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?

Some thoughts on the 2013 budget....

First we were told to fear the enemy. Some people got richer.
Then we were told to fear climate change. Some people got richer.
Then we were told to fear the global financial melt down. And still some people got richer.
Is the education of our children our next great fear? Will some people get richer?

There is no doubt that public education is under an organized assault by corporate reformers who seek to script our curriculum and make us teach to their tests. This will make them richer, but at what cost to our children and our children's futures?

Bill's budget supports this reform unequivocally.

NZ schools had a much broader vision for a different kind of education: one that supports each and every child to dance and sing and think and debate and play and create and dream and make art and show their ideas about how to make the world a better place.

It was called the NZ Curriculum and it has been lost in a haze of National Standards data and a myriad of so-called initiatives.

I just wish the budget had included more money for supporting our children and less money for 'measuring' them.

More National Standards Concerns

When will the government realise that learning does not behave like an economy? There is no business model. There are no straight lines. We are dealing with children, not exchange rates. 

e-asTTle is an assessment tool widely used by lots of schools in NZ for 'leveling' students' achievement in Reading, Writing and Maths.

It is not currently used at Limehills.

e-asTTle has suddenly discovered that last year's assessments were significantly inflated. 

The mean score for e-asTTle was dropped nationally as a result and adjustments were then made to the results from all schools who have submitted results this year.

Some children have been dropped by two grades, which is the difference between being 'at' the 'standard' or 'below' it. (A year's learning - whatever that looks like.)

This was done without consulting schools, many of whom only found out when they found their results had been changed by somebody at e-asTTle.

If that wasn't alarming enough, nothing has been done to those inflated scores from 2012. These scores have been fed into the national standards data about to be published and will 'inform' public opinion on how well one school is performing in relation to another. Accordingly, schools who used e-asTTle will appear to perform well in relation to those who do not. 

National Standards continue to be a farce. This latest e-asTTle saga makes a mockery of the government’s claims about quality data.

The current political agenda includes aligning teacher pay to their performance as indicated by that same flawed data.

Surely, better performing schools would then attract higher performing and better paid teachers and continue to improve. Poorer performing schools make do with lower paid staff and continue to struggle. How would that narrow the achievement gaps in NZ? If you remember, that's what National Standards were supposed to be about  - "narrowing the gap" and helping the "1 in 5".

Not a chance. We now know that National Standards were inextricably linked to a larger plan to destabilize the teaching unions and privatise education. Politics aside, Kiwi kids will simply be much worse off as a result. Only the corporate elite will benefit.

Role of ERO?

I have always genuinely enjoyed ERO reviews. You might think that this is slightly unusual, but I believe this statement says more about ERO and the way they operate, than it does about my sanity.

Previous reviews have always left me a better Principal than I was before, with clarified thinking and fresh ideas that often led to positive outcomes for students. Conversation with highly skilled and experienced officers (educators, not politicians mind you) have always been a privilege.

So why this post? It is certainly not to flatter ERO in the hope of a favourable review!

After re-reading my recent posts, a major question has emerged:

Are ERO an independent education review body? Or, are they a political tool for a government hell bent on privatising schools?

I hope ERO can forgive me for asking the question, but this is how OfSTED seems to have evolved in the UK, with disastrous results.

I can't wait to continue the conversations about learning and look forward to an enjoyable and productive few days.