In this Insight, we analyse anonymised NCEA data linked to later employment for the recent cohort of primary teachers to better understand what might be driving secondary students’ falling performance in maths and science. Our results show that one in four new primary teachers failed NCEA Level 1 maths, and more than half failed Level 1 Science. Many choose not to pursue Maths and Science beyond Level 1, but those who do are more likely to fail than pass.
Level 1 NCEA is not a high standard. It is a minimum that should be needed.
This would partially explain why over time our achievements levels in maths and science has declined.
NZIER proposes a number of useful solutions:
Like in secondary schools, have some specialist maths and science teachers at primary level. Comparison to health sector when you have GPs and specialists
Secondary trained teachers could be employed by primary schools to provide specialist maths and science support for primary teachers
Secondary trained teachers could teach maths and science in primary schools
New roles for maths and science specialists could be created with their own ITE pathway and higher remuneration to attract students with stronger maths and science skills.
Auckland Council has spent almost $150,000 on a statue at a park where it later removed a rubbish bin, sparking outrage from the chairman of the council’s revenue committee.
The sculpture, at the Pakuranga Rotary Walkway, was installed in November last year, two months later a bin was removed from near the statue.
Local councillor Maurice Williamson, who chairs the council’s Revenue, Expenditure and Value Committee, said the statue is nice but not essential.
Hard to disagree.
“There are bins being removed that are frequently used, some that are overflowing in fact. People are incensed, I took my dog out for a walk and noticed bins missing left, right and centre.”
Auckland Council head of area operations parks and community facilities Julie Pickering said public art played a vital role in a livable city.
No they are not vital. They are nice. They are pleasant. Water, rubbish is vital. I’d argue playgrounds and libraries are close to vital. Art is not.
She said when considering what rubbish bins to remove in the area, the council factored in whether the bin was in an area where people are likely or able to carry their rubbish away.
This sums up the contempt for the public. We have decided that you should carry your rubbish away with you, rather than have rubbish bins in popular parks. It is one thing to get rid of rubbish bins that are rarely used, but getting rid of frequently used rubbish bins is the Council trying to change the behaviour of its citizens, rather than be useful to them. We see the same culture in trying to force people out of cars.
Published in Social Science & Medicine, the study found nearly 30% of the country’s vape stores are within 400 metres of a school and 71% are within 800 metres.
Author and Canterbury University public health expert Matt Hobbs said: “I have been surprised by just how many vape stores are near schools and to see the magnitude of difference between numbers of vape stores in the most deprived and least deprived communities.
The public health activists do this all the time to try and make something mundane appear shocking.
They measure 800 metres as the crow flies, so it might actually be 1.2 kms away walking or further.
But more importantly 800 metres radius is a huge amount. It is 200 hectares. So any building within a 200 hectare space from a school is included. That’s almost 500 acres.
There are 2,500 schools in NZ so if none of them were within 800 metres of each other, these 800 metre radius circles would total 500,000 hectares.
I showed here what a 1km radius around every school looks like in Wellington.
I suspect over 70% of the population live within 800 metres of a school. So portraying this as something sinister is silly.
I took part in the Tough Guy/Tough Gal challenge in Wellington on Saturday. Not because I am one, but because it looked like a fun challenge.
It’s a 6 km course at Camp Wainui. Early on in the course you have to crawl through some tunnels, and then over several climbing walls. Then up into the bush. For the first km or also you’re carefully avoiding the muddy puddles but then they get larger and larger and finally you get to the stage where you stop diverting around them and just plough on through up to your knees. The trail is pretty slippery and muddy.
At the end of the first bush section you have to crawl through some culverts with flowing water, and then into the stream. The bottom drops away suddenly from being ankle high to waist high, and I also lost my footing so actually ended up soaked up to my neck.
Next you have some more crawling underneath wires and a further bush track. Then a series of pipes to crawl through and more climbing walls. At this stage I notice that both my knees are bleeding from crawling through the pipes and tunnels.
Then we have the hill the organiser called Everest. I didn’t think it looked that big, but what I didn’t realise is the route up is a straight line on a steep slope. It’s almost impossible to do without the climbing ropes, and by the time you’re onto the fourth 20 metre rope section you’re cursing and swearing, as everyone else is.
Finally you get to the top pretty exhausted. The track down is equally steep and after trying to walk it, I follow the trend, and just slide down on my behind. This is actually quite fun except for the odd time you pass over a small rock. Braking is difficult and several times you get rear ended, or plough into someone else. Luckily everyone is laughing.
At the bottom you think you’re near the end as it is close to the finish line, but actually you are probably only two thirds of the way through. Don’t believe the race marshalls who seem to all be trained up to never tell you how far you are from the end when asked, and all say “You’re almost there”. You’re not!
Then come a series of water barriers or ponds where you get soaked up to your waist again. Its pretty tiring wading through but at least you get to wash the mud off your hands.
The last couple of kms are mainly bush tracks which are so muddy by now you have to work hard not to fall over. I was around 90% successful! It twists and turns a lot but finally it starts heading towards the finish area. You go through a small wire challenge where you go over not under, and then repeat the initial tunnel and climbing walls. Finally the only things between you and the finish line is a pond/lake. It’s only 10 metres through or so, but it is deep and very cold.
But it does wash off most of the mud before you cross the finish line.
It was tough, but really fun. Only race I’ve done where I wasn’t even once focused on my time, just on getting to the end. Great camaraderie from other participants, and very welcome communal showers so your car doesn’t end up as dirty as you.
While I wasn’t focused on my time during the race, I was pleased to find out I finished in the top third, which I thought was okay for a 56 year old!
A south Taranaki iwi will use only te reo Māori when corresponding or speaking with central government officials from now on and hopes other iwi and kaupapa Māori organisations will follow suit.https://t.co/19VAFUMxQg
— Marc Daalder 😷 Wear a Mask (@marcdaalder) May 21, 2024
They’re entitled to do this, but I was curious about how seriously they take their commitment to te reo. I checked out their website and the Iwi doesn’t even have a te rep version of their website. And their newsletters are primarily written in English.
So they are saying they will only use te reo to communicate to the Government, but don’t use te red to communicate to their own members!
Stats NZ will abandon its office space in Auckland central at the end of this year after numerous staff expressed safety concerns about leaving the premises due to an increasing level of “intimidating behaviour” in the surrounding city streets.
The government department has even gone to the length of hiring a security guard for the 10 storey building on Greys Avenue.
They have also reassured staff they can work remotely.
An email sent to all Auckland staff at Statistics New Zealand, titled “Your safety at 80 Greys Ave”, has been seen by the Herald.
Stats NZ technology, operations, commercial and collections leader Emma Jones said she was “fully aware of the growing level of incidents in the area and generally intimidating behaviour”.
“At times it does feel uncomfortable just heading out for sushi at lunch,” she said.
Stats NZ will not be renewing its lease when it expires at the end of the year.
This is a terrible indictment on Auckland – a government agency saying it will move, because the CBD isn’t safe.
There needs to be a clamp down on anti-social behaviour so staff feel safe to go out for lunch,
With the respective camps’ announcement Biden and Trump WILL debate one another, the race for the 60th quadrennial Presidential election is on. (It’s Nov 5; NZ 6th). More to come on the detail, but I thought readers might enjoy this snap shot of the race as at mid-May 2024.
This graphic shows the average of all polls in America state-by-state for President (US “Election Time/538” who track this data pretty regularly and conservatively). On all projections, Trump is predicted to win. The trend is also interesting. Biden’s historic State leads are in several cases down by 3x, not 3 pts, but as much as 3 times! Trump’s leads are also up across the trend almost everywhere (ie he leads now by more than he did in 2016). Some states are flipping. Hawaii is close to going Republican. Florida is now solid Republican. Wisconsin is also trending Red (Republican).
It is worth noting, Trump is in court and his campaigning is restricted; Biden has incumbency, but Trump is still caning Biden in the polls. Once Trump hits the road and the rallies, and we have the debates, it’s likely the polls will start shifting. These results are all conservative and are poll results (ie if this poll data was Election Day in Nov) not predictive or projecting. Put another way, if the election were today, Trump wins 315/223 College votes. You need 270 to win.
~Stringer preceded DPF as a parliamentary staffer (Beehive press secretary) and political party professional (Nats) and has served on political boards. He has been involved in campaigns in NZ and the UK and was himself a parliamentary candidate.
More than 50 mayors and regional council chairpersons have penned a letter to the Government, criticising their bill that would require councils to hold referendums on Māori wards established without a local poll.
This is no surprise. Under Labour’s law, the Mayors and Crs would have sole decision making power on whether to introduce race based wards. Under the previous law and now current law, the residents are given the final decision making authority.
So of course Mayos will resent a law change that takes power away from them and gives it to their residents.
Applause and cheers erupted in the House on Wednesday afternoon as Children’s Minister Karen Chhour condemned Te Pāti Māori’s insults about her upbringing.
Chhour, who grew up in state care, is repealing section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act – sparking uproar from political opposition.
However, criticism of the repeal has moved to personal verbal attacks on the ACT Party MP.
A comment on social media from Te Pāti Māori said Chhour, a wahine Māori, had a “disconnection and disdain for her… people”.
“If Section 7AA were around in Karen Chhour’s time, she would have been raised Māori, she would have been raised being connected to her whakapapa and having a knowingness of her Māoritanga. Instead, she was raised Pākehā with a disconnection and disdain for her… people.
“Karen and her experience is exactly why we need Section 7AA.”
Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime also verbally attacked Chhour, calling her a “sell-out” during the First reading of the Oranga Tamariki (Repeal of Section 7AA) Amendment Bill on Tuesday.
In the House on Wednesday, Chhour addressed Te Pāti Māori’s comments.
“I am not going to stand here and justify how I was raised but I am also not going to let anyone else, especially Te Pāti Māori, think that they can tell my story for me. Especially when they have no idea what they’re talking about,” she said. In response, the House erupted in applause and cheers.
That is disgusting – to hold the Minister’s childhood up as an example of why the Act shouldn’t be changed. Good to see Newshub cover this.
Darleen Tana’s electoral return shows that she spent $2,415 on “candidate only election advertising”. That amount was for a “paid article published May 2023” in Verve Magazine. That puff piece appeared in Verve with no indication that it was paid content nor the required promoter… pic.twitter.com/WVRvfrYh49
Dairy owners are calling on the Coalition government to toughen its Three Strikes 2.0, that has been so watered down, it risks being ‘no strikes.’
“In Opposition, the new government talked a great game so we’re guttered to see Three Strikes 2.0 turn into no strikes,” says Sunny Kaushal, chair of the Dairy and Business Owners Group Incorporated.
“All we see is something that sounds good but will give criminals a ‘get out of jail free card.’
“That’s the effect of limiting a ‘strike’ only to ‘sentences’ above 24-months and the government doesn’t seem to grasp there are two sentences. There’s a starting point sentence but then there’s the end point after the judge considers “discounts.”
“So, what sentence does the government actually mean?
“For good measure, the government wants judges to have discretion where a strike is “manifestly unjust.” The chances of getting a strike go way down and if one is landed, it might be deemed “manifestly unjust.” Three strikes become no strikes.
“We’ll tell you what is ‘manifestly unjust.’ That’s 298 thefts and 17 burglaries every day last year in a record year for retail crime. Something that officials, judges and sadly now Ministers, don’t want to face up to.
“Here’s just two examples of what we mean. In February, a person was finally sent to prison but only after 105 convictions over many years including “intensive supervision” for burglary. They got 14-months.
“Late last year, a criminal appealed their sentence after burgling a Hamilton vape store, who when arrested, added escaping custody, breaching bail, breaching community work and assaulting Police. The final sentence for all of that? 17-months.
“This 24-month rule is a joke. We are talking about the worst crimes and worst criminals for people who aren’t scouts. Especially when ‘manifestly unjust’ provides a get out of jail card.
“Ministers need to get out of the Beehive and sit in on District Court cases to see how sentences get whittled down to wet bus tickets. As many of our people live where they work, we take the need for deterrence seriously. So should the Government,” Mr Kaushal said.
I agree that the law, as proposed, is so weak that it will be ineffectual.
When Whanau Ora chief executive John Tamihere was asked what his expectations for the Budget next Thursday were, he said: “All hope is lost.”
Last year Whānau Ora was allocated $163.1 million in the Budget to last for the next four years but Tamihere is confident Māori will draw the short straw this year.
“I don’t have any hope. Our mate from the Hope Foundation does, but I don’t.”
Tamihere is saying that thanks to the policies of the coalition Government, the affluent will stand ahead of the poverty-stricken this year.
John Tamihere is quite entitled to say he thinks a Budget he hasn’t seen will be terrible.
The Herald is not entitled to run his comments without disclosing he is the party president of an opposition party.
Willie Jackson will participate in the prestigious Oxford Union debate on Thursday, following in David Lange’s footsteps. Coincidentally, Jackson has also followed Lange’s footsteps by living in his old home in South Auckland. And like Lange, Jackson might be the sort of loud-mouth scrapper who could take over the Labour leadership to defeat a national government.
The idea of Willie Jackson as leader of the Labour Party might seem far-fetched. After all, the former Alliance MP is probably the most leftwing in Labour’s caucus and often still comes across as the shock-jock talkback radio host and union leader he used to be. He’s bellicose and mongrel in his style, reflecting that he’s the only Labour MP without a university degree.
Yet maybe that’s precisely what Labour needs right now – someone quite different to the usual “Professional Managerial Class” candidate running the party in the continued mode of the Helen Clark faction that has been in control of Labour for the last few decades. The technocrats have possibly had their day.
It’s an interesting idea. I’d assume that Jackson has a lower ceiling than Hipkins in terms of potential vote for Labour, but he would also have a higher floor.
So changing Hipkins for Jackson would not make sense if Labour is polling in the mid 30s, but if they poll in the mid to low 20s, then Jackson could become a better bet for them.
Incomplete list of atrocities, pogroms, and injustices committed by muslims against Jews in islamic lands between 622 when Mohammad was alive, and 1979:
▪ 622–627: ethnic cleansing of Jews from Mecca and Medina, (Jewish boys were publicly inspected for pubic hair and executed… pic.twitter.com/ba7aEVjdD0
Residents of a wealthy eastern Auckland suburb are mobilising their efforts after learning that a fast food chain is doubling down on a proposal for a 24-hour restaurant.
McDonald’s has made a second resource application, this time arguing the restaurant design had been changed to meet concerns and would even bring social benefits.
This really makes me chuckle at the horror posh locals have at the thought of a McDonald’s in their suburb.
Last season, Cuba’s production fell to just 350,000 tonnes of raw sugar, an all-time low for the country, and well below the 1.3 million tonnes recorded in 2019. …
Cuba now imports sugar to meet domestic demand – once unthinkable, and a far cry from the glory years when Cuban sugar was the envy of the Caribbean and exported around the world.
The slump in sugar has serious implications for other parts of the Cuban economy, he argues, including on its export earnings from rum. “We’re producing the same quantity of sugar Cuba produced in the middle of the 19th Century.”
So they’ve managed to get their production back to 1850 levels! A great success. To go from 5 million tons to under 500,000.
A union boss has been rebuked for going into a bus depot without permission amid a stoush over on-bus announcements.
On Sunday night, Wellington Tramsway Union secretary Kevin O’Sullivan entered the Kilbirnie bus depot and put almost 2000 leaflets on bus seats.
The leaflets asked passengers to call the Greater Wellington Regional Council if they thought the announcements, which alert travellers to which stops are coming up next, were “excessively loud and distracting”.
He included a phone number belonging to transport chair Thomas Nash, who said he received more than 40 calls and text messages as a result, starting from about 6.30am.
Passenger Tessa Moxey, who found the leaflet on her seat on Monday morning, thought it was in bad taste.
“At first, I was a little bit sympathetic, and then after that I felt a little bit angry because the request sounded a bit ridiculous that we, as the public, needed to call in to get the volume to be lowered even though there was probably quite a good reason that the announcement was on the bus,” she said.
On Tuesday, Nash wrote a letter to the Wellington Tramsway Union, co-signed by Blind Citizens NZ, which strongly backed the announcements.
“It is totally normal and standard practice to have on-board announcements on buses,” he said.
“It is an absolutely essential feature of an accessible public transport network, and I am 100 percent committed, and the council is 100 percent committed to making sure our public transport network – our buses, our trains, our ferries – are accessible for everybody.
Announcements are essential for blind passengers and useful for all passengers who may get distracted. Who would want to stop them?
Thomas Bryan from Blind Citizens NZ said blind people were dependent on the announcements to tell them when to get off the bus.
“When you are on a bus, and it is full of passengers, and people are talking on their phones, or they are having conversations, and all of the drivers have the payment system, the heating system turned up full bore, you need to have a reasonable volume otherwise you can’t hear it. And if you can’t hear it, what is the point of having it?” he said.
Yep buses are loud so announcements need to get over that.
O’Sullivan said he had driven buses for 45 years.
“Blind people have been navigating their way around Wellington quite successfully without all this stuff.
So the union official thinks that blind people don’t need audible announcements because they have managed in the past. Such empathy.
Rishi Sunak has called an election for 4 July, a few months earlier than expected.
It is going to be a bloodbath. On current polls the Conservatives will do worse than they did in 1997 vs Blair.
At the end of April the Conservatives were 21% behind Labour and forecast to win just 85 out of 650 seats. The betting markets have them at only 9% to win.
The country direction is a net -44% and Rishi Sunak has a -34% net favourability rating.
Starmer is not wildly popular with an average +8% favourability rating, but he doesn’t need to be. He generally leads Sunak by 15% in Preferred PM polls.
So things I’ll be looking for are:
How big is Starmer’s majority
How Labour does vs SNP in Scotland
Do Conservatives keep 100 MPs?
Who replaces Sunak after the election
Are there any huge gaffes like Gordon Brown being recorded referring to a woman as a bigot
Most countries focus on the economic benefits of exporting. They accrue primarily to the producers but they flow on it to employees and relevant towns. Consumers lose as they end up either paying the world price for the product (e.g. our fruit, fish, meat, etc) or accepting a much lower quality. Anyone who has been to a country like Japan and seen NZ quality kiwifruit or apples is unlikely to forget how amazed they were. In my life – in NZ – I have only once eating export quality steak and any export quality fish I have caught myself.
We focus a great deal less on the benefits of importing – which are equal but accrue to the less powerful consumer block that has limited means of influencing government.
I am currently in Brazil. Below are watermelons and avocados that are not only much bigger and of incredible quality – but a fraction of our prices. The watermelon comes in at $1.90 per kg.
At present European farmers are protesting NZ products and NZ producers are offended. NZ consumers need to work out what they would like to come in at world quality and world prices and push for those products. It would improve our “cost of living crises”.
