Source: Education Review Office
Education Review Office’s (ERO) independent review has found that changes to how English and maths are taught in primary school are showing promising results for both English and maths.
“English and maths are critical for our students’ futures and for a long time we’ve been concerned that too many students are not where they need to be,” says Ruth Shinoda, Head of ERO’s Education Evaluation Centre.
“The good news is there are promising signs this is changing. Not only are tests of new entrants’ English showing rapid progress from Term 1 to Term 3 this year, but also most primary school teachers report students’ English and maths have both improved compared to last year. Parents also agree, with three-quarters reporting improved progress in their child’s English and maths,” Ms Shinoda says.
Encouragingly, teachers also report students are now more engaged in learning English and maths, and nine out of ten students report enjoying learning English and maths. Teachers told ERO that the new approaches are improving attention and behaviour in the classroom.
“ERO has found these promising signs are due to the hard work schools across the country to change whatthey teach, how they teach, and how much they teach English and maths,” Ms Shinoda says. ERO found that more than 8 out of 10 teachers have already changed how they are teaching English and maths.
“School leaders and teachers have put in a lot of time and effort,” says Ms Shinoda. “Encouragingly, a third of teachers report they have increased the time spent on reading, writing and maths and this is even greater in schools in lower socio-economic communities, where we’re finding almost half of teachers have increased the class time spent on maths.”
Parents have also been key to the improvement. “What has also been great to see is how parents are also supporting their children, with nine out of ten parents helping their child at home with reading and writing” says Ms Shinoda.
ERO has found teachers have been well supported to make these changes with training and resources that make a difference. For example, when teachers have accessed resources for maths they’re nearly four times more likely to change their practice.
There is further to go. ERO is recommending three things that need addressing. There needs to be more support for teaching the more complex maths, including for parents to help their children at home. There needs to also be more support for small and isolated schools that find making the changes harder. And finally, we need to support to teachers be able to help students catch up and extend them.
– The Education Review Office (ERO) has completed this research over three terms, with a large evidence base. This includes: Ministry of Education responses from almost every school in the country, Phonics check results from over 400 schools, evaluation visits to over 400 schools, and in-depth visits at 36 different schools observing more than 50 maths or English lessons, and talked to hundreds of teachers, leaders, students, and parents and whānau.
– ERO has also collected and analysed over 6,000 survey responses, from leaders, teachers and students across nearly 700 schools, and parents and whānau across more than 1,000 schools, across the full spread of schools with students in Years 0-8.
– Since the start of 2024, primary schools have been required to teach an hour each day of each of reading, writing and maths – so three hours a day on literacy and numeracy.
– At the start of this year, schools were required to start using the refreshed curriculum to teach English for students in Years 0-6, and maths for students in Years 0-8.
– ERO is the New Zealand government’s external evaluation agency for the education system. ERO’s Education Evaluation Centre carries out independent, in-depth research of different aspects of New Zealand’s schools, early learning services, and Kaupapa Māori education settings.
– The full report, A new chapter: How well are the changes to English and maths going? will be available from 5am on 15 October at www.evidence.ero.govt.nz/.
