Kerre Woodham Mornings Podcast

A math professor believes the Education Minister deserves kudos for their new maths programme. 

The Government's announced 2000 Year 7 and 8 students will take part in a programme aiming to boost math achievement over the first two terms of next year. 

Erica Stanford says it's designed to give more Kiwi kids confidence in mathematics. 

Massey University Distinguished Maths Professor Gaven Martin told Kerre Woodham that this plan can start to address many of the problems thy had.  

He says that while there may have been a fair bit of resistance, at the end of the day, they turned around and delivered something that’s beneficial for the whole country.  

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Now we've known for some time that New Zealand's once world class education system is no longer – that it is failing. And I really, really feel for the teachers. Education has been hijacked by ideologues who want children to share their world view and care little for the fact that our kids have no idea how to spell world or view. Our literacy is bad, our numeracy is even worse.  

According to international studies, we are now one of the least numerate countries in the developed world. In the 2019 Trends and International Maths and Science study, New Zealand's 9-year-olds, the Year 5s, ranked 40th out of 64 countries. Year 9s were even worse - their scores fell by the largest margin since the study began in 1994. Māori and Pasifika students ranked lowest of all.  

In 2021, a report published in New Zealand by the Royal Society of Mathematics Advisory Panel, which advised the Education Ministry, noted that 1/4 of preschoolers cannot count from 1-10. That's not on the ideological educators at the ministry, that's not on teachers, that is on parents. By Year 9, fewer than one tenth of students are working at their age-appropriate level. Massey University Distinguished Professor of Mathematics Gaven Martin described maths education in this country as a “goddamn mess”.  

Families with money or access to money or the desperation to find money from somewhere, anywhere, have been sending their kids to after school tutoring. The NumberWorks’nWords franchises and the Kip McGraths that you'll see around the country. One parent in a New Zealand Herald story from 2021 said if you have the money, the kids go to Kumon, which is a another one of those franchises, or NumberWorks, two to three times a week. It's like a form of wealth separation, he said, as only the wealthier families can afford it. And at around about $700 a term, they’re right. The wealthy families will do it, but they seldom talk about it. The other kids just languish in the school system and remain at the bottom of the class. And so the gap between the haves and the have-nots gets wider and wider and wider.  

Now the Government has announced a form of after school maths tuition, but actually in school, and free. They're starting with intermediate students in terms 1 and 2 next year – around 2000 Year 7 and 8 students who are behind in their learning will take part in an intensive support program to bring them up to the required curriculum level in maths. The trial will use small group tutoring and supervised online tuition for 30 minutes, up to four times a week for each child. Basically, your Kip McGraths, Your NumberWorks, and what have you. There will be $30 million for high quality curriculum aligned workbooks, teacher guidance and lesson plans to be provided into every primary and intermediate School, $20 million for professional development and structured maths for teachers as well as (hip hip hooray) getting the Teaching Council to agree to lift maths entry requirements for new teachers.  

Education Minister Erica Stanford spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night, saying intensive tutoring is one of the best things you can do if you're behind in maths.  

“We know that all of the international evidence tells us that if you are really far behind, especially in mathematics, one of the best interventions you can do is intensive tutoring in small groups to get up to where you need to be. Because a lot of our students have missed big chunks of their learning and mathematics, and we are particularly targeting those in Year 7 and 8 who are not going to see all of the benefits of our amazing new curriculum and all of our new materials and they're going to go off into high school and, you know, not be where they need to be. So we've had reading interventions in the past, we've never had one for maths, and my intention is that we put this trial up, see what it does and then roll it out.” 

Yes, yes, yes, yes and more yes! We know the tutoring works. Anyone who has sent their child to one of the expensive but efficient after school tuition programs knows that it works. You've got that one-on-one – and I'm quite sure that our teachers, if they had one-on-one time sufficiently with kids who were falling behind, would be able to raise them up as well, but they simply do not have the time or the resources. Now they will.  

To be fair to the previous administration, they understood that education was failing our children, they were not getting the education they deserved. The gap between the haves and the have nots, those who could and those who couldn't, was getting wider and wider and wider. In fact, I think we managed to top one aspect of the Trends in Science and Maths by having the biggest gap between those who were succeeding and those who were not. The vast majority of parents cannot afford that kind of one-on-one tuition, but we had Labour tinkering with the curriculum and bringing into Te Ao Māori into maths and science, and it was all very localised and communities could kind of pick and choose how they wanted to teach, with no resources teachers were left floundering as well. They basically had to do the work of the many thousands of bureaucrats and the Ministry of Education and come up with a curriculum.  

As Professor Elizabeth Rata at Auckland University said, the draft of the new curriculum, as devised by Labour, was a national disgrace. It's a curriculum without content, it's an ideological manifesto. Children in the Far North should receive the same education as children in the far south. It should not be left to chance. And that's what happened. That's exactly what has been happening now. We've got an Education Minister who is a) passionate about giving our children what they deserve and b) has ideas about how to make it happen.  

It shouldn't be left to chance, as Professor Rata says, it shouldn't be left to teachers to come up with some kind of vague curriculum which they have precious little time to do. And it shouldn't be left to parents to find $700 a term to shore up the gaps in our education system. It shouldn't be that those who can and those who have are able to circumvent our education system and be better and do better, leaving the others languishing. That is not the way we make a better New Zealand. That is not the way we make a productive of New Zealand and that's not the way we make a New Zealand that gives every child the opportunity to fulfil their potential. 

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There is absolutely no doubt that healthy teeth are vital for a healthy life.  

Poor dental care can actually kill you. There's a small number of cases from the States they read about recently where an untreated tooth abscess led to an infection that spread to the brain, and a number of children died as a result of that.  

Even without catastrophising, bad teeth are miserable. It's painful, leads to other infections throughout the body, it's unsightly - robs people of self-confidence if their teeth are all over the place.  

But at $353 per visit to the dentist, on average, dental health is not a priority for many people. It can't be. If the money's not there, it's not there.  

A new report has found that New Zealand's dental system as it stands is costing billions of dollars a year in lost productivity and social impact.  

The report from Dental for All, who are a group of health professionals, unions and poverty campaigners, is another call to arms to make free dental care universal, with campaigners saying the cost of not acting is exceeding what it would cost to bring dental into the public health care system.   

The argument against has always been the cost of it. We've seen how much our public healthcare system costs, ballooning costs, that successive chief executives of Health New Zealand have been unable to manage - bringing dental health into that adds another couple of billion to the cost. But Dental for All, and their argument is a bit like the argument David Seymour put up for funding more drugs from Pharmac. He said, well, it's going to cost us less in the long run than allowing diseases to develop and take hold within the community, so if we can prevent them from occurring in the first place, saves us down the track. That's precisely what Dental for All are arguing.  

While there is free dental care up until the age of 18, the New Zealand Dental Association policy director, Doctor Robin Wyman, told the Mike Hosking Breakfast, they believe free dental care should continue into your mid- 20s.  

“It would make some sense if you look at the research to increase the free dental care scheme which goes up to 18 years old into the mid 20s. That's where we see quite a peak of acute admissions into hospital in that young adult group. We're not talking about fractures and things like that, we're talking about infections and things that need to be treated.  

Where do you draw the line, though? If you said free, what is it? Is it a check up? Is it a filling? Is it root canal work? Is it veneers? What is it?  

I think we talk about the essential dental care - so check-ups and fillings, tooth out if that needed to happen, maybe you would go to root canal treatment, particularly if you're talking about front teeth and those sorts of areas. We're not talking about cosmetic treatments like veneers and orthodontics in that sort of area.” 

Dental for All estimates the current system is costing $2.5 billion in lost productivity, $ 3.1 billion in lost life satisfaction, or lack of quality of life.  

Another $103 million was spent on sick days through poor dental health. However, as Doctor Wyman pointed out to Mike they were looking at the lower 22 percentile, so not New Zealanders overall.  

This has come up periodically. The Greens proposed universal dental care, funded with the wealth tax. Labour were looking at free dental care when they were tossing out ‘please vote for us’ during the election campaign - one of them was free dental care for under 30s, gradually increasing that to the population overall.  

It is hugely expensive and it only gets worse as you get older. As teeth start to age, the gaps start to form, they start to erode and that's when you need the expensive dental work done. The crowns, the root canal and the like. If you can get through 15 to 18 and you don't need the orthodontics, the next time the big expenses hit is around about 50 plus as your teeth start to age.  

There are people who travel overseas because it is less expensive to go to Thailand and get your teeth done, even with the airfares, even with the stay in the hotel, than it is to go to New Zealand dentists.  

If things go Pete Tong, however, you're not covered by ACC, so it could end up costing you more in the worst-case scenario.  

All very well and good to talk about let's pay for the costs upfront and then we don't have to pay for the lost productivity, the quality of life.  You can make up any number really when it says look at your lost quality of life, lost productivity.  I've no doubt that there are people living in misery because of the state of their mouth and it's leading to bigger problems further down the track that sees them hospitalised.  

But again, if the money is not there, it's not there, just as it's true of household accounts, it's true of government accounts.  

Do we have $2 billion right now to put into universal dental healthcare? Adding that to what we already can't pay for in the public health system.  

Some people are lucky. Some people are born with great teeth. Never have to worry really. Others are plagued from the time they're born with chalky teeth that give way, cause problems, end up with cavities, can't afford to treat them and it just gets worse and worse and worse.  

Is it a case of having to come up with the money so we save money down the track? Do you buy that having a universal dental healthcare system would save us money in the long run, or is it something that you just have to deal with yourself? Pray that your parents gifted you good teeth?  

Back in the olden days, like the 40s, 50s and 60s, women used to have their teeth taken out before they got married and fitted with dentures, so they didn't cost their husbands anything. Can you imagine? Perfectly healthy teeth being ripped out of the mouth of a 19-year-old recently engaged woman as a kind of dowry paid for by the bride's family. We don't want to get back to that now, do we?   

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It is becoming a fairly common story that debt is getting so big, people are burying their head in the sand rather than dealing with it. 

Money mentalist Lynda Moore tells Kerre Woodham debt is easier to ignore in the modern day, without red-letter hard reminders arriving in the mail. Without help and support, people can very easily get lost or trust the wrong people. 

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The interim report into the grounding of Interislander’s Aratere ferry has found the bridge crew didn't know how to turn off the autopilot function on a new steering control system.

A report by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission was published yesterday, setting out the facts and circumstances established to this point and its inquiry into the incident, which remains ongoing.

So, the interim report said the Aratere received a new steering control system in May 2024, that was a month prior to the incident, to work with the ship's autopilot and integrated bridge navigation system. The Aratere was pootlingalong and it was just past its second waypoint off Mabel Island when the autopilot was engaged at 9:26pm, putting the steering for the other teddy under autopilot control. About 30 seconds later, a master who was on board the ship to refamiliarize himself with the Aratere after some time away, pressed the turn execute button, intending to initiate the Mabel Island waypoint turn.

After seeing the Aratere was heading towards shore, the crew attempted to press the takeover button and turned the wheel hard to port, all to no effect. The bridge team was unaware that to transfer steering control from the autopilot to the central steering console, the new steering system required them to either set the same rudder command at both consoles, which makes sense, or hold down the takeover button for five seconds. You couldn't just press it, it had to be held down for five seconds.

So how did the crew not know that? Well, according to Interislander Executive General Manager Duncan Roy, who spoke to Heather du Plessis-Allan last night, you can't know what you can't know. 

“That's what I'm saying. We got a new piece of equipment and there was a very specific set of circumstances that meant that required a 5 second override. For the 83 crossings prior to this, the one press button worked. The day they arrived in Picton that day, they pressed the button once to take control. It was only when in this very particular set of circumstances where the rudder was out of sync with the steering wheel that you had to do a 5 second override. The bridge didn't know.

And are you telling me that whoever provided this equipment to Interislander told no one in Interislander that in the specific set of circumstances, you have to press the button for five seconds. Like literally nobody knew?

We are working with that provider right now and as TAIC said today a number of times it's a very complex part of the investigation.

Duncan, but nobody in Interislander knew you had to press it for 5 seconds?

Heather, if we'd known that you had to do it, we would have done it.

OK, well, it might have just been a communication problem, but I get it. Did somebody go get a coffee?

Yeah, we can put that to bed right now, the right number of people are on bridge doing their job professionally. No one left the bridge to get coffee.”

There we go - nobody left the bridge to get coffee, that was all just scurrilous scuttlebutt.

So, you can't know what you don't know, do you? I mean, I've got a new little oven in my kitchen and I couldn't make the elements go, so I hadn't bothered to read the instructions. Read the instructions, saw that there's a child lock was on, which you had to press and hold down for five seconds, funnily enough. And then it would come off and I could operate the elements. But I suppose you can't really Google when you're on the bridge of a ship, as it's heading towards shore, can you?

So, you can't know what you don't know. If you accept, and I do, the interim report, if the provider of the gear said oh, by the way, if your rudder is out of sync and this is happening, you can't just press the button once, it has to be held down and held down for five seconds. So, if they haven't told you that, you're not going to know.  

Immediately after the grounding, Interislander worked with the company that provided the new steering system to understand what had happened, and they've now issued new guidance on the use of the autopilot system and upgraded retraining of deck staff on the control system. So, fair enough. So far from what you've heard, the crew, Interislander (initially, of course), the bosses and then the captains, and then the crew weren't briefed properly by the provider, they weren't given every circumstance in what to do when that happens, that's now been rectified.

One part of me goes that is perfectly understandable, I totally get it. The other part of me, a little part of me is going nobody seems to brief anybody properly these days. You know the Transpower crew with the nuts and the bolts and having to redo roading because you've done something really stupid that somebody should have picked up along the way. There's a little part of me that goes is nobody briefed properly about anything anymore? Are the where are the men in their walk shorts and their walk socks and their highly polished shoes and their short sleeve shirts and their ties and their pocket protectors? Where are they? They wouldn't have let this happen. Measure twice, cut once. That have read through every semi colon of that manual, had it seared into their little grey consciousness, and when the ship started going and the crew were going yikes, what's happening?

Somebody sensible would have stepped forward and said on page 273 of this manual, you'll see that if you hold the button down for five seconds we'll be able to take control again. If you take it as a one off, it seems like a genuine accident. The provider didn't brief Interislander properly, the provider didn't brief the client properly. But if you're taking over some heavy machinery, like if you were working in the heavy machinery industry, either in construction or farming or what have you, are you always briefed properly or do you sometimes find yourself in the middle of a field or the middle of a ditch, thinking what the Dickens? Now what do I do? And you ring the provider and they’re like mate sorry I should have told you.

To me it seems a reasonable explanation, but not if it's happening all the time, all the everywhere. In this case, no real harm done. A bit of bowel damage happens when you run into land and you're a ship. Nobody hurt, everybody learned a valuable lesson. No real harm done but there could have been.

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Should single rooms be the norm in hospitals? 

Multi-patient rooms are the status quo for New Zealand hospitals, with up to five people staying in each room. 

New research argues that this breaches safety and ethical concerns, saying that single patient rooms should be the most basic standard of care. 

Researcher and author Dr Cindy Towns told Kerre Woodham that while it may seem counterintuitive for single rooms to be as economical as multi-patient rooms, poor care costs money. 

She says that having multiple people in one room can create more room for infection to spread, and the inability to manage the environment completely can exacerbate some conditions.  

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A community service sentence ends the saga of Philip Polkinghorne. 

The former Auckland eye surgeon has returned to the High Court in Auckland today – more than a month after he was acquitted of murdering his wife Pauline Hanna. 

He's been sentenced to 150 hours community work after admitting to a meth charge.  

The Front Page's Chelsea Daniels spoke to Kerre Woodham from the High Court at Auckland and says the possibility of a fine was discussed. 

She says Justice Graham Lang didn't believe a fine would be enough to hold Polkinghorne to account, given his “healthy” financial position. 

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When did parents stop wanting more for their kids? The figures out today are absolutely appalling and paint a grim future for thousands of young New Zealanders. People aged 16-24 who are on the main benefit can expect to stay there for 20.4 years. I suppose we'll take the good news where we find it – that's down from 21.3 years. But good Lord, what a miserable existence for so many young people and what a shocking waste of potential. Young beneficiaries are more likely to have lower skill levels, more casual employment arrangements and high level of employment in low paid industries.  

And what the Ministry of Social Development report didn't say, because it wasn't within their purview, was that there's an army of uneducated kids coming up on the horizon. In the past decade chronic truancy has doubled in secondary schools, nearly tripled in primary schools. Another report released this week reveals more than 80,000 students missed more than three weeks of school in Term 2 this year. And where the hell will the truants end up when they finally drift away from education altogether? On a benefit.  

Social Development Minister Louise Upston told the Mike Hosking Breakfast the Government is committed to getting young people into work: 

“When the labour market is tight young people are disproportionately affected, but the good news is when the economy turns, they also pick up employment more quickly. We need to ensure they spend less time on welfare, that they don't get stuck there, and that we get them on track with some training, with some education and definitely with some work opportunities. That's why we've set the target to reduce the number on Jobseeker benefit by 50,000 in six years, because we know work makes such a difference to people's lives.” 

It really does. So, the Government is doing what it can, community organisations are doing what they can, where are the parents in all of this? I get that life can be really, really tough, but then it always has been for a sector of the population. It was really tough for my dad, who was born in a depression work camp in a tent. He grew up in a state house and getting into a state house was like winning the lottery for his mum and dad. Getting out of the state house and into a home of his own was my dad's driving motivation. He used education to do it. He was determined that his own children would never grow up relying on the government for anything, and we didn't. Even when I was a single mum, I never took a benefit. I could work and so I did.  

Education has been seen for centuries as the ticket out of poverty, and out of misery, and out of a predetermined future. You might be doing it hard. You might feel the system failed you, you have little education, you have never worked, and you struggle from day-to-day, but surely you don't want the same for your kids? All you have to do is get them to school. They'll be safe there, they'll be educated there, they will get into the custom of getting up and going to work. They'll even be fed there. And I bet if you find it hard to put them on a bus or walk them to school, if you ring the school they'll have someone who can come and collect them. You might be struggling, you might think you're worthless, you might think life is hopeless, but do not let your legacy to your kids be the same miserable existence. Listen to Education Minister Erica Stanford, who was on the Mike Hosking Breakfast last week: 

“I've been very clear about the drivers of inequality, and it is poverty. In this country your means to determine your destiny. It is almost the one single factor that is the cause of that yawning gap, which is why when you turn up to school, we need to cloak you in that protective factor that is education.” 

That is what so many families for hundreds of years have seen education as – a protective cloak that means they do not have to live the same life as their parents. But then that is what parents wanted – you always want your kids to do better than you have done, to be better parents, to have more options to live better lives. When the hell did parents stop wanting more for their children? So yes, the figures are grim from the Ministry of Social Development. Young people aged 16 to 24 who are on a main benefit can expect to be there for 20 years. And we have more than 80,000 kids coming up over the horizon, unskilled, uneducated, unless we change our ways and we change them now. 

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It’s not just the Government who are taking a look at building consents. 

Hastings District Council has been looking into a more risk-based approach to building consents, aiming to bring the costs down for both building firms and consumers. 

Council CEO Nigel Bickle told Kerre Woodham that the current system was put in place with the 2004 Building Act in response to the significant damages and issues caused by leaky homes. 

He said that the system was always meant to be recalibrated. 

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I suppose I should have, but I had no idea that it takes, on average, 569 days for a home to be built and consented right now. Nearly two years for a home to be built and consented! A decent building company could throw up a house in three months, couldn't they? But no, because of the consenting process, 569 days in this country for a home to be built and consented. No wonder we have a shortage of homes and no wonder they're so expensive.

Now the Government wants to change that and yesterday announced plans to develop a new opt-in self-certification scheme for trusted building professionals and accredited businesses. The scheme, which is going to have to go through a robust consultation process, features two key pillars. The first: qualified building professionals, such as plumbers, drain layers, and builders will be able to self-certify their own work for low risk builds without the need for an inspection. This brings them in line with electricians and gas fitters who can already do this, and it's something the industry has been calling for, for years.

The second pillar, according to the Government, is that businesses with a proven track record, your Jennian Homes and your GJ Gardner’s and the like who build hundreds of near identical homes a year, will be able to go through a much more streamlined consent process. At the moment, a single-storey basic home might go through ten or more separate inspections. That's beyond double, triple, quadruple handling. It is clearly too many, says Chris Penk, and the cost benefit has become unbalanced. Penk said if we want to grow the economy, lift incomes, create jobs and build more affordable, quality homes, we need a construction sector that's firing on all cylinders.

So the next piece of the pie is constructing a new self-certification scheme for trusted building professionals and accredited businesses carrying out low risk building work. The Master Builders are welcoming the change. ACT says it's a step in the right direction, even Labour is cautiously supportive. All of them say the devil will be in the detail and let's see what the safety measures are. How's it going to work? Well, the spectre of leaky homes still haunt building regulations, still make people have an abundance of caution. How can the building industry restore confidence to the sector and prove that they are perfectly capable and able to self-certify?

It was interesting hearing the Building Surveyors Institute chap David Clifton, who was on with Mike Hosking this morning; he said electricians can self-certify, there are very rarely any problems with their work, very rarely, unlike builders, he said. So does giving an industry the ability to stand on its own two feet, does giving an industry the ability to monitor itself, build a better quality of workmen? If you know that your work's going to be checked, checked and checked again, does it make you more careless? Perhaps not intentionally. Why is it that sparkies can self-certify and do good work, whereas when you've got builders who are being checked and checked again, David Clifton said that's where you find the problems.

Is being self-determining and being able to stand on your own two feet, does it actually result in fewer mistakes because there's you and only you that is responsible for the work that's being delivered? If your work is being checked by three or four different people, where does the responsibility lie? Would self-certification actually be good for the industry? I'd be very interested to hear from you and if you have been in the process of building a new home or getting a new home built, has it been 569 days? Which just seems absolutely absurd. A good move as far as you're concerned? If you've even got grudging support from Labour, that would indicate to me that they're on the right track.

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