Will have a good look later at the detail but unless there is a major improvement then the standards to be promoted today will be weak and I would have gained no satisfaction from any of my children achieving them and the fact that they had would have told me nothing.
In the past big education changes have been introduced on a bi-partisan basis. Tolley says this is the biggest thing for 20 years but there has been no consultation with me on them at all notwithstanding a commitment made to the Education and Science Committee to do so.
Lets make it clear. I support standards. I support better information for parents. I support looking at class and school results to identify teacher and school strengths and weaknesses so they can be built and worked on. I invested lots of your cash into getting systems set to do that.
But I don’t support horse race league tables because they don’t measure value add. It is not hard to give worthwhile inter-school information to show which schools do the best with their students. I can accept publicity for that.
But the Key/Tolley plan doesn’t give that. And the way it is already destroying trust between schools and the sharing of information is a signal that this will over time reduce not increase achievement in New Zealand.
Off to Taihape to help open the new school buildings with Simon Power. A real pity that someone with his intelligence and ability to work with others isn’t Minister of Education.
Tolley got an easy ride on Breakfast.
well she was interviewed by national party spokesman Paul Henry and his fawning sidekick Pippa’easy on the eye’ Wetzell…
I think November the 8th should be declared a day of mourning.
She sure did get it easy on breakfast – stating that teachers need to only focus on the ‘3 r’s’ and not to worry about the kids who are hungry or have inadequate clothing.
She is a real concern – as I have stated before – her lack of knowledge on education is disgusting – as for Henry – well known he stood for the Nats, so its about what we would have to expect.
Just how the heck is she expecting schools with significant numbers of at risk kids to participate in her “journey” when they are socially, emotionally and behaviourally unable to is the big question here.
I liked (not) her comment about being an elected govt that could do what they wanted. That sums it up nicely. Just to clarify though – not everyone voted for them. As for saying significant feedback from parents – bollocks. From memory there were 2500 parents responded – how many tens or hundreds of thousands of parents are there? We are looking at a very low percentage of people – hardly justifies her position.
“Off to Taihape to help open the new school buildings with Simon Power. A real pity that someone with his intelligence and ability to work with others isn’t Minister of Education.”
I’m sure your good opinion of Simon Power is based on experience Trevor. I’d just point out, there probably not enough Simon Power to go around the government porfolios.
A very patronising Minister! It takes many weeks to get even acknowledgement of a letter out of her office and I take serious issue with the research basis for many of the decisions being made by the Ministry lately. Axing school support advisors is my biggest concern but how National Standards will benefit individual children is not clear to me either. I like the idea of knowing where my child is by some measure and then seeing if they have made any progress. What is the plan for children outside the scope of the measurement tool (at each end of the scale) and; what’s to happen if a child is not making progress, progress is slowing, or they are moving backwards!
@Linda – what will happen? They will fail. The schools will be punished – by stat managers and commissioners – possibly closed – and these kids will be a burden to all of society as they disengage and become delinquent youths clogging up the justice system. Will it be the fault of the child or school – no – that responsibility must rest on the incompetence of the minister and her sadly deluded cabinet.
This narrow minded arrogance (as in, I am the minister, I say what goes) combined with no knowledge of the system, a set of ministry advisors who have forgotten that their job is to make sure what is best for kids occur, and a mind set of ‘forging ahead’ despite research and half a brain – is what will ultimately cause vulnerable students to be left behind.
What would have been more appropriate would have been to work with the sector to continue strengthening the good work with the new curriculum, ensuring resources are adequate for struggling schools, providing support for schools who service at risk communities and using the best practice already in place to assist schools. NOT introducing something that actually most schools are already doing but has the potential to break something that is not broken.
Accountability at last. Just needs the government to balance the equation by setting standards for parents. They must be required to deliver, well rested, fed and clothed children to the school gates. The ministry must be prepared to provide full time support for each behaviorally troubled child to avoid losing valuable instruction time.
In my mind standards are good because they teach our kids to grow up striving to reach a benchmark – a far better attitude than the alternative of growing up learning how to beat the person sitting next to them. The latter isn’t really a helpful attitude for them to take in to the workforce…
So clearly the introduction of league tables and other such vile things would be completely counter-productive to what standards actually try to achieve in learning attitudes.
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@logie – LOL – its just like a tui ad – yeah right!
@Nicola – the benchmarks for achievement actually already exist – its the consistency of how they are applied. Much cheaper and better (as in buy in from the sector) if they had worked on this rather than the ‘crusade’ they are pushing.
The benchmarks will likely be very average. The top of the bell curve will not have to ’strive’ to achieve them but, just like NCEA, the ’smart’ student can say ‘I’ve achieved what I need to so I can cruise for the rest of the year’. I would prefer that children were striving for ‘personal best’ and improving in all areas at a rate appropriate to their capacity. Good teachers know their students well enough to determine that little Johnny is capable to more and is slacking vs Katie who is working very hard to achieve, despite both having average results against the benchmark.
It needs to show ‘value added’ – no two children are created equal – so what you need to show, especially for the ‘tail’ – students who struggle and have special needs/at risk – is how much they have moved from one point to another. The unfortunate thing about that is that for the students who will never get past the first national standard, it will always show them as failures – rather than acknowledging the progress they have made. For some, this will be something that stigmatises them from an early age, and after a few years they will see it as pointless, disengage and drop out. This has happened in the UK.
I cant comment on where the mid line is going to be until I see them – but I anticipate they are a mix of what currently exists, re-packaged to look like a ‘new’ slice of bread.
The goverment has given a commitment to stop league tables being produced. National standards will help to weed out bad schools and teachers, so that is one important part of why the NZEI and PPTA have driven so much antagonism to this policy, as they nearly always defend bad employees.
This is reasonable accountability and it helps to challenge the vested interest power of the educational/union establishment.
Every party has its Anne Tolleys and Chris Carters. Education, I suppose, is not seen as one of the most significant portfolios. Remember Merv Wellington?