NZ wants to teach the ‘basics well and brilliantly’: Christopher Luxon on education

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says his government wants to teach the “basics well and brilliantly” in education because it enables kids to get to a “better set of circumstances”. “Education is the great leveller … it enables kids to get from a set of circumstances to a better set of circumstances, and I’m an example of that as well,” Mr Luxon told Sky News host Erin Molan. “We’ve got two big challenges here in New Zealand – one is that regular school attendance is at an all-time low, and I want kids back at school. “The second thing is actually getting our kids taught well so that when they arrive at high school, we want 80 per cent of them to be ready and at curriculum – currently, it’s about 50 per cent. “We’ve done several things: first thing is we’ve banned mobile phones all across the schools … we’ve mandated an hour of maths, an hour of writing, an hour of reading in our primary and intermediate schools. “Just yesterday, we talked about the fact that we’re going to mandate something called structured literacy, which is actually one common approach for teaching our kids to read through using phonics and sounds – the old-school way. “We want to teach the basics well and brilliantly.”