Concerns about math requirements for new teachers

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Education Minister Erica Stanford will address the media at approximately 1:45pm. We will be live streaming the event at the top of this page.

There are concerns that a new maths requirement for primary school teachers will discourage applicants and is pointless.

The government has announced in advance The Make It Count maths curriculum for grades 0 to 8 will begin in Semester 1, 2025.

This recommendation was made because of concerns about completion rates.

Premier Chris Luxon said recent figures showed about 50,000 children in Year 8 would not meet expected benchmarks by 2023. Opposition questions His figure.

The changes include that any candidate entering a teacher training programme will need to pass NCEA Level 2 maths in the future.

During a brief meeting between the Teaching Committee and ITE providers on Tuesday, a number of issues were raised, including:

• NCEA Level 2 Mathematics is not the mathematics required for primary school teaching. There is no evidence to support the assumption that this mathematics will have an impact on what and how primary school teachers teach mathematics.
• This requirement exceeds the university entry requirement of 10 credits in mathematics at level 1 or above. This requirement will have an impact on enrolment numbers and may deter otherwise excellent teaching candidates from applying for or gaining admission into teacher education.
• This requirement assumes that secondary school students have decided to pursue a teaching career by the end of grade 11, so the mathematics requirement will be higher than the UE entry requirement.

Teacher Education Forum executive chair Dr Rosina Meili said the changes made no sense.

“The idea that raising the bar for entry means that graduating teachers will achieve better results doesn’t really make sense, there’s not a lot of evidence that it makes a difference.”

photo: RNZ/Nick Munro

Meili said the changes could actually discourage quality candidates from applying, which would only exacerbate current staffing shortages.

“With our current entry criteria, which are still very strict and there are a lot of applicants who don’t make it, if we raised the criteria further it would decimate a lot of initial teacher education programs in the primary sector and that would certainly have a huge impact on the teaching workforce,” she said.

TEFANZ said evidence from Ireland and Australia showed that rather than improving the quality of mathematics teaching, the changes had a significant negative impact on teacher diversity.

It also expressed concern about the pace of change and the limited time and opportunity for in-depth consultation.

Stanford University previously declined to comment.