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.