A focus on literacy and numeracy acceleration from 2023
You will no doubt be aware from headlines such as “Now I don’t know my ABC’ report exposes crisis in literacy” RNZ, 21 March 2022; “How New Zealand’s low literacy rate impacts the economy” NZ Herald 17/8/22 and “NZ’s falling literacy crisis - why our kids can’t read” 17 Aug, 2022, there is a serious issue with numeracy and literacy achievement amongst young people in New Zealand. This poses a serious challenge to schools and communities throughout New Zealand and to New Zealand as a whole.
At Kaipara College we are committed to meeting the challenge of accelerating literacy and numeracy learning and achievement for our young people head on. Under the changes to NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) students will be assessed externally (by an exam) on their numeracy and literacy levels by the end of Year 10, from 2024. From next year at Kaipara College we are incorporating into our Year 9 and Year 10 curriculum and timetable, an accelerated learning programme designed to target explicit teaching of literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills, designed to accelerate learning for our students in these two essential areas. This will ensure our students will be well prepared for, and successful in these new assessments. Of equal importance however, this will ensure our young people have the literacy and numeracy skills including listening, speaking, reading, writing, numeracy and critical thinking, interwoven with the knowledge of social and cultural practices, to enable them to contribute to and improve society. Numeracy and literacy are keys that unlock learning in all other areas.
We are also galvanizing our teaching of numeracy and literacy across all curriculum areas and working with our teachers to identify opportunities to teach literacy and numeracy throughout the curriculum and be explicit about it. In this way we will be upskilling all our students in literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills across the whole school and at all levels. We are also committed to, and will strengthen, the two way collaboration with our contributing schools (members of the Kahui Ako o Kaipara or Community of Learning) so that we are working together and learning from each other as to the best ways to ensure our young people are excelling in numeracy and literacy.
It is our job at Kaipara College to work with whânau to unlock exciting and fulfilling pathways for our students, so that they can fulfill their ambitions, pathways and dreams and to be contributing and useful members of society. Literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills are essential keys in this process.