Praneeta Mahajan
Hamilton, October 10, 2023
Education is a critical tool for unlocking a better future for New Zealand and equipping the next generation with the skills, knowledge and understanding they need to succeed. A high-quality education system is essential for driving social mobility, helping break cycles of poverty, and building a future-ready workforce.
Education is the third largest of government spending, after benefits and health. Parties on the left are proposing expansion of access to free early childhood education. Parties on the right want to introduce more targets and monitoring of student achievement.
Indian Newslink brings the key policies by leading political parties on crucial matters, that impact the voters and their choice.
National Party
National party has emphasised on the need to work towards better literacy rates and improving the education standards for the country. The party wants to ban mobile phones in schools, an announcement that was extensively discussed by voters.
The party said that many schools and parents are concerned about the use of mobile phones at school and research indicates there are health and social benefits to reducing screen time and encouraging students to interact with each other during their breaks. The party wants to implement the international success stories of schools that have improved literacy success rates by banning mobile phones during school hours.
The second policy on education by the National Party is regarding setting minimum times for reading, writing and maths in schools. The party has said that there is currently too much variation between how much time different schools spend teaching reading, writing and maths. To implement it, the National Party would require all primary and intermediate schools to spend an average of at least two hours a day on reading and writing, and one hour a day on maths.
ACT Party
ACT Party has highlighted the need to reintroduce the model of partnership schools, especially for children who struggled to fit into traditional schooling systems. ACT Party has highlighted that partnership schools are focused on improving educational outcomes for those groups of students whom the system has not served well. The model, according to the party, will ensure more flexibility to innovate and engage with their students in return for stronger accountability for improving educational outcomes.
The party has also said that the current levels of attendance in schools should be treated like a crisis, and should receive a similar reporting approach to the Covid-19 pandemic.
To improve the low attendance rates in Schools, the party would require every school to fill out a daily electronic attendance register, recording which students are not in attendance and whether absences are justified or unjustified. Schools that fail to report this would risk losing their funding.
Labour Party
The Labour Party has emphasised that early childhood education helps remove barriers to early learning and can contribute to children benefitting later in life. It also allows parents to return to work and pick up more hours. Extending the 20 hours of free early childhood education to two-year-olds will help support more families, reducing costs for parents.
For their second policy on education, the Labour Party believes that being good with money is an essential life skill. It has announced that making financial literacy a compulsory part of the curriculum would address low levels of money and budgeting skills among school leavers. The party would require financial literacy to be taught at all levels in all schools by 2025.
The third policy is around increasing the number of dental places at universities by 50%. The party said that growing the dental workforce would mean more people can access dental care and would also ease pressure on the system caused by expanding eligibility for free and low-cost dental.
Green Party
Green Party has been highlighting that students struggle to meet basic needs and through this are forced to accrue substantial debt. It said that education is a public good and believes that its policy would ensure all students, regardless of their circumstances, have the financial support they need to focus on their studies. It believes that this approach would alleviate student poverty and reduce the need for students to go into debt.
The Green Party has also said that it would take measures to enhance the working environment for teachers and reduce the number of students per teacher, ranging from early childhood to high school. The party representatives have mentioned on various occasions how the teachers are working under a lot of stress and a better teacher-student ratio will help ease that pressure.
The party has also proposed that it would create on-site hubs in schools that include health, mental health, and social services to provide comprehensive support to students. It plans to integrate community services such as health, welfare, or cultural services within the school environment, where appropriate.
NZ First Party
The NZ First Party said that school children are being taught about relationships, gender, and sexuality, and that amounts to indoctrination. It has emphasised the urgent need for this to be stopped.
The NZ First Party would stop school children from being taught about relationships, gender or sexuality in schools. This would include removing what the party describes as ‘gender ideology’ from the curriculum.
New Conservative Party
The New Conservative Party believes that more power should be put into the hands of parents and local communities to drive education decisions. The party has promised to promote alternatives to mainstream state schools, such as home-schooling, special character schools, pathways for early trades training, and early entry to the workforce for on-the-job learning.
Their campaign also emphasises banning education on relationships and sexuality in primary schools as the party states that it would protect the mental, emotional and physical wellbeing of children.
The party has also highlighted that we need to ban education on gender and gender identity at all school levels to protect children’s mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Te Pāti Māori
The party has said that there needs to be a fair, liveable student allowance for all tertiary students. It has emphasised that Māori are more likely to face barriers to tertiary education due to the low level of income support and high costs of studying.
The party would also make Te Reo Māori and Māori history core subjects up to year 10.
By next week, we will have a verdict on what the voters are supporting and which party has managed to address the concerns of parents and caregivers when it comes to the literary future of their children and the country as a whole.
Praneeta Mahajan is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Hamilton.
