John Locke, Director of the First Time Principals' Programme, explains why young people deserve a quality education that develops key competencies.
They will only be able to be fulfilled if their education is built around capabilities such as the key competencies
The New Zealand education system does quite a good job for quite a lot of students and we compare very favourably with most of the countries in the OECD. Where we have a particular issue is with the 20 to 30 percent of students who are disengaged from students and are far less successful than they should be.
Unlike their parents or grandparents there is no prospect of an unskilled job for them because those jobs don’t exist.
So in terms of personal well being and community well being and national well being it is really important those people have a worthwhile life. They need to be and deserve to be and are entitled to be properly educated, to receive an appropriate and high quality education. They won’t get that if they get a 20th century education. They will only be able to be fulfilled if their education is built around capabilities such as the key competencies.
Updated on: 13 Jun 2009
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