Dear Editor, As a parent I’m in support of Joe TP’s letter of September 26 – “Tereora College on life support”.

It sums up perfectly the frustrations and feelings of many parents with children attending our national college. As a former student myself, and now a parent to students and former students, I have seen the college degenerate over the years to a place where it is, to be honest, an embarrassment, and not a place where our children are able to thrive and receive the education they deserve. I’m not surprised kids are losing motivation and incentive to attend our national college (and I do know both students and parents who feel this way).

The response of the Education secretary Owen Lewis was as to be expected, a long-winded word salad, which did nothing to provide any insight into how the situation at the college is actually going to improve.

Lewis takes pride in announcing that Tereora is not just another school, it is our national college and “we fully recognise its importance”. Do we? He adds “we want our public to be proud of this school and confident that our education system is providing for our children positively”. We’re a long way off that, Owen. A long way.

And to say as regards Tereora’s NCEA results, that “our national averages are on par with New Zealand’s”, and “we have seen significant achievements in this area”.  Well now you’re just telling pikikaa Owen. 

Why should I have to seek outside tutorship for my child because the teaching is not up to par, and she’s having to google how to do specific maths components because her teacher is not able to teach the concepts.

Also read:

Letter: Addressing education concerns

Letter: Tereora College ‘on life support’   

Why should tax paying parents, or those fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so, have to send their children overseas to boarding schools for education because they’re not getting the education they deserve at our national college, which as Joe TP points out is on life support and well on its way to becoming a dysfunctional and toxic learning environment.

 The suggestion to undertake a comprehensive review of Tereora by an independent NZ based review panel to identify the systemic shortcomings and provide recommendations is a good one. The system needs a shakeup and overhaul. Maybe our MPs should sit in the classroom for a day and get an idea of what is going on in our national college. 

Our national college, as Lewis states, should indeed be “a place of excellence that our Pa Enua schools can rely on for future education pathways” and that “we want it to operate with the highest standards in staffing, resources, and face to face learning”.

Blah de blah de blah. Please more action less words.

Politicians, time to put the money where your mouth is, invest in our children, invest in our future. Joe TP is expressing what many of us are feeling, wake the hell up, stop jetting around the globe attending to things that are not a priority. Why is Tereora on a shoestring budget, while we’re seeing news headlines showing the outrageous expenditure on MPs travel. We read just last week that tourism revenue is looking to hit the half billion dollar mark this year. Please for the love of God start investing some of this into our education system. If we want better quality teachers we need to pay accordingly. The world is moving ahead, education is evolving, give our kids the chance to get a foot in, instead of boring and disincentivising them.

Invest in excellence, stop being satisfied with average.

Yours

P.d off taxpaying parent

(Name and address supplied)