Murray Trenberth

NZ students' declining educational achievement (and declining mental health) – causes and changes necessary to reverse this.

I am a retired secondary teacher and have been lucky enough to work with youth, in one way or another, for 50 years. I was also a parent of three boys, who went through the state school system, successfully.

I started teaching maths/computing in 1973, and during my career taught in nine state schools, including a decile one school for five years and a decile ten school for nine.

I was Principal of Taita College, 1997-2003, reversing 16 consecutive years of roll decline. The MOE made the decision to close this ‘failing’ school one month after I had been appointed to be the next principal and one month before I was due to take over. I had six months to fix it. I took the roll from under 200 to over 800, by which time students in this decile 3 school were achieving decile 5 results.

Since then, I have worked:

As a review officer for the Education Review Office (ERO).
Under contract for the Ministry of Education (MOE), to fix maths. (My strategic plan was deemed too politically sensitive to take to the Minister.)
And for eight years was CEO of a Mental Health/Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) agency for youth, helping around 850 teenagers annually to stop or reduce their problematic AOD use; and to ameliorate other mental health issues (anxiety, depression, self-harm, gaming addiction... ). I employed a doctor (part-time) and 10 counsellors. We worked in 33 schools across the greater Wellington region, with Youth Offenders for police, and referees from Child Youth and Family Services (as it was called then).
Returned to teaching, having failed retirement, 2015-2022.

I am not an academic, so do not write from that perspective. Rather, I see myself as a pragmatist, able to work out what is not working well and how to fix it. And now I have finally concluded my teaching career, would like to comment on many aspects that I think we are getting wrong; and need to redress if we are ever going to return to the top of the educational achievement ladder.