 If Reality Check Radio enriches your day in life, support us to keep bringing you the content, voices, perspectives and the dose of reality you won't get anywhere else. Visit www.realitycheck.radio forward slash donate. Alwyn Paul is an education specialist with a passion for learning. He's been instrumental in setting up charter schools, has a real passion for breaking through with kids with learning difficulties and we're going to have a chat about the state of education in New Zealand. Alwyn is on the line now. Welcome to the crunch. Thanks Cameron and I won't call you whale as John Vance did last week because you know I feel there's something derogatory in it. Oh no, Banksy and I have known each other for 40 odd years so he gives me whale. That's just a term of endearment from the old whale oil days but that's okay. Now you were instrumental or involved deeply in charter schools when they existed. You've got a passion for education. What sort of marks would you give this government since it was formed in October on education and let's talk about Erica Stanford as well as the minister in charge. If we can bump it back just a tomb and I think I saw an interview that included Erica Stanford and Willie Jackson on the weekend and Erica presented really well about the amount of work they need to do and Willie said well you know Erica has got a big job but so did Jan Tinetti and what Labour has been at pains to do is point out that Jan Tinetti was the minister of education where the truth is that for more than five years Chris Hipkins was the minister of education and arguably well arguably I'd say statistically the worst minister of education we have seen. He did nothing. His only legacy was throwing out national standards without any sort of replacement and saying and throwing out the charter school model him Ardern and others promising that significant work would be done on the designated character school model. They didn't do any of it. They had applications during their term from people like well I'd call think Nathan and Eveteria New Zealand's best educators. People like Nathan and Evette, myself Francis Valentine and others to set up really high quality designated character schools. The ministry no doubt from the minister said no to all of them and then justified why. So Erica's come in and National have come in on the basis of a real disaster. Last year certainly the education sector didn't help themselves. We had on top of the sort of COVID response that was still impacting. We had this proliferation of teacher only days and almost all of them taken either before or after a weekend or after a holiday or after a long holiday long weekend. We had strike days and not only strike days but significant number of paid union meetings. We've got this situation and unfortunately one of the charter schools that I'm not involved with these schools now but one of the charter schools I set up. First of all went on strike and I just about fell out of my tree. They then started taking teacher only days and I've always said you simply cannot put kids from DSOL1 families DSOL123 even on the street because these teachers have got 12 weeks holidays a year. They've got call back days in their contract which schools don't use. The good parents in that situation will take a day's leave to look after their kids although pay and then have four weeks leave a year if that and so that's pretty bad and then we've got and again that's one of those schools and but plenty of other schools having their parent interviews in the day during the day and sending kids home and so you've got this crazy situation where we've got 38% of Maori and Pacifica kids attending full time. It's a 10,000 kids in the wind and in other words no one knows where they are. Everyone knows it's an attendance crisis and yet schools are behaving or behaved that way last year and Stanford was really critical and I think rightly so of Tinniti who was minister at the time for not getting the Term 3, 2024, 23 attendance stats out before the election the Term 4 ones are not coming out to April as well. Well that was something to kick off with. So how have they done so far? I felt that the key thing to show from the moment they got elected was genuine public facing leadership and whether that's Erica Stanford or David Seymour as the Associate Minister I felt that from November, December, through January into February that they would be absolutely banging on about school attendance and you know every press release, every chance they got to speak, schools do a better job, contact your parents, involve the families, families get your kids to school and we heard nothing of it until I think well into February where Luxon and Stanford went to Browns Bay Primary, hardly the heart of problematic education and mentioned it there and Luxon said you know the families across New Zealand got to be responsible for getting their kids into school and then this morning Luxon said that Seymour is in charge of that policy and there'll be announcements coming out soon well it's April and the announcement sounds at the moment and let's wait and see a little bit like they will be in and around punishing parents as opposed to necessarily improving school quality and that's I'm not sure how that's going to work the banning of cell phones in principle sounds like a good idea they messed up the announcement of that to me because there are a lot of kids who have needs different ways of learning who have depended on their cell phones for doing things like taking photos of notes off the board you've got kids with significant anxiety trying to get back into school and being able to contact a parent you know at breaks and lunchtimes is a big part of their how's this come to hear this anxiety thing a lot yeah it almost seems like a crutch or an excuse for any sort of behavior I know they have high anxiety and so they're having a day off school here because only a mental health day and I can't I can't count the number of parents that I've heard say I know Sebastian or Matilda is having a day off for their mental health and I'm suddenly thinking you know when I was a kid even if I had a drippy nose mum was booting me out the door and saying go to school I had to be pretty damn sick for me to get a day off school yeah um there's a mix I mean I is obviously going back a little bit but in my what was fall to uh yeah I uh I don't know uh you had a you would probably call it a depression and you know and for the first term I you know my parents did I don't know whether I told them or not but I faked an illness yeah uh fairly successfully managed to get myself in hospital twice um you pretty good at it then wouldn't you I know I was yeah it wasn't until uh the psychologist at Waikato hospital sort of um caught me out one day not coughing and we had a chat and he was great and um but so I think I mean I think that was a genuine anxiety and uh it probably wasn't until my mid 40s that uh because I carried that anxiety I still do but I carried that anxiety and and sort of white knuckled it for a long time so there will be a core of kids for whom that's a part of their makeup and how you deal with that requires a heck of a lot of skilled parenting um we've had in the in the schools that that I've operated we've had kids who you would call genuinely school averse you know they um and but I think you're right the projected problem is bigger than the actual problem um it's an interesting term you use their projected problem because I can remember when my my kids were younger and at intermediate school and we got called up to go see the school and they decided that they had a label that they wanted to apply to my son yep and the crux of it was uh not that I wanted to do anything but they wanted additional funding and so we needed to label somebody so they could then apply to the ministry to get teacher aides and I said to them well the problem you've got at your school is that you've decided to bus in a whole lot of desile one kids from down south into a desile 10 area so that you could Jimmy the system to get more money that way and as a result these kids are bigger physically right than than uh than European kids or Chinese kids and it was a prevalence of Chinese and Europeans in the school but but a large cohort of Pacifica and Maori children from down south and they're bigger and you use the term bullying but you know I'm a realist in in life and there is a pecking order and and you see it in chickens you see it in any type of animal and humans are animals and so you see it again in schools you call it bullying but it's not really and so um you've got a problem there but you want to solve the problem by labeling the kids that are being that are different with a label and then stick a teacher aid with them and then exacerbate the bullying because now they're a special kid yeah and kids are cruel they just are right and it depends it depends what's model to them I like a lot of what you're saying we had a boy at Mount Hobson uh who had Tourette's now it was the first child I'd taught with Tourette's and uh he's a couple of things came of it neat kid and at times distraught by his situation uh he didn't often swear but there there was one situation where a kid came sprinting down the driveway a whole lot of parents in the office kid came sprinting out of drive and said uh he's called Brian Brian just called me a mother yeah and I mean what shush well he called me and he repeated it yeah two or three times and I said look he didn't yes he did he called me a mother yeah I went I went no no no you know how he has tics oh yes but he never swears why I said this time he did yeah I can guarantee it and he wasn't calling you and he goes well I'm still telling my parents and I said that's okay you can tell your parents but don't use the term um but one of the things with this kid is he would greet people and he would say hi you know I'm Brian and I've got Tourette's yeah and I'd say no no no no yeah hi I'm Brian please to me hi I'm Brian I'm a cool guy yeah and and let's let's you know it's a really simple way of saying whether it's ADHD whether it's dyslexia anxiety yeah all of those things they can't define you and with something like dyslexia ultimately for that child to be successful they have to work harder yeah yeah they have to learn they've got different learning styles I mean yeah this is the the bugbear I've always had with schools going back to my experience you know now we're going to talk about schools and rankings a little bit later in the interview but I went to Auckland grammar and they streamed people and they still stream people and I was uh came home from school after the first day of exams and um and and told that I was in 3c so abc 30 kids in each class more like 35 in each class I think it was back then or squeezed in and um you know dad thought I should have been in 3a and um so he went up and talked to the headmaster we didn't have principles back then it was a headmaster I think it still is then yeah it was John Graham went across the road from the school and he said um no the exams are right that's where your your boy belongs if he wants to be in 3a or 3b well he needs to you know take the first term sit the exams at the end of the first term and do better now of course um I was in that class where everybody in that class knew that we could be in 3a or 3b but we couldn't be bothered doing the work so we were a teacher's nightmare and I was right like that all the way through school yeah and you know I remember in the third form uh the parent teacher he's like you touched they were in the evening right yes and mum mum went up to to the school and the the former teacher said oh your son's very difficult to teach and she said oh really why is that she said oh well it's like he reads encyclopedias and um my mother said well he does he he comes home from school and grabs a you know a piece of cake or cookie or you know a glass of water it sits down and he'll pick a world book or an encyclopedia Britannica whatever takes his fancy and he'll read it from cover to cover and he won't put it down to five o'clock so he does yeah but but the impression that I got from schooling and then bring my own kids up through the schooling system is that they love bell shaped curves of course reality doesn't like that not and um you know they don't cater for people at either end of the bell shaped curve and yeah the the challenges of teaching a super bright person as opposed to a uh well you know I was facetiously facetiously called dullards but you know there's the same there's the same challenges you've got to keep them interested yeah in education I work a bit uh keep up correspondence with John Hattie who is arguably you know the world's best major researcher for education and and the nature of our conversation in brief is John to say well this is what the data says and me to say and it's my job to change it and with that kind of bell shaped curve the teaching learning philosophy that I go with is that in it it's it's got a lot behind it but every student can develop exceptional learning skills absolutely in knowledge sets with expert teaching coaching mentorship significant purposeful practice and opportunities to express themselves and there's very little in cognitive science etc to say that the bell shaped curve should exist and a lot of that as you say is schools delight in it because it gives them an excuse I went to and I'll come back to national in a sec but I went down to a school a few years ago to check that what I was teaching and writing for curriculum for the schools I was involved in was good for year 10 science so I went and saw a head of department at a school that's at that stage I had respect for and I said what do you do for year 10 science what do you do to really you know get these kids fired up and interested and he said I when you got to understand it's it's a big school and I went yeah and he went well we all we want to do in year 10 is find out who came from who can't and unbelievable oh but that that is incredibly common um Mount Hobson we we got a lot of kids who had a background that was not conducive in terms of heading towards really good academic results we taught them all as if they could we probably failed over 18 years on on maybe I don't know five occasions which is which is not bad but still I I don't like the five 97 of those kids got at least level one nca and and went into the 70s I think went on to university entrance and things like that um we had advantages in that we were small we were you know by definition I guess we had most of the parents were supportive but we scholarship a lot of kids in who couldn't afford it and that to me that's the approach that we need in our schools not a bell shaped curve so I guess the feedback that they're getting from the cell phone ban is is is mostly positive I don't think it's working for the kids who are not going to school and I think it needed to be accompanied by a really good program working with parents because those kids the schools only got those kids for five or six hours yeah so are they going home and binging on their phones from there are parents aware that no kids should be behind a closed door with an internet capable device because they'll see things that they can't unsee how our parents doing with having the phones on top of the fridge at say eight o'clock at night are they having phone free dinners so they can you know all of those sorts of things that you and I were brought up when there were no cell phones I I I've only got home for very rare occasions now I mean the first time I had a I had a cell phone that I bought myself that wasn't related to work I was 30 years old right right so up until then I seem to have managed to get through life without cell phones I certainly got through school without cell phones you know I can remember at school you know there was a great fuss about calculator watches and stuff like that no dude's terrible you could cheat and all of that sort of thing well you know the smartest amongst us we had devised methods of cheating that teachers hadn't even thought of you know because we didn't like to do an awful lot of work we went to school to eat our lunch in many respects because school wasn't a challenge and you know I remember in the seventh form I remember my English teacher who said that he wrote on my first exam in the seventh form I got he had given me 75 percent but I looked at the paper and I'd actually got 95 percent the teacher was annoyed with me because I didn't do any classwork and I didn't hand in any essays or or things like that and so the guy who got second in the class had got 78 percent and so he scaled me down to 75 percent so I'd come second to the guy who got 78 and he wrote on my report a splendid exam result achieved with a little obvious effort and he handed me my report and grinned at me and said we'll see what your parents say about that and I just laughed like hell I said thank you so much for the compliments sir his name was Graham Marshall he went on to become the principal of Hutt Valley High School right yeah and I remember it to this day you know and then then what I worked out is all I had to do was hand in about 50 percent of the essays and and homework and stuff like that and I'd still pass and I wouldn't get scaled back and I'd get it so I ended up walking the first time in my entire secondary school life walking across the stage and shaking John Graham's hand getting an award for a prize for English um only because I played to the the strengths of the petulant teacher I could my boys went to grammar and in lots of other experiments I could write a book on it and oh so did I only only only only one very short chapter would be positive and you know Tim O'Connor went on with Bruce Cottwell the other down in ZB Plus and Tim O'Connor's the headmaster there and you know boasted that they had an 86 percent UE pass rate believers well their statistic is 74 percent and I knew I wouldn't get a reply from Tim but I did write to him and pointed out and you know it's it's it's I don't regard it as a good school I think the students there come from good families who who pretty much push the kids along and a lot of the kids become motivated by competition but I asked my boys how many good teachers did you have at grammar and they sort of stared at me and then they sat down and talked to each other and counted and came back with five over that over ten combined years yeah I think one might would be about two right you know I'll give you a good example uh in the fifth form I had uh Rory Barrett as a maths teacher now he is lauded all around the country as perhaps New Zealand's best maths teacher and let me tell you how Rory Barrett taught our class he was never in the class yeah he would get a prefect to come in and write on the board you to read pages 29 to 30 of the of the of this textbook you might be calculus or whatever and answer the questions on page 41 and we never see him that's how he taught maths at Auckland grammar school it took me a while with some kids I taught I'd say well how how did you how did you get this one right and they go a bob helped took me a long time I mean I must be a bit of a bit of a social dummy but after a month I finally see who's bob a back of book sir back of book and I say ah dear um so in terms of you know the cell phone thing just decreasing distractions in class you know there can't be a bad thing um I was the worst student right you know distractions in class I was the distraction yeah yeah I can remember one teacher at grammar paul forder was his name an economics teacher actually quite like the guy he'd be writing on the board scratching away and he'd say slater if I hear your voice one more time I'm gonna cane you and then I'd pipe up from the back of the class sir if you tried to came me I'd laugh in your face every time yeah that's I think that's why uh you know I found myself being a pretty good classroom teacher because I've done everything and and I'd learn to laugh with kids as opposed to at them and if they if they managed to really get one over me to laugh at that too I always felt that teachers were well the teachers that I had were intent on humiliating students yeah and felt well I actually think that a lot of my teachers were bullies uh yeah I look I uh I agree and um yeah I mean I I went I I talked with Michael laws a bit and we both went to the same school him about 10 years before me it's an appalling school uh one going to one going to boys college I mean at the time it was appalling we call ourselves survivors because we wanted the very few to get out of the town and and into a university at the moment they had no students graduating going into universities and they've got the ui pass rated about one and a half percent for levers but I even back then I remember we had a swarm of earthquakes uh would have been 1983 and these earthquakes would come through the exam hall and while everyone was in commotion people were just passing their papers around the hall yeah so I mean kids are ingenious and the the results went up because of the swarm of earthquakes um the the the back to basics the three hours math uh reading and writing again in principle sounds pretty good but what will happen in reality I mean teachers are pretty woke and liberal and they don't really you know you never hear them going on a strike when there's a labor government in but as soon as an there's a national lead government in there's all sorts of strikes and industrial actions and they um you know go to war with the education minister what's the reality it going to be in you know in these schools are they actually going to do an hour of reading writing and math today let's do some complications so one one is that uh where number schools already are keep in mind the schools did strike under hipkins and tinnity uh probably because they saw them as as as some schools are already they'd already worked to that extent there are a tremendous amount of primary school teachers who are not capable of teaching math well um little on science so I would argue that we have a lifelong learning system called ncea that every primary school teacher should have level two math and a level two science as well as a level two english and once they know once they've got that they're far more capable of teaching it so to me that would be a priority um as dame wendy pie who I think is a absolute New Zealand treasure that the ministry ignores uh and who produces sunshine books and is axiom and education in places like singapore china uh does work in the middle east and south africa etc how are you going to get a five-year-old to write for an hour and then of course in your curriculum so primary school's got five hours in a day and if you were to look at that you would say well you know I do want them to do some some math some reading some uh writing I want them to exercise the New Zealand history curriculum is compulsory each year I want them to get the basics of science and science is probably one of the most exciting important subjects for kids and they're all of these other things and I think a lot of schools are just get well art you know uh when are we when are we going to foot all the sin and I think some of this is uh the the literacy and the numeracy is really important and you can't you can't do math effectively unless you can read well people forget that too they think reading and writing is letters and math is numbers it isn't you've got to be able to understand the problem to be able to do it so we're talking about incredibly important things and we're going to talk as we go on about some parenting stuff um you mean my my children have grown up and done pretty well um I'll never forget them sitting in a lounge one day and someone saying well how come you guys are pretty good at academics and my daughter said well the only thing dad did well when we were growing up which my ears prepped up because I'd hope there would be a have been several but it was that I sat on the couch and read to them every night from the time they were two till the time they were about 14 but it wasn't just we we did read we we read incredible books we read classics we we we we'd roll down we read C.S. Lewis uh Lord of the Rings all sorts of stuff Venom or Cooper and so they were steeped in literacy and and I knew and I don't know how I obviously read it somewhere I hardly come up with the original thought but that you read above a child's cognitive above their skill level into their cognitive level it drags them up doesn't it yeah because they can understand story even if they can't extract themselves and you know my son asked me to start reading in the Lord of the Rings before he was three and I kind of looked at him and said well ah I don't know I said I'll tell you what we'll do we'll start reading it took me eight months but you have to tell me what happened the night before each time we read and his brain could deal with it there was no way he was going to read it of course and and I think if if again if we're going to improve literacy etc we need to go to parents and say hey you know what you need to be reading to your kids and Duff was talking about that wasn't he with trying to get yeah trying to get books uh people there's people who've got kids in the house and there's not a book to be seen in the whole place you know I had so many books when I was young you know we had encyclopedias we had encyclopedia Britannica and World Book mum was a voracious reader dad was a reader as well I think I was reading James I mentioned a box at 10 um you know that sort of that sort of stuff um I just go and have a look at what was on the shelf we almost had a library you know um if we didn't have a book there where mum would take us to the library yeah and it's not happening these days everyone's got devices but they're not reading they're not understanding yeah it would it would go a significant way to saving the numeracy and illiteracy situation it would assist schools a great deal and we put it in the two hard baskets um so again in principle this emphasis on math particularly with what the Royal Society said under Labor which Labor said there's great ideas and then ignored it I think that's a big deal we're ignoring science and and I think that's because it's less measurable particularly internationally than the others I know how to get people excited in science particularly boys yep teach them how to blow things up oh the best day the best day at Mount Holston that we we had uh each year was to bring in uh CO2 pastels oh of course you put them in a Coke bottle with a bit of water put the lid on and you've got a bomb unbelievable and uh just superb and one day we forgot to tell the child care center next door what was going on but now you're right kids absolutely adore it we used to bring this guy called we do a flight and space project yeah and this guy called Jerry Munston in who built rockets you know model rockets and he'd be firing off in the back I had no idea where they landed um but the kids we you know we we used to learn about science on Guy Fawkes day didn't we absolutely if you hold on to this it'll hurt your fingers yeah experiential learning the old um uh well it was my friends who blew up letterboxes but you know they'll double happy in the top of a can or a tripod in a pot of water and uh you'd send this can 30 feet into the air so so there's there's a lot that can be done and I think science is neglected and you go back to reading um I always say to families one of the ebooks you must have in your home is the illustrated version of Bill Bryson's the short history of nearly everything because a kid will read that and they're hooked well what we did with with our son is we got um um horrible histories right yeah you know and and he just read those voraciously you know and and that it was a light-hearted you know look at you know vicious vikings and they had all sorts of things like that yeah um you know it was targeted specifically at boys yeah um and and as a consequence he's got a good working general knowledge uh and understanding of history and and the astonishing we can you know I I thought I knew a little bit about um some of the aspects of the bomb development at the end of world I'm currently watching Oppenheimer on Netflix you know it's amazing 20 minutes and I'm stunned stunned by just about everything including the act then and I love the bit where I love the bit where he says to Einstein yeah I want you to have a look at this oh yeah yeah at this equation because they're quite they couldn't work it out you know the the generals were saying well what are your what are your scientists saying about the equation you know what happens if we set one off in the atmosphere and we could burn the earth to to a crisp could set off a change reaction so what did Einstein say Einstein said well the only way you're gonna find out is to let one off hi it's classic boys own stuff isn't it oh we don't know how big this is gonna be uh we maybe we'll stand back a bit yeah but it's it's it's it's stunning and kids respond when we set up South Auckland middle school and middle school is talking about this charter schools you know one of our projects the beginning of year 10 uh the second project is Shakespeare and people could sort of look at you and go what and um they love it and and when that globe you know the pop-up globe was on Hamilton yeah so so they are talking of bringing back charter schools uh again there's a lot of people in society who are interested I've got at least six groups who want to work with me yeah uh I've got two opportunities already in terms of buildings etc it's gonna be incredibly important that they established this model in a way that it can't be undone that it can't be undone um David's talking about state schools being able to transfer that's cool um I think small private schools should have the same opportunity um he says the bigger private schools will cost the government too much money if they did I don't think they would anyway because they wouldn't get the funding that they need to to maintain uh the schools like Kings and St. Cath's yeah um the key key element or two of them uh combined is that the ministry have nothing to do with the approval and monitoring uh that it's established as a separate entity and the second one is that the approval has nothing to do with the current network so if we go back to Whanganui Boys College uh education in Whanganui uh is appalling uh both Whanganui High School and Whanganui City College, Whanganui Girls, Color Lane, they're all very low performers. Colleges it's okay but most of the kids come from elsewhere anyway but if I went to Whanganui and said look I'd like to set up a charter school down here and try and improve things at the moment I'd be told by the ministry no because there are 500 empty desks at Whanganui City College yeah but they're all out on the street setting fire to letter boxes and you know doing ram raids and all that sort of stuff because they're not at school correct so that's one of the big problems if the ministry have got a hand in this uh it will not succeed in the way that it should so so that's that's that's um another policy they have in place clearly the school lunches is up for debate I was meeting with someone this morning and they said what what was done about attendance and I said well I had a select committee meeting uh investigation of 2,600 schools eight schools submitted so how seriously are schools taking attendance in the report that came out it said there's no evidence to associate school lunches with improved what you call it attendance and then your friend Boyd Swinburton I mean he he was all over tv one last week saying how the data showed that attendance had improved and get this by an average of three days a year so that's 0.075 days a week for three hundred and twenty four million dollars spending but let's see that this is bollocks right it sounds crude to say that but it is it's bollocks there were no school lunches when when I went to school you went to school or else yep and you know in the secondary school um certainly not so much in intermediate but in secondary school it was well there you go there's a fridge full of food there you need to make your lunch before you go to school was what one would say and she would supervise or oversee she'd say show me what you've taken to lunch for lunch you know and and we did that and then the other answer to that of course is well who fed the kids during covid lockdowns or school holidays etc who feeds the kids during school exactly right yeah so I have this strong belief that uh feeding your children is the responsibility of a parent now I know there's a lot of parents that don't or won't or can't those are what we need to address we need to address that don't want won't and can't type parents to find out what's going on and if it's a money issue well feeding them at school isn't going to solve it I think it has to be well researched who needs this okay if they need it we'll deliver it yeah but we're also going to accompany that with with a parenting program and people go oh but you know you you know you're exposing well no we're helping people because we're bringing those people into the school we've got good people coming in we're talking about budgeting we're talking about you know the need to do this stuff it's not inconsequential and the other I know I think it's most bizarre uh is that let's say your school was in the school lunches program well not only can you not send your lunch in with your child they kind of get penalized if they come to school with it and often they have to sit separately and you know our oldest kid particularly I mean all three kids were really active at school but this kid never sat still uh the morning tea lunch you know he'd get through his math so he'd go shooting hoops and playing table tennis until I found out that was happening and I mean he would have had three of these lunches and so the fact that parents can't send lunch with their kids is bizarre and so they're they're reviewing that so that's kind of what I think the government's up to love to see more visible leadership there's been almost no questions in the house uh around education uh there was one last week when the aero report came out on on bad school behavior um to me that again yes schools have to be good and schools have to deal with what they've got and deal with it well but it's parenting that's the problem isn't it because I've got a good mate and um his his grandson was being bullied at school and um you know that drawn it to the attention of the school and it carried on and um finally decided to take matters into his own hands and gave the bully a good hiding in the good old fashioned way of dealing with bullies right you can't do that in the modern day society so what happens is the parents uh get called up to the school and said your son's assaulted this this child and they said well actually we drew your attention to this guy's bullying and it hadn't stopped and so he sorted it out now and they said oh well the problem is is the guy that he hit came back and said you know it wasn't really fair and he wanted to have another go and um what arranged it for after school and um and uh and your son gave him another hiding uh but this time people video didn't put it on facebook or tiktok or whatever and so they were in trouble because it was now that my mate said well let's have a look at this video then said to his grandson and said mate that's a sissy punch right you need to so what they've done is they've enrolled him in in uh in some martial arts training so that he can defend himself better but the school suspended him for defending himself for four days yeah and it was supposed to you know teach him a lesson well he came back to the school and he's a hero because he stood up to the bully and now other people were standing up to the bully and the bullying problems ended because somebody stood up to the bully absolutely and the schools punished him one of the best phone calls I ever got I was teaching at St. Cath's and I got a phone call from the principal of Cornwall Park District School where my three kids went and um it was a principal and he said I need to have a conversation about your boys the fighting pool boys and I said the what and he and he said look uh Michael your oldest son was was in the playground and he tripped over this bigger boy and the bigger boy was known for being a thumper and so this bigger boy gets up and and starts punching Michael now Michael's brother who was seven at the time and weighed about 25 kilograms and had poor eyesight I have no idea how he knew this was going on comes tearing across the field leaps on the bully's back and starts thumping him and uh you know the principal wanted me to talk to the boys so when they came home I said look guys you know it's probably not a good habit to be into but Daniel it's incredible you know uh that that you went out and defended your brother because that kid weighs at least three times what you weigh and and you know I'm I'm really proud of what you did as I said I'm not going to encourage you to fight but it was a moment and um his older brother paid him back years later they're in a really competitive cycle race um and Daniel was young and and and Michael was riding away with the leaders and he looked around and his little brother was trying to come across the gap which was never going to happen and so Michael dropped back and you probably know the name Gordon McCawley him and another in the in the lead group and Michael dropped all the way back to Daniel wrote him back up the front and said never do that again and I thought you know that's that came from all of that time to see you know we're talking about the poor behavior in schools we're seeing that manifest itself in society as well yeah we've had this clamped down by schools on so-called bullying uh you've got people aren't using social media you know with impunity saying the most awful appalling things to kids and stuff like that they then grow up to become adults and you see them on twitter or x as it's called now saying the most appalling things to people and i've sat there and i think to myself you know what this is like this because these people have never had a kick in the teeth from someone they've insulted they've never learned the consequences of being mean as someone gives you a hiding i think as well when uh so my big my big thing is at the moment parenting and i have chosen not to take full-time work this year uh i'm earning some money the other way so people listening just get on my substack and subscribe thanks but we we need to address parenting in new zealand uh the the government cannot solve these problems and schools cannot solve these problems schools have to be good and i can't suspend the way back to good behavior it doesn't you can but you'll only have 15 of the school population left yeah and i believe we need a crown entity of parenting it needs to be incredibly well defined but you're doing something about that aren't you you're setting up a a union of parents i'm working with some very good people to look at that because you know even from an education perspective there is no parent force uh the what they call they call themselves the peak bodies which how does that work so in wellington these peak bodies will meet with the minister the ministry ppta nzdi the teacher unions uh principles association for secondary and primary school trust these which are vested interests vested interest but nobody vesting in the interests of the children no not at all and then you all you go all the way back so i i call it project 5.75 i've got some good people working on this kind of thing in new zealand like nathan wallace who uh who are saying you know we need to invest money in the first 5.75 years of life that includes pregnancy because we've got these programs for kids in schools with fetal alcohol syndrome it's a heck of a lot easier to stop than to treat and easy to prevent isn't it and we you know a lot of us have become middle class to upper class i guess and we've had role models and and we know the things that we've talked about like reading to your kids and stuff like that the amount of words you speak to your kids can i swear can i swear on your program right you just can't say the f word or the c word the editors the editors throw real wobbly okay so i i was in a supermarket in hamilton the other i'm not really a swearing person to the start but and there was a parent with a kid who wasn't misbehaving you know he was two meters over head of her and set of right beside she's come back here you little shit i'm sick of your bad behavior and i thought okay if you do that in the supermarket what's happening at home and and again a lot of parents actually don't know the impact that that's having and i'm trying to bring a guy called david eglinton new zealand he's the i'd argue the top communicative neuroscientist in the world and he just talks so well into those developmental years about if you're not producing the brain and physical development that that child needs in that they're not going to catch up no and he uses the charchesco romanian legacy of of the hundreds of thousands of orphans and you know the people going in there after sort of a period of time and saying well why aren't they crying and the people in the hospital saying well they did you know for six months or two months or whatever it was per child and then they stopped because no one was meeting their needs and so really good hearted people came in and adopted a lot of these kids but they actually had lifelong problems and so if we're going to address what's happening now for our 14 15 16 year olds we actually have to do that but we need to go back and say hey what do we want in 18 years time that's the problem isn't that because you know everybody's got a story about a dud teacher that they had very few people have a story about a fantastic teacher that challenged them yep and we're going to turn that around but I don't you know I don't know how we turn that around because my experience of teachers you know we talked about that with your kids asking them about you know all congramma how many teachers could they name well I'm in the same boat I can only name one teacher that made a difference to my life but he made a difference to my life through sarcasm and trying to be demeaning right yeah but but I just rose above that yeah that's the only reason why he made a difference in my life because I actually liked it sarcasm I thought oh well I can work with that there are some great teachers I had one extremely influential good one who I've stayed up with our second child he was pretty naughty at school primary school and a lot of it came back to Karen and I hadn't realized that his sight was impaired and it wasn't till we did that he got glasses that he you know got but one teacher said to us year five I think he's amazing and we said are you serious and we weren't trying to be me and then at the end of year six he came home and he said to us are I think I'm getting a prize yeah okay really we see what price you think we're getting he says oh I think I'm getting this academic boy now we've told him this story so he's no longer embarrassed but we showed ourselves in a room and just I don't know I suppose giggled nervously and that's exactly what happened he and this one teacher had turned him around and and I think those stories are important because teachers it's an amazing job I still regard myself as never having worked a day in my life and I have worked alongside some incredible teachers but then I've worked alongside you know possibly the majority not in the schools that I established because we had really good start protocols but teachers who complain about kids teachers who pigeonhole kids from day one yeah and all of those kinds of things it's a lasting impact on those children look at the stories I've told you I told you a story about two teachers you know secondary school I'm 55 years old and I know their names I know what they did yep I know what the impact they had on me oh you never forget no um and again that's these people I mean they spout that they are important they are right they are important but they see that importance from the wrong perspective they said I am important therefore pay me more well if you're a good teacher you deserve to be paid no doubt absolutely no question no question yeah but you've actually got to see yourself as being important because whether you are good or not that child is going to remember you they are they can have an impact negative or positive on your life and sadly there's far too many teachers that have a negative impact on children's lives which have which have lasting long-term negative consequences which we're starting to see in society where we've got poorly behaved adults interacting with other citizens in a way that we don't like yeah and I put that back back to the lack of education and lack of understanding from the teachers as well as their parents and the school school structure is important teachers being literate is important I remember interviewing a teacher and I'm not going to remember the name of the book now but I said what what do you read you know do you read consistently you know and she said oh you're the last book I read now what's the one about bondage and discipline people will know the shades of gray shades of gray yeah yeah so she's sitting in my office and she said well this is the last book I read and I thought well that's excellent next yeah let me guess you're the you're the resident tainer and strapper of the school well I thought we've just about used up all our time now and so people can find your sub stack if they just do a google search for Alwyn Paul sub stack that will pick it up and get you there or you can use education plus challenging mediocrity yep and education innovative consultants I mean I said in one of your posts or post you put up yesterday a lot of people will contact me because they want better for their kids yeah and they start the conversation with hey look I know you're busy or you probably haven't got time for you know this is what I live for and and if it's a one-off conversation and I can help that's cool if they if they want you know to set up something else some advocacy some work with their schools I mean I've also set up mount hopson academy online I I'm no longer involved but that is rocketing and there are some really good things about virtual classrooms now and the quality of teaching and the communication and connectivity you have with kids all over New Zealand and some other places in the world they get together pretty hard to punch someone in the head when you're online you know there are the way there are other ways but these teachers are so good there's almost no downtime and and for kids certainly who are remote it's also an amazing opportunity yeah because a lot of our area and remote schools are just not doing well so yeah hey thanks for your time really appreciated you coming on the crunch and when you get if you managed to get that guy coming down to visit New Zealand or definitely get in touch and we'll have a chat with him as well people can look him up David Eagleman there's plenty on YouTube and stuff he's stunning and probably the last thing in terms of parenting you know I when we were parenting our kids we had uh Ian Grant you know as a as a New Zealand icon in terms of the good things that you could do with your kids and and how the parents and things like that I don't know if there's an individual like that in New Zealand now but we need collectively to bring back that kind of an emphasis because the government and schools can't solve these issues Ronald Reagan used to say and the nine most dreaded words in English language I'm from the government and I'm here to help correct the ministry have to be good the minister has to be good the schools have to be good but they're only going to be a small part of the solution and they need to let it go and get parents back involved in schools back involved in parenting and give them the credit that they deserve when they do well Elwin Paul thanks for coming on the crunch thanks Cameron Elwin raises some concerning statistics and those statistics are leading to societal impact if kids can't or won't behave at school or even attend then they won't behave elsewhere the government's made a good start but there is much much more to be done tell me your thoughts on what Elwin Paul had to say about the state of our education system by emailing inbox at realitycheck.radio or text to 2057 thank you for tuning into RCR reality check radio if you like what you're listening to or dislike what you're listening to either way we want to hear from you get in touch with us now you can text us with your message to 2057 that's 2057 or email us at inbox at realitycheck.radio we would love to hear from you so connect with us today