BIM reports released yesterday gave a snapshot of where Government officials were at with National’s policy programme of action.
Interestingly in the Education portfolio, the Treasury report was more informative about planned intentions then the Education BIM itself. A suggestion to increase class sizes ignores previous evidence and experience which shows that benefits to students learning will be marginal at best.
The Ministry of Education BIM states that:
“Central to improving student achievement is the quality of the learning environment and the interaction between a student and teacher that takes place within that environment. Highly effective teaching makes the biggest difference to student achievement within the education system. First and foremost good teachers acknowledge the language, culture, and identity of a student and utilise that to support student learning. They establish respectful relationships with parents, families and whānau, and create learning opportunities for the student that match well to the student’s current capability and interests. They have high expectations for every student, provide high quality feedback to students and clear pathways to enable learning to progress. They use assessment both to track progress and chart future learning.
Our recent synthesis of research evidence has also underlined the importance of professional leadership. The evidence from the schooling sector is that leaders make their greatest contribution through planning, co-ordinating, and evaluating teaching and the curriculum and through promoting and participating in teacher learning and development. At present, professional leaders undertake a range of educational and administrative tasks.
Leaders also play an important role in creating a school culture that supports positive and respectful relationships between students and teachers and amongst students. New Zealand students report relatively high levels of bullying behaviour which can impede both successful learning and some of the social outcomes sought from schooling. Successful leaders create environments and learning that counter these issues.”
All this suggests that good quality teachers and focussed leadership will propel success in learning. So why does the Minister delete the part of the BIM which suggests increased class sizes.
NZPPTA were clear to point out that larger classes will increase stress on teachers – the Minister would do well to visit kiwi classrooms and hear first hand the types of pressures our teachers are dealing with on a daily basis.
There is a fundamental difference between the National Governments approach to education and a Labour approach. We believe that investment in a good quality public education system is our opportunity to give everyone the tools to contribute to the future of our great country. A high performing economy requires a highly skilled population – for everyone. In the New Zealand context recognition of culture, language and identity will form strong pillars for educational success and opportunity.
If the Government is determined to create more attention on cost saving measures in the public education system and drive expectation around achievement, they may be softening the entry of Charter Schools as a more plausible alternative…just saying.
Could the “cap on backroom staff” numbers be moving into the classroom?
The teacher pupil ratio is set by government, could we see them wanting to ‘raise the bar’ in this area.
If treasury want to save money by increasing class sizes (thus reducing numbers of teachers) why would they then spend this money on extra training??, why not take the savings and use it where there is percieved need, its makes no sense unless treasury beleive that there needs to be more money spent on training teachers.
How come these idiots cant do simple maths. If you increase the ratio, the one on one time kids need goes down, and yes increasing the class size by 1 does make a difference when you spread it over a year per student.
For Profit Schools is their aim.
_________overworked teacher
_________
Pupils in sardine room
__________________
__________________
__________class clown
Sounds more like David Lange’s “Tomorrows Schools”
Nanaia do you understand the difference between class size and teacher quality? You’ve shown you know how to cut and paste, but the Education BIM basically says what Hattie has been saying for years. Lower class sizes has the lowest positive impact on learning outcomes. Throwing more and more money at reducing class sizes, without considering improving teaching quality and feedback to students, has been really damaging to kids.
Impact – why do u think overcrowded classrooms are acceptable??????
The point is, in a perfect world all teachers would be excellent and could possibly be effective in a larger class – however, the reality is even with more stringent teacher selection and better training, most teachers are going to be fairly average, which with larger classes, will inevitably mean those children who are slower at learning will miss out on vital support.
Your average teacher is much more likely to be successful with a class of 15 – 20 than with a class of 25 – 30+. Hattie, in my opinion, has caused more ‘wrong turns’ in education and has done more damage to the leaning opportunities of NZ children than any other bureaucrat. He is the perfect example of the academic in the ivory tower. Labour really needs to have a strong policy on this, because there is no doubt there are too many indifferent teachers out there, but this latest government idea is not the answer
@IMpact I’m pretty sure it’s and ‘and’ ‘and’ scenario where teacher quality and better teacher:student ratios deliver greater gains. Are you advocating bigger class sizes? What about for senior students in speacilised subjects?
How fortunate for the nats that planning to increase class sizes wasn’t part of the election manifesto they’ve just campaigned on.
Can’t be a broken promise if it’s never discussed, right?
Just wait for a ‘review’ to suggest unpopular policy after the poll and claim it’s not their fault when they ‘have to’ enact it.
Worked for raising gst, now set in motion to short change our children for a few extra quid added to the bottom line.
When I first read this recommendation from Treasury, I had to check the date on my newspaper to make sure it wasn’t a joke, an April fool’s joke!
Talk about Treasury back to the future!!
What a short sighted way to save money – in bad 1980’s style – I wonder if they still wear shoulder pads?
Spend children – that’ll save a few piddling million.;)
It is a pity they are once again focusing on short term cost savings instead of analysing the long term benefits of investment in education. The complex nature of the class size issue is obviously beyond the bean counters there.
I also spotted the predictable statement from National’s favourite academic – John Hattie. What irony in Hattie’s statement that teacher professional development is where money should be spent and class numbers do not make a large difference to achievement – Doesn’t he realise that the National Government heavily reduced the teacher advisory service who provided quality teacher development for years.
Nanaia as a former minister I would have thought you would understand priorities. Public spending is a tradeoff, as you know. If you’re going to invest money into something then you want to make sure that you’re getting the best value from your investment. Reducing class sizes is very expensive, and in isolation from improving reporting on progress (which Labour doesn’t support and is less expensive) and not improving teacher quality is a bad use of public money.
Logic states that if you spend less time on a job the quality will be lower. You can invest in extra training to improe skills of teachers, but if that will increase there outcomes shouldnt we be doing that anyway.
I dont want my kids in huge classes, i can remember what this was like 30years ago, great fun for the naughty kids who could control the classrooms, but the rest of us in the middle received no one on one teacher time or real help.
@ Impact, when you build a house you start with the foundation and you dont skimp on it, if you dont get it correct you have problems.
If we skimp on education the whole country suffers in the long term.
Impact, I ask you again, do you think overcrowded classes are acceptable. And would you rather the rich have lower taxes to pay than for our children to be in a decent learning environment.
Waterboy, I’m not saying don’t build the house properly. I’m saying don’t spend money on HD TVs when the plumbing’s broken.
Millsy, I’ll debate with you when you stop misrepresenting my position.
Why is my last comment in moderation?
“Highly effective teaching makes the biggest difference to student achievement within the education system.”
The MOE’s website elaborates on that “The vast majority of research shows that effective teaching has the biggest single impact on student achievement. This is the case in smaller and bigger classes”. Here’s the link http://tinyurl.com/7mdox82
It says currently the ratio is 1:14.5. That’s pretty low.
By the way, the MOE link refers to a Best Evidence Synthesis on the Education Counts website. Its executive summary is 287 pages long! I think effective report writing skills might go some way to improving outcomes.
Bea„ what about overcrowded classrooms?
@Bea
This staffing number must surely include staff who are not in front of a class of students.
I do not know of any teacher with a year 7 or 8 class who has class numbers as low as 15.
Most that I know of have close to or over 30 students in their class. There are 33 students in my class.
@Bea
Remember that the ratio of 1:14.5 is a ratio and based on an average. The reality is that most classes of students in years 7-10 have many more students than that.
It is only in senior high school classes where numbers can be quite small.
In years 7-10 many classes have 30 or more students.
Impact you have implied wanting classes of over 35. Presumably to ensure the top tax rate is kept down. So I am not misrepresenting you at all
I had breakfast with a teacher this morning of year 1 students. She commented as follows “yes there’s no more learning done by the students when you have only four of them than when you have 34″ – she was being sarcastic – teacher for 25 years. She commented that if the objective is simply to regurgitate information, as was our parents experience, then perhaps it makes no difference although the number who have an ability to retain and regurgitate is not even close to 70%
What is the answer? Some seem to think that more teachers are sub standard quality than quality. So, let’s sack all the sub standard teachers tomorrow. Then, we resize classes and make the remaining teachers move around the country to schools they are told to go to to ensure this model works. Then we have class sizes of 90, but not big enough classrooms. BUT we still have NS and everything else, so now one teacher is doing paperwork for 90 children, long hours, in a city or town they didnt bargain on.
At this point how much are we paying those teachers? $150k per year each?
Just wondering
Maybe we could play trainee teachers to train, as we do police. Then we might attract higher quality candidates. Do we need to bear in mind that high quality teacher doesnt necessarily mean got A’s in all subjects at school?
@tracey I agree that a quality teacher might not necessarily mean an ‘A’ student. Experience in hard to staff schools, strong mentoring opportunities and placement in schools with strong leadership would be great….just thinking how in reality that might work out…The ability to attract high quality teaching students into the profession also.
Mel “most classes of students in years 7-10 have many more students than that.” Can you direct me to actual figures to look at for that? Looking at my own youngest’s class photos Yr 7 to Yr 10, the highest number was 25 and the lowest was 18.
According to that MOE link above, class numbers are a function of BOT decisions – if on the one hand you have the flexibility to increase a particular class size, on the other hand you can offer more subjects which by their nature would have smaller class sizes.
Those who have worked with school budgets would also be aware of the fact that there’s a time lag with MOE funding for teachers because its based on historical roles – which can make it tricky when roles are increasing or decreasing – and makes flexibility important.
Mike, yes I think you’re right – it would include classroom release time so probably looks lower than reality.