Taken for granted

A few years ago I vis­ited Cam­bod­ia. The high­light was a trip to Siem Reap to see the largest reli­gious monu­ment in the world, Angkor Wat. This temple com­plex, ori­gin­ally Hindu, then sub­sequently Buddhist, is the cent­ral fea­ture of the Angkor UNESCO World Her­it­age Site, con­tain­ing the mag­ni­fi­cent remains of the Khmer civil­isa­tion. Built in the early 12th cen­tury when Europe was still in the Dark Ages, this mag­ni­fi­cent monu­ment is on a breath­tak­ing scale, with an out­side peri­met­er of 5,500m and intric­ate stone sculp­tures, some of which, sadly, were dis­figured by Pol Pot’s trig­ger-happy sol­diers, who used them for tar­get practice.

Explor­ing the site, I happened upon two girls of primary school age sit­ting in the ruins, writ­ing with a pen­cil stub in an exer­cise book. It turned out that the older girl was help­ing the young­er one with her arith­met­ic, and they were both totally focused on the task. It was explained to me by my Khmer hosts that the vil­lage school was nearby. This, I dis­covered, was a simple can­vas can­opy with a well-worn black­board at one end and, facing this, long wooden benches. The teach­er, a Buddhist monk, was on hol­i­day and there were no adults in sight. How­ever, the stu­dents had come to school any­way. To please their teach­er, they had cleaned and tidied up their classroom without super­vi­sion and now were out in the play­ground hap­pily impro­vising a game of hacky sack with a jandal.

This incid­ent stuck in my mind. These chil­dren had so little but they clearly were mak­ing the most of the edu­ca­tion­al oppor­tun­ity they had been giv­en. Yet with only 34 per­cent of Cam­bod­i­an school-age chil­dren attend­ing lower sec­ond­ary school, it would be dif­fi­cult for them to advance their edu­ca­tion bey­ond the primary years.

In stark con­trast, young New Zeal­anders have so many oppor­tun­it­ies avail­able at each step of their edu­ca­tion­al jour­ney. Wheth­er they will make the most of these is depend­ent on them hav­ing a pos­it­ive atti­tude to learn­ing and the sup­port of their teach­ers, par­ents and whānau. A class is com­prised of 20 or so indi­vidu­als, each with a unique set of abil­it­ies, needs and atti­tudes. The chal­lenge is to find a school in which each child learns best and where par­ents feel there is a clear align­ment with their val­ues. Make the right decision and this could lead toward a pros­per­ous, healthy life and a suc­cess­ful career, as all of these pos­it­ive out­comes are strongly cor­rel­ated to high edu­ca­tion­al achievement.

The 2014 school year is only just under­way, yet for those par­ents with sons or daugh­ters trans­ition­ing from primary or inter­me­di­ate school, now is the time for you to con­sider school enrol­ment for 2015. State or state-integ­rated or private? Exten­ded primary or inter­me­di­ate or com­pos­ite? Loc­al school or one out of zone? Wel­ling­ton stu­dents are for­tu­nate. In this region, where people are bet­ter edu­cated than the aver­age New Zeal­ander (46 per­cent of people here aged 15 years and over hold a post-school qual­i­fic­a­tion, com­pared with 40 per­cent nation­ally), there are many school­ing options.

So how do par­ents go about choos­ing a school where their child will thrive? Here are some tips. Par­ents need to be pro­act­ive and do some research. On the Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion web­site is a check­list entitled ‘Choos­ing a School’, which provides some help­ful point­ers, in par­tic­u­lar about data you can gath­er. Most import­antly, par­ents and pro­spect­ive stu­dents should vis­it schools, walk around the play­ground and classrooms, and get the feel of it them­selves. Talk to the prin­cip­al, the teach­ers and staff. This is the only way you can get a feel for the cul­ture of the school and find the best fit for your child.