Its coming.....

This may feel American, but I assure you the political agenda in NZ is identical - we are just a few years behind.....

 

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The mad scientist and the frog

The Education Amendment Bill No. 2 establishing EDUCANZ to replace the Teachers Council is currently before parliament. It is a neat microcosm of our government's flawed thinking on education, where political ideology is rammed through irrespective of the best interests of children, learners and teachers. For example:

1. The new Council's governing body are to be political cronies - directly appointed by the Minister of Education. There is no democratic process for representation, even when teachers fund more than 90% of the operations of the Council through their registration fees. Furthermore, since the bill stipulates a maximum number of teachers for the council and crucially, no minimum, there could conceivably be no teachers or people with a teaching background on the Teachers Council at all. The Bill, therefore, undermines quality teaching by giving teachers substantially less control over their own profession (Section 380 and Schedule 22). Instead, control will be exerted by a politically sympathetic group of individuals, who may have little or no understanding of the complexities of education.

2. The Bill makes it easier for non-qualified and non-registered people to work as teachers, perpetuating the 2013 amendments resulting in charter school staff being exempt altogether from the requirement to be registered or qualified (New Part 31.) The new "limited authority to teach" (LAT) provisions mean that someone "with specialist skills but not a teaching qualification" can be authorised to 'act' as a teacher for three years - even with criminal convictions.  

3. The Bill aims to gag the freedom of teachers and principals to advocate for children by not allowing them to criticise Government policy: the new code of conduct must “take account” of the State Services Code, which prevents public servants in core state services from publicly criticising Government policy. This provision might have been used, for example, to prevent principals and teachers voicing their concerns about National Standards or the $360M 'Investing in Success' debacle. 

Contrary to Education Amendment Bill No. 2, I believe that:

• All teachers deserve the right to have a voice in choosing who represents them professionally and who sits on the council that will shape the future of the sector.

• All children - in schools and early childhood education - deserve fully qualified and fully registered teachers.

• All NZers deserve a government who is prepared to listen to the free exchange of ideas, not just the ideologically agreeable ones.

These examples illustrate a government that puts their political ideology before the needs of our children. They still refuse to accept internationally regarded research, they still refuse to listen to the profession and they still refuse to even contemplate the notion that their economic policies might impact on student achievement - such notions would not be ideologically agreeable.

There is a classic confusion between correlation and causality. Because underachievement is more pronounced in poorer areas and in Maori and Pacific learners, our government have conveniently concluded that this must be because teachers don't want to teach these groups. It couldn't possibly be because some of these learners might be hungry or cold or scared or lacked the interactions in the first three years of life to ensure the formation of the neural pathways required to learn. Instead, our ministers accuse all teachers of being elitist and racist.

It's like the mad scientist who chopped off the frog's legs and told it to jump. When the frog didn't jump, the mad scientist concluded that the frog might be deaf.

Joining the Dots

"How fortunate for governments that the people they administer don't think." - Adolf Hitler

Let us look to the UK and Sweden as examples of treasury driven education reform. Figures from the international PISA study show that no other country's standards are sliding faster than Sweden's. And in the UK, just this week:

- Discovery New School, a brand new and very expensive charter school in West Sussex is being closed for failing it's students
- several other charter schools are in 'special measures'
- three arrests have been made for a kohanga reo-esque fraud at a 'flagship academy'
- 90% of the country's teachers have been on strike
- 2 school playing fields have been sold off
- The UK's education secretary has spent $90 million on one 'free school' for 500 pupils
- Leaked documents reveal that the Education Minister is making plans for special fast-track support from highly paid private consultants for failing free schools to avoid further embarrassment.  Yet more tax payers' dollars at work. (Observer front page) Gove is quoted as stating his (failing) reforms are driven by a "moral purpose" (Oh the irony!)
- Upon recognising that many students arrive at primary school ill-equipped to learn, OfSTED (ERO) suggest standardised tests are required for the nation's two year olds....(See the pattern?)
- Teacher recruitment figures continue to dwindle

This video goes some way towards explaining the invidious and undemocratic way our government is ramming through its own agenda for similar treasury driven reforms.





Either our NZ government fails to understand the harm that identical policies have inflicted in Britain and Sweden. Or, it absolutely does understand the harm inflicted in Britain and Sweden and is continuing regardless. Either scenario suggests that our elected officials are dangerously incompetent, blinded by ideological sympathies and unfit to govern.

Even if you did support a vision for privatised education, could you condone the process thus far?

The general public is being kept in the dark because, in an election year, these policies would prove to be deeply unpopular if more people understood the ramifications.

Join the dots.

Think, lest our government be unjustly fortunate.

Why education is such a big election issue

I arrived into the NZ education system 10 years ago. Back then I was full of optimism. I had left behind the damaging political agenda for education that had decimated schools in the UK and discovered something really exciting. A new NZ curriculum in 2007 was full of opportunities for schools to enhance rich, authentic learning experiences. Furthermore, since NZ was relatively sheltered from the economic downturn that was crippling the rest of the world, I genuinely felt we had an opportunity to educate a generation of kiwis that would have an advantage over their competitors in the global market place.

Sadly, since then, the NZ government has:

ü  Gifted $35 million to private schools (<4% of students)

ü  Slashed $25 million from the Education Ministry coffers

ü  Abandoned the curriculum and implemented National Standards without trial, against advice and with limited consultation. These were hurriedly legislated into law.

ü  Wiped $400 million from the (crucial) early childhood budget 

ü  Narrowed curriculum to literacy and numeracy

ü  Sacked advisors not related to national standards (Science, Technology, Arts…).

ü  Cut funding for technology teachers 

ü  Increased class sizes to over 1:27, 6 more than the OECD average

ü  Closed health camps and residential schools for behavioural needs (illegally).

ü  Threatened schools who questioned National Standards with having boards and principals sacked, professional development and funding withheld or additional ERO visits.

ü  Bungled Christchurch school closures.

ü  Employed new Education Ministry head from UK with a background in Charter Schools and limited knowledge of New Zealand system, who left quickly after a stormy relationship with Hekia.

ü  Implemented Novopay without a proper trial despite having 147 software faults. 

ü  Introduced charter schools despite no evidence of need or raised attainment. Charter Schools are given a huge financial advantage over public schools.
ü  Watched for five years as New Zealand’s international ranking plummets to as low as 23rd.

ü  Ignored internationally regarded research that reveals New Zealand's schools are suffering serious harm under the National Standards regime.

ü  Announced that $359 million will be spent on Executive Principals and Teachers who are successful in raising achievement in National Standards. Educators question why the money is supporting a corporate management system and isn’t being spent directly to help kids

ü  Changed teacher training requirements to allow teachers to train in 6 weeks

ü  Developed PACT tool – a flawed tool to rationalize flawed standards that is universally boycotted by all teaching associations

Following the next election, National have already hinted at performance pay for teachers and even school funding to be based on flawed and unworkable national standards. Both these concepts are fundamentally flawed.

Children have never been considered. Not once.

Education outcomes have never been considered. Not once.

This agenda is about relinquishing all financial, educational and social responsibility to private enterprise. The research is unequivocal – your kids will be far far far worse off under such a system.

Either you believe in equitable and high quality education for all NZ children, or you don't.

Some parents have asked me to explain here why I believe the current political agenda in education is not only scary, but also dishonest. They have also asked me to explain the question in this post's title.

1. On the surface, current policies seem to be about raising achievement. They are not. They are about privatising schools so that our government can limit their obligations to tax payers, both financially and  educationally. Private businesses are targeted to pick up the slack. Why is that such a bad thing? Because, once a school is about making money, it is no longer about learning or students or community. Expensive (ie high quality) teachers are a liability. Expensive resources like music studios or science labs or open green fields become superfluous. Only wealthier students will be able to afford to attend a school with such facilities. This is inequitable.

2. On the surface, current policies seem to be about the government investing in education. They are not. Your taxes will be used to establish charter or partnership schools so that businesses run by political cronies can make money. That's your tax dollars funding opportunities for private profit at the expense of poorer communities. Meanwhile, more and more of your taxes are channeled to top class private schools for the wealthy. These will be the first tier schools of the future. This is inequitable.

3. On the surface, current policies seem to be about helping poorer children from low decile communities get a better deal. They are not. Once control of schools is passed to private companies, they can and will make their own rules about fees and selection. Those that can afford higher performing partnership schools will attend them. These will be the second tier schools of the future. However, the majority will end up in the third tier schools - poor performing*, for profit schools, stripped of assets and quality resources. This is inequitable.

Currently, such schools already exist in the UK. They are 'selling' school places to those that can afford them. These schools are no longer the heart of the community. Indeed, local children's families can not always afford to attend them.

I understand 'user-pays' economics. However, education and health should be the exceptions that prove the rule.

The right to access high quality primary school education should be fair and equitable for all NZ children. (Access to university is a different matter!)

Hence the statement on our school Facebook page - either you believe in a system of high quality public education for all children, or you dont. Ask yourselves. Ask your MP.


*poor performing schools should not be interpreted as schools with poor National Standards achievement data.

Tests n tablets?

Here is some reporting in plain language about why teachers fear a national test:

Publishing league tables makes national testing high stakes - we want our students to do well in them. Our pay may even be related to student performance in them. So we spend our classroom time teaching how to pass the test. 

Some kids pass the test. What have they actually learned? 

Some kids don't pass the test. What have they actually learned?

What about subjects that are not tested - sport? music? art?

This test obsessed culture leads to students who are apathetic. Their learning is limited to how to pass the tests in reading, writing and maths. I believe this type of education is partly responsible for spawning  the Y-generation - "Why bother?" They were passive recipients of an education devoid of passion, devoid of values, devoid of joy, devoid of wonderment, devoid of any engagement with the process of real learning. Their test scores improved over time, but their 'education' dried up with each new practice test. What positive action did their learning lead to? Just another, probably more difficult, test. Why bother? 

I was both a teacher and a student in this type of system and I am totally gutted that it is happening now in NZ, just as the UK and USA are counting the costs of their education blunders both socially and economically.

I believe current testing systems, as in our own NCEA are already completely obsolete in their current form. The National Government 's failure to recognise this is sending us back to Victorian ideas about education. Moreover, they are inflicting this senselessness on children as young as six in order for them to be better able to pass equally senseless tests at age sixteen!

I cant recall the Greek philosopher, but I remember the quote about teaching a man, not what to think, but how to think. Pencil and paper testing only enables the tested to show what they have remembered - utterly useless in modern times, when you think about it.

I was intrigued by Professor Sugata Mitra, who called for internet-connected devices to be taken into the exam hall. He argues:

Let's look at examinations. At about AD1000 there used to be an entrance examination in an Indian university where the student was expected to orally answer the gateman; that's why it was called an entrance examination. If he couldn't, the student had to go back home. He could use nothing other than his mind and his voice.

There was a great jump after about a thousand years. Somebody said no, we must enable the person we're examining with technology. We can give him a piece of paper and a pencil. So now teachers had to prepare students to use that new technology to answer questions. Recitation became less important. I suggest that we just make one similar change.

Allow a tablet connected to the internet to be brought in to the examination hall. Take away the paper and pencil and say this time you have to answer the GCSE (NCEA) differently. All you have is a tablet. You can email your friends, you can look up on the internet, do whatever you like. And answer the questions.

I believe that if we do that the entire system will change. Teachers are intelligent people; they will start to immediately teach differently. A tablet can tell you what to think, but it will never be able to tell you how to think.....

or how to discriminate....
or how to be genuinely creative....
or how to argue...
or how to think critically....
or how to reflect....

A test obsessed system does not strengthen or develop these things either. 

Put a tablet into an examination hall. It's a small input. The entire system will self-organise. We may then have a chance to help foster the next generation of actively involved, confident, connected, lifelong learners.

Unions United.

This week the various teaching unions have united (at last) to unanimously condemn PaCT - a performance and consistency tool based on National Standards.

Predictably,  Fairfax Media have continued to publish teacher bashing drivel that completely misses the point.

If all airline pilots unanimously objected to a new pre-flight procedure, the public would surely take notice - pilots understand aeroplanes.

If all building inspectors unanimously objected to a policy revision, the public would surely take notice - building inspectors understand buildings.

If all doctors unanimously objected to a new drug, or a new medical procedure, the public would surely take notice - doctors understand health care.

And yet there are clearly people out there, who still believe teachers are acting in their own self interest to oppose National Standards. Do they really believe the government's line that teachers are all lazy, useless, left wing loonies with too many holidays?

You can trust your child's teacher.

Can you trust the Education Minister?

Can you trust Fairfax Media?