I see Anne Tolley’s Ministerial role has been downgraded so that she can focus on the implementation of National Standards. It had to happen.
With the naughty principals up north threatening to defy her, with no research to prove National Standards have merit, with the country’s top academics refusing to back her, with all her teacher bashing, with her claims that National Standards are the biggest thing to hit NZ education in twenty years, with $32 million sunk into her gamble – she has to focus on making the standards work.
You’d think though that if they are as good as she claims, they’d work anyway.
Key: “no reflection on her ability”
Tui ad: “yeah right”
No reflection on her ability? Its the other part time Minister of Education usually known as John Key that Im worried about
“You’d think though that if they are as good as she claims, they’d work anyway.”
That sort of comment is more worthy of someone in the four-ale bar at closing time than from an MP in a public forum.
I think that before making statements like this you should try to think of similar situations where you’d be on the other side of the fence lest the comment comes back to bite you in the future.
Some sectors of the education industry are dead set against this and for a myriad of reasons are being marshalled to fight against it. Regardless of how ‘good’ the effects of the introduction of national standards will be this situation alone requires that the minister has time to devote to ensuring that the policy (which was signalled at election time, remember) is implemented.
I have no idea of how large ministerial workloads are, and consequently whether or not space needs to be made for Ms Tolley to concentrate on this issue. But this sort of thing certainly happens in business where someone is relieved of some responsibilities to focus on a special project, especially if it needs careful handling either with customers or employees. In such situations it’s seen as no big deal. Apart from by the saddo in the corner who was passed over for promotion and spends most of his time criticising whatever the management does or says. Over time his remarks are increasingly ignored, of course, to the point that he just becomes an annoying irrelevance to everyone and is treated accordingly.
George – get real. She doesn’t have to implement a thing. It’s teachers and principals who have to do all the work and implement the National Standards. Anne Tolley’s time will be spent developing the spin and lines she’ll feed to the nation.
Kelvin – “Anne Tolley’s time will be spent developing the spin and lines she’ll feed to the nation” – in other words carrying out her day job of being a politician
I think this notch belongs on Trevor’s belt.
She’s clearly out of her depth and can seemingly only focus on screwing one particular part of her portfolio at a time – while the primary schools, staff, and students are getting their fair share of non-consensual sodomy the universities and their staff and students are not, ergo, Key had to act! We can’t have any group in society (that isn’t the top 250,000 of income earners/wealth owners of course) escaping their just deserts from the party that is ambitious for a brighter New Zealand now can we!
Just two portfolios – Minister of Education and Minister Responsible for the Education Review Office. Is this the lightest workload ever for a frontbencher?
I feel a Tui ad coming on.
I would rather see her out of education entirely but it is a start at least that she lost tertiary education. It was quite sad really seeing in Salient every week at the start of last year the failed attempts of them or VUWSA to get in contact with her or even an answer to a question.
Education is joint with Health as being the most important portfolios to get right in government and I am really not happy with how either are going right now. Health seems to be struggling with cuts and Education seems to be struggling with poor enforced policies. I hope they switch her to back bench and give the education portfolio to someone else next reshuffle.
She’s not cut out for this. Threatening school boards with dismissal. Reading Reilly the Rat to the rank & file. Key would have been better ditching her completely. I’m surprised Trevor hasn’t taken more advantage of her ineptitude. She’s an easy mark.
While it may make some teachers and academics feel better to oppose the standards policy, they were outvoted by the people who matter much more: the voters of New Zealand, who were made aware of this policy before the last election. Why do teachers feel they can pick and choose which policies they’ll implement and which they’ll ignore? That doesn’t work in any industry with anyone who hopes to remain employed. Teachers are looking inward so much they’re in danger of strangling themselves on their lower colons.
Just as an aside, do you dear people look at how other people view this matter of standards in reading/writing/arithmetic ?
Try the USA, NY city – read this article by Mr Klein on the effects of such standards in NY schools –
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/julias-revolution-should-measure-up/story-e6frg6zo-1225823741809
Then pay some attention to what is happening in Australia where the Labour government is in a battle with their teaching fraternity over the same.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/parents-guide-to-my-school-website/story-e6frg6nf-1225823836189
NZ is behind the times, it looks as if Anne Tolley is out in front of you lot.
Get reading if you can !
@John “they were outvoted by the people who matter much more: the voters of New Zealand”
Actually, the public was handed a snow job – the Nats did a good hard sell based on hearsay, used scaremongering tactics and provided little in the way of actual detail.
Suffice to say, the public bought the hard sell of ‘schools are failing to teach the basics of literacy and numeracy and they are failing’ (and lets face it – tell parents that schools are not doing a good job of it, and do not provide them with decent reports etc and it appeals to the scary part of us that worries that our kids will fail, because we all think we know education because we have all been to school) and hey presto, the scaremongering works and people vote. Then the spin about how the voters were all for it, even though by this time the public start realising they were sold a lemon…
As for Tolley – yeah right its a promotion – I look forward to the day she topples – in the meantime, come on Kelvin and Trev – shes an overgrown lawn to you – go mow her down!
John, I thought they all got caught up with tax cuts and rejecting nanny state? Don’t know many who voted for the standards or any other stand alone package. Oh and why are standards so much more important than any other “deferred” promise national has made?
National Standards WILL BE an absolute disaster.
I got an inkling today when chatting to a mid decile teacher in Junior School. When he looked at the reading standard, and the kids he taught last year, he realised that he cranked up only about 20% of kids in his class to the new
“National Standard”! Where to start – his kids had reading age from about 5 to 15 from what I could work out!! Where to start?
There are no easy answers, no cheap answers. No amount of good teaching is going to bridge the void that exists between the gifted and the slow, the high socio-economic to the low socio-economic, the sophisticated to the primitive. Sorry Anne!
Trevor you say that she is lightly loaded with only School Education and the Education Review Office to worry about. They will simply have more time to lead her on a merry dance – like they did Chris Carter!!