I have to admit that this comes as a surprise but I also seem to remember having a debate on here before about the relevance of statistics and how they don't always tell the full story. NZ didn't even have the full board of statistics to contribute for a start.
When I heard about this report over here in the UK on 14th Feb, indeed there were whole talk shows and radio shows dedicated to the thing, I was not in the least surprised that the UK fared so badly in almost every category. I work with kids at risk every day and the main problem with all of them is that they have no values, worst of all they don't value themselves hence the drug-taking, smoking, drinking, unprotected sex, teenage pregnancy results.
The UK doesn't value it's young people and hasn't for as long as I can remember. The education system has lost the plot, teachers are so busy trying to meet targets that they don't talk with the kids they talk at them, they're made to sit down and shut up, read and write only what they're prescribed, art, music, drama, dance is pushed out of the curriculum altogether and we end up with either school after school turning out teams of robots or, more often than not, the system failing more kids than it works for.
The Uk's problems I believe, have an awful lot to do with our individualistic culture. The Thatcher years instilled in us that we should all look after ourselves and sod everyone else. There is no sense of community, there are no communities, everyone is suspicious of everyone else, if you are friendly you're treated like a pervert, kids are demonised and marginalised, any woman who chooses to stay at home to raise her kids is treated like a work-shy moron, families are pushed into putting their kids into childcare and returning to full-time work, being successful constitutes wearing a designer label an up to the minute i-pod and carrying a mega-mega-pixel mobile phone that you don't know how to use.
My boy is 11. He plays football for a local team on a Saturday morning. He is the only member of the team that doesn't have 6 or 7 pairs of footy boots to choose from, he gets laughed at for this and is considering stopping playing. Our youngest daughter who is only 5 is very bright and her teacher told us just last night that they don't know how to keep her occupied so they let her do what she likes. My boy is also very creative but when he doodles on his jotter whilst his teacher drones out about science he gets a detention, when he contributes in a rarely offered dance session he is reprimanded and sent out for not dancing the way she tells him he can dance, when he runs faster than the others in PE he gets told to not run so fast because it's not fair on the others to lose, he has SAT tests coming up that they say will 'predict his future achievements' so they must have 7 pieces of homework a week to reach the predicted targets. BULLSHIT! I'm in the middle of finding out whether I can pull him out of them altogether!
From what I have heard about NZ from you guys on here and from other people who are in NZ with their kids, they wouldn't bring them back here for all the tea in China. They all report that their kids are so much happier with the more laid back, less pressurised way of life. I don't know, maybe the peeps that move over there are just the kind of folks that spend more time with their kids anyway, maybe they're the kind of peeps who value family life and who recognise the importance of making their children the centre-piece of their lives and see NZ as offering the freedoms to be able to do that, maybe they're the kind of peeps who are sick and tired of having constraint after constraint put on them and who are fed up of being spoon fed rules and regulations on child-rearing, maybe they just reckon they're the best people to bring up the children that they decided to bring into the world.
Anyway, this won't stop me coming in the hope that my kids are going to be better off there than they are here. It's one of my priority reasons for even thinking about coming in the first place as I'm sure it is for many of you.
Phew
there, had my say!!