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Summarised by Centrist
NewstalkZB’s Mike Hosking says the country witnessed an extraordinary education result this week, but almost the entirety of NZ’s mainstream media chose not to report it.
He describes watching the Prime Minister and Education Minister announce the findings of a nationwide maths acceleration trial involving 1,500 Year 7 and 8 students who were more than a year behind in maths.
Two models were tested. The intensive, in-person support model saw students gain up to two years of progress in just 12 weeks.
The standard curriculum model, which simply required students to do one hour of maths a day, produced gains of one full year in the same 12-week period.
Despite this, he says the country’s major outlets barely touched the story.
Radio New Zealand did not cover it. Stuff did not cover it. The Herald did not cover it. TVNZ did not cover it. Hosking notes that digital platforms were filled instead with pieces about “Te Tiriti o Waitangi” and “Bishop’s coup,” an issue he says “isn’t even a thing.”
Hosking calls the bias overt and a joke: “The kids over a 12 week period who advance one year in one of the most difficult areas of education, an area that we’ve complained about, worried about, moaned about for years, when they get actual, tangible, real results, you cannot tell me that isn’t news, and yet, according to most of the media in this country, it wasn’t.”
