“In Term 1 and 2 next year, around 2000 Year 7 and 8 students who are behind in their learning will take part in an intensive support programme to bring them up to the required curriculum level in maths,” Education Minister Erica Stanford said in a statement.
“The trial will use small group tutoring and supervised online tuition for 30 minutes, up to four times a week for each child.”
The initiative comes after the Government revealed in August that only 22 per cent of Year 8 students are meeting new curriculum expectations in maths.
Although this figure has since been labelled a misrepresentation of data, by principals and teachers’ unions.
The trial will run for 12 weeks and cost approximately $2 million.
The Minister said tuition will be delivered through a mixture of online, in-person and hybrid models to see which method works best.
“We are going to be contracting providers to come in and provide this intensive support with small groups of up to four young people at a time, and we’ll make sure that those people are versed in the new curriculum, explicit teaching and the science of learning,” she said at a press conference.
An evaluation of the trial will inform how to scale it up across the country from Term 3 next year.
Stanford said intermediate level students have been chosen for the trial because they have the least amount of time to benefit from the new curriculum and resourcing introduced by the Government, before they reach high school.
