The A, B, C’s of Schooling in New Zealand

In this blog we have written about some aspects of schooling in New Zealand, but as we are nearing the end of our stay in New Zealand, we thought it would be fun to organize our impressions about school life here and reflect on some of those differences. Here are some thoughts based on our experiences at Warkworth Primary School and Mahurangi College.

Academic tracking: Children are explicitly placed into groups based on academic ability at the college (secondary) level. There are “low banders”, “middle banders” and “high banders”. This is done in a subtler way in the primary (elementary) school. Children are grouped for reading, math (mathS here) and spelling based on their performance on assessment tests. At the primary level, these placements are more fluid as there is frequent assessment. The upside is that the children are working precisely at the level where they are performing. The downside (especially at the college level) is, most obviously, the labeling. It can have a motivating effect. Annick and Isaac moved up every month or so to a new reading level and this pleased them greatly!

Barefoot children: We still get tickled by this one. At the college level, children are required to be barefoot during physical education. However, at the primary level, most children go around school barefoot all day long.

Camps: New Zealand schools love leadership and team-building camps. Almost every year, a given class will go on some sort of two- to three-day overnight adventure experience together, reminiscent of summer camp in the USA.

Donations: Nearly all public schools ask for a family donation to the school at the beginning of the year. It is a set amount which is strongly requested, but never required. In lieu of being bombarded with dozens of products to buy throughout the school year like wrapping paper and pizza mixes, we paid once and that was it. The only other fundraiser for the school was the gala, a fair with loads of games, entertainment and food. This functioned as much as a community builder as a fundraiser. We were thrilled that we didn’t have to act as ravenous consumers just to feel we were supporting our school.

Expectations: Given that New Zealand performs very well worldwide on math and literacy tests (always somewhere in the top five in the world!), we were a little surprised that academic expectations were not particularly high. New Zealand seems very strong in preparing their children to be solidly literate citizens of society, but not so driven to create mentally energetic scholars. At the primary level, we found school to be comparable with our “home school” in the United States. College was less challenging for Xavier than Bala Cynwyd Middle School.

Free time: The school day is slightly shorter here (9 a.m. to 3 p.m. for the primary students, 8:40 a.m. to 3:20 p.m. for the secondary students) and more breaks are built into the day. There is a morning tea time and a long lunch with plenty of time to eat, play and hang out with schoolmates. Consequently, the children seemed more focused and less tired.

Garbage in, garbage out: In an effort to reduce waste, children are not allowed to throw anything from their lunchboxes into the rubbish bins. If you pack a yogurt for lunch, you must also provide a way for your child to bring home the empty container. There is a lot less paper floating around Kiwi schools than American schools. For better or for worse, children spend more time copying things off the board into their own notebooks than filling out printed worksheets.

Hats: The primary school requires that children wear brimmed hats in Terms 1 and 4 (the summery terms). There is a high incidence of skin cancer in New Zealand and given how often the children are outside, they strictly enforce this policy.

Instruments: There is some musical instruction in the schools. At the primary level, in addition to doing a lot of singing, the children learn to play the recorder and the ukulele.

Jesus plays a part in Kiwi schools. In the primary school on Friday mornings, the children receive religious education based on Christian teachings. Easter and Christmas stories are shared in the classroom. The younger children even perform a nativity play in December. We found this a bit odd as most people we met in New Zealand are not at all religious.

Kiwiana: As expected, the New Zealand (national) curriculum centers on New Zealand. Our children learned a lot this year about Kiwi history, culture, geography, plants, animals and language. After ten months in New Zealand, we all know a whole lot more about kowhai trees, kiwi birds and the historical significance of Kerikeri.

Lice: Infestations of lice are a common occurrence in New Zealand and Australian schools. No one reacts very much to a case of nits as most children expect to get them at some point, much like catching the common cold. We learned early on that tea tree oil shampoo helps to keep them at bay and we have been lucky to have escaped so far.

Maori: There is no French instruction at Warkworth Primary or Mahurangi College, but our children have learned some Maori this year. It is a challenging language and difficult to pronounce. Most enjoyable is that the children can now chant the “Haka”, a Maori war dance.

New Zealand national anthem: Our children have learned to sing it in both English AND Maori.

Outdoors: Even at school, life in New Zealand revolves around the outdoors. Kiwi classrooms are connected by covered outdoor walkways opening out onto courtyards. Indoor hallways are almost non-existent. There is no cafeteria. Children eat outside on wooden tables. Every day, the children are able to see the sun (or the clouds) and have fresh air for at least 20% of the school day! This was a huge psychological perk for our children.

Puhoi bus: The school bus picks up ALL the schoolchildren (from five- to eighteen-years-old) at 8:15 in the morning in front of the General Store. It is a comfortable, coach-style bus. It takes about 15-20 minutes to travel to Warkworth where the college students are dropped off before the primary students get delivered. At the end of the day, the primary students board just after 3 o’clock and then ride over to pick up the college kids before starting the trip home. It is heartwarming to see how the older kids befriend and look out for the younger ones. All the children of all ages giggle, goof off and chat together on the bus.

Quaint atmosphere: Sometimes the word “quaint” is used in a patronizing way and that is not our intention here. One of the things we love most about the schools here is the cozy, comfortable, old-fashioned ambiance. It is laid back and not at all legalistic. It is true that there is a lack of glitzy, high-tech resources at the schools here. Students don’t give powerpoint presentations nor are they even expected to have access to a computer at home, but there is a lot of personalized care. Especially at the primary school, we felt our children were really embraced. When we needed something, we felt we could ask and it would be delivered in a timely manner without reams of paperwork and meetings.

Reading and writing are taught in a different way than at home in Cynwyd. There is less emphasis on phonemic reading and more time spent on sight words. Children are given lists of the most commonly used English words in reading and writing. Through various means, they are encouraged to learn these. Children are assessed and placed in reading groups with children of a similar level. The school has loads of small, simple books that are color coded to correspond with each reading level. Each child reads a given book at school with adult guidance, brings the book home to read with a parent for homework and then rereads the same book a third time at school the next day. Seeing the same, appropriate-level book three times helped the twins progress rapidly with reading. Like the reading program, the writing program is very structured and systematic. The teachers provide formulas to follow for certain kinds of writing and then guide the children through them. The methodology used here worked very well for our children.

Sports figure prominently in Kiwi society. Kiwi children are involved in all sorts of sporty activities including swimming, cricket, rugby, sailing and surfing. Even the primary school has a small pool and a huge field for playing sports. Quentin benefited the most this year from the sports programs. He participated in several swim competitions and won plenty of recognition. He also discovered that he can throw a mean cricket pitch!

Technology: Xavier was required to take a number of technology courses this year such as food tech (cooking), fabric tech (fashion design and sewing) and metal tech (welding). In case he didn’t already know, Xavier learned that he isn’t fond of gooey lemon bars, he does not have a gift for putting together fabulous outfits and one can get burned while using a soldering iron.

Uniforms: Even public school students wear uniforms in most New Zealand schools. Surprisingly, our kids loved them. There was no worry about what to wear each day and everyone looked the same, eliminating much of the “cool” factor amongst the kids. Once in awhile, the school would host “mufti” days when the kids could wear their own clothes. These were special days where most students would bring in a gold coin (a dollar) in exchange for the privilege of wearing street clothes and the money would go to a charitable cause. On school trips, the uniform is a real plus as it is much easier to identify your school’s students. At the end of the school day, however, it is sometimes hard to find your own children in a sea of similarly dressed kids.

Virtues and Vices: The Kiwi children we have met are generally very polite and imaginative. They are refreshingly not materialistic and very rarely spoiled. However, they do curse a lot! The primary school actually includes the teaching of virtues like courtesy and helpfulness in the curriculum.

Whanau is the Maori word for family. At Mahurangi College, all the students were assigned to a whanau group that they stayed with throughout their years at Mahu. There is a mix of kids in there from all class years. It is yet another way the school encourages children of different classes to interact with each other.

Xenophiles or xenophobes? New Zealand is just starting to really struggle with a more pluralistic society. Up until recently, there were New Zealanders of European descent (mostly British Isles, but some Dutch) and the Maori people. Closer to Auckland, there are far more immigrants than further north near Puhoi. There is some backlash toward Asians in particular. Mostly, New Zealanders do seem tolerant. At school, there were some Australian students, some British, a few Asian children and a group of children from the Pacific Islands like Samoa and Kiribati. Curiously, about ten percent of the children in Year 3 with Annick and Isaac were from Kiribati.

Year-Round School: Well, not quite, but more than our school district back home. The New Zealand school year begins in early February and ends in late December. It is divided into four terms with two weeks of holiday between each term except after Term 4 when there are six to seven weeks of summer holidays. We liked this pattern. The summer holidays were long enough to feel like a good, long, restful break, but it was awesome to have three two-week breaks elsewhere in the year.

Zenith moments: Warkworth Primary School is excellent at finding ways to recognize and reward the achievements of their students. The children are given certificates every time they progress into a new reading level, for example. There is a school assembly every two weeks to share school news and to give awards. The awards can be very simple. Annick won one for “outstanding effort in all academic areas”, Isaac for "settling quickly to tasks and taking responsibility", and Quentin for "being a most reliable sports shed monitor".

Homekill and Other Rural Realities

Rural living is not for the faint of heart. Most Kiwi families own animals and most often, they serve a purpose. Even the family dog has an important job as fierce guardian of the property and herder of the sheep. A testy or uncooperative dog gets “sent to the farm” where it is euthanized with a gun by the farmer. A dog who dares to chase the neighbor’s sheep or worse yet, attack and eat one of the neighbor’s sheep, is destined to die. The neighbor has the lawful right to shoot the dog or can demand that you do the deed when the dog has transgressed. This happens more than you want to know. Happily, our dog has stayed close to home.

Chooks (hens and roosters) provide eggs and little chooks in order to always ensure a fresh chicken dinner. I have been told that you need to unmercifully pin the bird down and whack the neck cleanly or you will lose the battle. Feeding the chooks inevitably attracts rats. The rodents must be exterminated in order to ensure the health and safety of the flock. Some poison, some trap and some just shoot ‘em dead with a gun.

We don’t have chooks, but we do have rats. We are told that they are common in Puhoi because of the river that runs behind our property. We have heard them climbing in between the walls and up near the flue of the fireplace, but most disturbing for us is to be woken up at 4:30 in the morning to the sound of rats chewing the wood under the floorboards. It sounds as if they are already in the house. Someone reported to Beth that they actually had rats chew holes right through the floor! Our preferred method of raticide is a combination of poison and Victor traps from Pennsylvania. We took pictures of our first few dead rats, but the charm has worn off. We have caught about a dozen and God only knows how many we may have poisoned.

Along with the rats, we have also had some of their smaller cousins, the mice. We had tolerated a lone mouse or two, but Beth reached her limit one night when a mouse ran around the tops of her woolen clogs at least three times in circles. Beth screamed and then we were on the hunt for the mouse who somehow disappeared under our bed. It took two hours, but Gerard finally pinned the poor chap with an old mop. We have since bought traps and subsequently, many of our mice have met their maker.

Many households have paddocks with sheep, cows or horses that need regular maintenance. Sheep need to be shorn twice a year or they risk dying a horrible death by the carnivorous blowfly. Horses need covers here to keep them warm since they aren’t kept in stables. All farm animals need various medications that are routinely advertised on national television. While watching “American Idol”, we are often interrupted with a commercial break toting the benefits of a given de-worming medication for livestock.

Sheep and cows are sometimes kept for wool and milk, but not exclusively. You buy a young animal and let it graze. After it has grown up enough, you call someone who does “homekills”. Essentially, a traveling butcher shows up, kills your animal and chops it up for you. You can freeze the meat and feed many people for many months or better yet, you have a homekill barbie (barbecue) and invite your friends to eat the cow or bull formally known as Elsie or Bob. Thank goodness we have avoided this aspect of rural life.

One day last week, a friend at the bus stop complained about how long she had procrastinated about getting the butcher over to kill the cow. She finally arranged it, but the night before, they couldn’t find the cow. Early the next morning before the sun rose, she and her husband climbed up the steep hill of their paddock with torches in hand looking for the darn cow while kicking cow pies in the cold and dark. They had no luck. The butcher arrived and surprisingly, the cow willingly reappeared along with a couple friends. One look at the butcher, however, and the cow jumped the fence. She will live another two weeks, I am told. This is not a conversation I would be having at the bus stop in Bala Cynwyd.

As far as we can tell, horses are the only animals in New Zealand that don’t serve a practical purpose. In a country of very little frivolity, it seems that most people who own horses simply enjoy their beauty and companionship. Our next door neighbor is a lovely mare named Rose. When she sees us, she whinnies, runs to the fence and relishes a nice pat on the nose. She is a sweetheart, but you wonder if she knows that she holds a privileged spot as far as animals are concerned in New Zealand.

A Date on the Bird Island

Gerard and Beth decided to spend a day at Tiritiri Matangi while the children were at school. In past visits, we had never been successful at getting a picture of a saddleback, a native bird that hops and flits around in a highly caffeinated manner. Saddlebacks are mostly black but have an orange-brown spot on their back, which, as their name suggests, looks like a saddle. They only live on offshore islands and even though we had seen plenty of them on past trips to Tiritiri, we had never caught a shot of one. We had a pleasant and relaxing day, serenaded by bellbirds and tuis as we walked around the island. With some patience and a little luck, Gerard got a couple of decent saddleback shots.

Later, while eating lunch near the lighthouse, we were approached by one very curious takahe hoping for a handout. We were delightfully surprised to discover, in the last hour of our visit, two kokakos feeding in a tree. Along with the kiwi, they were the only species of bird on Tiritiri that we had never had the pleasure of seeing before. Now if we could only get those red headed parrots to sit still for a moment. Guess that’s our mission on the next visit.

Another Try at Trounson

We drove north to try our luck once again at finding wild kiwi in Trounson Park. We stopped on the way up to climb Tokatoka Peak. The land is low and mildly hilly around Dargaville, yet there are a few rocky pinnacles that jut up sharply in the landscape and they have a Dr. Seuss appeal to them. Tokatoka Peak is the most dramatic of them. We clambered up and enjoyed the 360 degree view from the tippy top which is about 15 feet wide surrounded by steep cliffs. Imagine standing on the tip of a cone. Definitely nerve racking for parents with kids.

After, we went to Trounson Park so that we could enjoy the thick, New Zealand bush and towering kauris in the daylight. On the way, we encountered a huge herd of cattle in the road that were being moved from one paddock to another. We sat and admired them, thinking this was all great fun. However, when they finally passed and we proceeded on, we noticed that they had left plenty of mud and you know what all over the road. When we got out of the car later, we discovered the bottom of our vehicle was plastered with a layer of excrement. Boy, did we stink!

We took our hike as planned. Xavier and Gerard spotted a morepork, a small indigenous owl. He flew across the trail in front of them and perched on a branch, perfectly camouflaged with his surroundings. We admired him for a quite a while and tried repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) to take a photo of him.

We enjoyed a short break at a nearby holiday park where the kids ran and played while Beth and Gerard prepared dinner. Immediately after eating, we hopped in the car and drove back to Trounson. With torches in hand, we entered the dark forest. We heard a couple kiwi in the distance, but sadly didn’t see any. We did see lots of glow worms, wetas, kauri snails, kokopus (a small native nocturnal fish), a monster eel and surprisingly, a sly possum who is a most unwanted guest in a kiwi forest. It is a lot of fun to walk in the woods at night. A few times, we turned off our lights and just stood in the blackness and quiet, spying a few stars in between the treetops. As soon as we got into the car, it started to rain and we drove home, a long but satisfying trip to Trounson.