers who will receive up to four days of training and have access to ongoing support online.
She said the staffing entitlement would be similar to the structured literacy intervention which was spread across schools and Māori immersion kura.
In that approach, the staffing allocation was one day per week to two days per week per school and the hours funded must be matched by the school from within its own budget.