Sir John Graham and John Taylor have a great column in the Herald today.
It is about creating far more respect and dignity among our teaching profession so that it can once again become the desirable and satisfying career which attracted us into it many years ago. It is about reinforcing the importance of inspiring students through their teachers’ passions for the subjects they teach, as well as the thrill of seeing another side of difficult students through their extracurricular talents.
Most importantly, it is about promoting a sea change from excessively boring, mechanistic and assessment-driven teaching, to the celebration of whole subject expertise, the inculcation of good values, and the importance of all round student involvement beyond the classroom.
I’ve worked closely with these guys in the past. They are seen as being at the conservative end of the principal spectrum but both ran very good schools. Respected by staff and students. While there are a few matters of emphasis that we would differ on this is a damn fine column.
I especially agree with their view that subject fragmentation and over assessment together lead to a major problem that we must address.
And yes I’m prepared to take responsibility for more than half of what has happened in education in the past twelve years.
Are we looking at our schools to educate our children or just for work training? Is this why our country appears to be dominated by Lawyers and accountants over problem solvers engineers & scientists.
Just as important is second chance career training.
Did you ever ask Sir John for his views on education standards?
He was interviewed on Deaker on Sport a couple of months ago and he was most emphatic that education standards were fundamental to rating teachers so they could be paid commensurately. So he agrees with Anne Tolley!
* We need to be far more pro-active and bold in attracting, retaining and rewarding high quality teachers.
Interesting that this line was in BOLD lettering .. do agree with it Trevor or do you favour a salary package the same for all teachers regardless on how good, or not so good, they are considered to be.
What’s happened in the past has happened, and also lots of good things happened on your watch. It is the future that is the real concern. The probable National Party agenda is very concerning, based on imported ideology, and seemingly disregarding the concerns of both national and international education experts. Should they be re-elected, then the primary school system as we know it may cease to exist, with increasing corporate involvement likely. The overseas evidence is very indicative of where things may head here.
The problem with ratings is the way they operate and what they measure. For various reasons it becomes a self reinforcing system exacerbating the difference between top & bottom schools. At the moment secondary teachers can get pay differentials depending on the subject. Perhaps a grading system such as Nurses or Lawyers run on might incentive upskilling for teachers.
“We need to be far more pro-active and bold in attracting, retaining and rewarding high quality teachers”. Perhaps we should also add scientists, engineers, doctors, social & health workers in fact everything except MBAs Lawyers and miscellaneous pen pushers.
I am not in a union and any pay rise I receive is based on performance. I have reviews mid year where my performance is discussed. I’m happy with this. If I wasn’t, I would leave.
Now, I deal with 100′s of union workers in my role. These operators are all unionised and get the same pay as each other when doing the same role .. all roles are graded. Some of these people are great workers and some I wouldn’t let take out my rubbish bin and yet they all get the same % pay rise .. fair???, I don’t think so.
The answer to paying good teachers more is in the article – try reading it.
Teachers complaining about ‘the system’, is like a sea captain complaining about the sea.
Of course its donkeys years since I was a student but Im sure todays kids get a better education than the ‘good old days’
the wage/salary part in the article was very limited Trevor and that is why I asked you about your thoughts about their salaries.
Jabba you are being mischievous. Be warned. Clare
Sorry Sir John Graham and John Taylor’s article is well below standard even though it reeks of common sense and solid values.
By contrast, Peter O’Connor’s article in todays DomPost charts a new course, one that many are encouraging Labour to take a decisive lead on.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/5344930/Narrow-focus-road-to-education-failure
Please Trevor…lead us forward into a brave new age not on the shirt-tails of the same old conservative claptrap that so seductive.
Interested on your views about their idea of putting untrained teachers in schools Trevor. Seems very scary to me that someone with 6 weeks training is put in front of a class of kids. Wouldn’t expect the same in medicine, shouldn’t be the same in teaching.
have you forgotten the trainee teachers that used to be in nearly every class i was in while at primary school? or do they not have teachers aides, or trainee’s getting the best kind of training they can. on the job, learning from the experienced, qualified teachers… what’s frightening about that?
I will address the major points made in the article as they were stated.
* We need to be far more pro-active and bold in attracting, retaining and rewarding high quality teachers.
Attempting to implement such a measure will cause the NZEI and the PPTA to shit bricks. They simply won’t allow performance based pay to happen. It would also drive good teachers away from lower decile schools as the chances of improving child performance are much lower in those schools.
* The role and importance of the Principal needs to be more effectively recognised, supported and rewarded.
I agree. It is said that schools often get the principal that they deserve. I have seen many good principals driven from their jobs by difficult communities. This relates to the point made about school governance.
* NCEA should be fixed to make it more acceptable to, and adopted by, all secondary schools throughout NZ.
Agree.
* The Board of Governance structure set up under Tomorrow’s Schools 20 years ago should be reviewed and enhanced.
Partially agree. The current way that school governance works is to the detriment of lower decile schools. When you take someone who is welfare dependent and has had no real experience of guiding policy then you are headed for disaster. The principal is a CEO. What other CEO has to answer to a group of uninformed, unskilled and possibly dysfunctional laymen once every board meeting? As for co-opting members who are skilled in IT, law or finance you surely must be joking. Finding someone without a criminal record to do the finances can be very tough in some communities.
* There should uniformly higher expectations and insistence on basic disciplines and respect for the rules.
Easier said than done. When the parents have substance dependency issues and have never worked then it can be very hard for the child to even attempt to live up to the expectations mentioned in the article. I disagree with the concept of using fear as a motivational tool for children. I’m sure that the children that come from the poorer areas of our nation would need quite a big scare to motivate them into anything considering what the have probably already witnessed at home.
In conclusion… Great sentiments but I think more discussion is needed before such a plan is put into action.
Do you take responsibility for the closure of St Stephan’s and the fact that you have not re-opened it yet?
I have no problem with looking back but not with rose tinted glasses.
I listened to a young politician this week make it very clear that at her high school if you weren’t intending on going on to University you were a failure.
I have some knowledge of Mr Graham’s schools. I lived with a high achiever from his school and a low achiever. The high achiever thrived and went on to university. The low achiever left school not knowing what he was good for and with a belief he was dumb. it was well known, or thought, by students that the higher classes got the better teachers.
If we try to make one size fits all schools, teachers and students, we are failing everyone, now and tomorrow.
popeye thanks for the other link. Interesting stuff.
Trevor, why was Mr Grahams tenure at Southern Cross campus so short?
This is a very relevant debate.
I agree with the person above who made the comment that our primary system is in dire straights. Much of the article relates also to primary education and it is crucial that both primary and secondary are dealt with appropriately because as I read through the lines, both those, dare I suggest, conservative and somewhat old fashioned ex principals, were subtly trying to advocate for structures and systems that undermine what all teachers in primary do in order to overcome parity issues.
The two major issues for education right now, under this govt, are:
1. The lack of engagement with the profession
2. The constant undermining of educators coupled with the tired crisis ‘picture painting’ this govt keeps selling the community about a failing system (which it is most certainly not – there are issues but it is NOT failing)
The answer to this is not performance pay – I have said before and happy to harp on again – anyone who can come up with an appropriate and fair perf pay system that would actually work for teachers would be a genius – but so far no one or no system has be developed that actually takes in all the variables.
While I am on the subject of PP – the ability to reward, attract and retain teachers exist – anyone who thinks it does not is wrong. Could it be tweaked and strengthened – absolutely.
I agree – strengthen principalships, (labour started some great work on this end – leadership is critical) and I agree that reviewing and strengthening BOTs is good. What would be even better would be to address the first thing re engagement – if the govt engaged with the sector then we could really have a humming system.
Ps – I just wanted to address this issue of putting top grads into a classroom with 5 mins training.
The idea of putting untrained top grads into a classroom just because they are ‘smart’ is pure stupidity – smart does not mean they are able to teach – and Trolley is looking to put these ‘greenies’ with practically no training or support into the hardest communities.
They wont be like a Teacher aide or a trainee BBF – a teacher aide is not responsible for the whole class – they are support – not the teacher, and a trainee is supervised, under a teacher and often the teacher is in class with them. The trainee also has an education lecturer critiquing and supporting them. The greenies will be it- the schools they are targeted for are already understaffed and these newbies will be teaching some of our most at risk and hard to teach kids – theres a reason why these schools are hard to staff.
Putting the least trained ‘teachers’ in with these kids is just stupid – and its exactly what I would expect our current Minister to do – it shows her ignorance of what a teacher is – and it shows she knows nothing. These kids need our best and most experienced teachers – not some green, well meaning do gooder genius who was bribed to be there for a year – who can then sod off and leave them in disarray again. (how to NOT build a relationship – the key ingredient in teaching kids!)
Please do tell me why a school would want to invest the time and money into training someone who is contracted to be there for 5 minutes, getting paid better than others (or is that bribed) and with no teaching knowledge or experience? For goodness sake they wont have even wanted to be a teacher – they would have been recruited and bribed with a contract period. Would you want them teaching your child? I think not.
The only bonus is that if they work out to be useless (as many of the overseas experience has been) the school will be rid of them. My goodness, just imagine the damage that could be done. Any ‘bribing and incentivising’ that should be done should be for our best teachers to be contracted to go there and these ‘genius grads’ should go into the high decile, easier to teach schools in their place. Somehow though, I doubt that will happen.
In the week they released a green paper about vulnerable children and the PM said a focus on our youngest is crucial, they reduced funding of play centres by 70% (so claimed by play centre people). At least Bennett’s intro on the paper was apolitical, unlike the PM who used it as a free campaign mailout.
Parents driving the direction education takes is wrong. They deserve input and so on but parenting a child is NOT the same as teaching one. In addition a parent by definition has a very focused and narrow predispoition, to their child or children. Teachers are required to view more broadly than one child.
victims and criminals get almost NO input into criminal systems yet parents under this government can drive education decisions???