Just thought I’d post some best wishes to Tau Henare who is recuperating in hospital from a heart attack. He fessed up to reading Red Alert so I know he’ll see this.

The rumours that he really booked himself in for liposuction and stomach stapling because he was scared he’d lose the $20 Biggest Loser bet are untrue.

All the best for a speedy recovery Tau. With Hone now in charge of the Maori Affairs Select Committee anything could (and probably will) happen.

You know all those things you’ve told him he can’t do? Well he’s in charge now.

We’ll try not to leave too much of a mess for you to mop up when you come back.

Purely out of concern for the health of the Chairperson of the Maori Affairs Select Committee (Tau Henare), I bet him $20 I could lose 10kg faster than him.
Parekura overheard and thought he’d be in on the wager.
Mita Ririnui and Hone Harawira overheard Tau and I talking about the weigh-in, and thought that they could benefit from a bit of diet and exercise, and before you know it the whole event has grown legs with the Dom Post putting it on their front page, Te Karere, Te Kaea and Breakfast are all doing stories on it.
Close-Up has interviewed us all and will follow our progress each week for the eight weeks of the challenge.
Now I hear Simon Bridges, Paul Quinn and Shane Jones are all on board.
I can understand Simon and Paul needing to lose a few pounds, but Shane Jones? We all know he’s the epitome of physical perfection. An Adonis in his own mind. This has upped the ante – especially when he greeted me this morning with “Kia ora Twiggy.”
I thought I’d just cut down on food portions and go for a brisk walk a couple of times a week, now I’m hearing of nutritionalists and personal trainers being called into the mix. The others are obviously concerned.
We’re just waging $20 each, although one smart alec emailed a photo titled “The consequences of losing a bet at work” – some poor bugger obviously lost a bet at work, the consequence being he had to wear a Borat ‘man-kini’ for the day.This wouldn’t work for us. We have to wear a tie and jacket in the House.

So thirty thousand students a day are not at school. Sounds worrying. I guess 100% attendance is the aultimate goal.

But let’s look at that 30,000 figure. It represents 4% of the total number of students in compulsory education.

If a child is away for 4% of the school year that means they are absent an average of less than two days a term.

I don’t recall when Anne Tolley said she got the figures she’s quoting, but if it was last year we need to remember there was a swine flu scare and the Ministry of Health was asking parents to keep kids home if they had a sniffle.

When I was a Principal, teachers had to mark in the attendance register whether a student’s absence was justified or unjustified.

Justified meant the child was usually sick or at a bereavement. Unjustified meant they were truant.

I’d be interested in whether she’s done any analysis of justified vs unjustified absences. She needs to realise kids do get sick at times and some non-attendance is expected.

We had a dedicated volunteer chasing up non attendance everyday by ringing parents and writing letters if their attendance fell below our school attendance expectation. Our volunteer coped a heap of abuse from parents, normally the well- to- do- folk who thought we were being over aggressive in chasing up the non-attenders.

What was our attendance expectation? We expected students to be at school 96% of the time. We allowed a 4% absence rate – exactly the rate the Minister is talking about now.

One hundred percent attendance is desirable, but it appears Anne Tolley is trying to over-egg the situation, and my guess is she’s doing it to divert attention from her National Standards shambles.

One of the points from Heather Roy’s Step Change report is a need for cultural competence in schools. I agree.

It would be relatively simple to introduce a Cultural Audit into all schools. A cultural audit could be incorporated as part of ERO reviews. I’ve seen an example from a First Nation tribe in the U.S.

A cultural audit could look at – what and how teachers teach their Maori students. How do they involve Te Reo, customs and culture? How do they engage with students and their families? How does the teacher and school reflect the ethnic make up of the school in the curriculum, in the school grounds, in their practices and systems?

A cultural audit could be developed for any ethnic group represented in their student body.

If a school is found wanting in the way it relates to the various ethnic groups in its student and parent bodies, then professional development specific to meeting the needs of that ethnic group should be provided.

Again, it comes back to investing in teachers.

I like personalised learning programmes. This type of learning has been talked about for a few years now.

It makes sense that teachers, students and parents sit down and develop goals for the student’s learning and then together monitor the student’s progress towards achieving those goals.

It’s being done in many schools and is considered best practice. Those schools that aren’t doing it need to be identified and professional development provided to them so they can be brought up to standard.

It comes back to investing in teachers – not giving kids vouchers so they can swan off to another ‘provider’.

There are just under 760,000 students in the NZ compulsory education system. Under Heather Roy’s plan, twenty five per cent are going to be allowed to choose between different classes provided by different schools or providers.

Let’s look at what that actually means.

One hundred and ninety thousand students on any given day will be boarding cars, buses, trains, taxis and bicycles to travel from one school/ provider to another. For a student in Auckland, it may mean a twenty minute car ride to a school and a twenty minute car ride back. For a student in Kaitaia it may mean an hour in a car over to, say Kerikeri, and then an hour back.

Is this what New Zealand wants for its children? Almost two hundred thousand children spending hours each day sitting in a vehicle instead of a classroom?  Kids will get dumber rather than brighter.

Who is going to plan and fund the three hundred and eighty thousand trips to and from another ‘provider’ each day? What happens if a student has to attend TWO other schools in a day?

Has this report had any cost analysis?

Does this mean every school has to teach the same subjects at the same time? There’s no point in a child heading off to a ‘better’ maths lesson at another school/ provider in the morning, only to come back to their ‘regular’ school / provider to find that maths is being taught in the afternoon. Will school timetables have to be standardised?

The more I look at this report, the sillier it becomes. There are good points such as personalised learning and cultural competence, but there is some rubbish as well.

I’ve just got back from a select committee up in Marton. Apologies for not having yet read posts from this morning’s blog. Instead I have started going through Heather Roy’s ‘Step Change’ report in a bit of depth.

There are quite a few points to be made, but I’ll make them in separate blogs for risk of overkill in one post.

The report is a bit misleading around the identification of the top 5% of kids who the report says are gifted and talented.

The top 5% of kids are not necessarily gifted and talented – they may just be very bright.

I had a bit to do with setting up a school for gifted and talented kids in Kaitaia in 2000 when I worked for the Ministry of Education.

The children accepted into this school were assessed in areas that schools simply did not assess. Asttle certainly doesn’t assess for G&T, nor does NCEA.

It cost about $400 (at the time) to get them assessed by a specialist group in Auckland.

Gifted and talented kids did not usually fall into the top 5%, instead they normally fell in with bunch.

I remember some G&T kids not being able to write more than a couple of sentences in script that was barely decipherable, but their ability to concentrate on a single task like building the Eiffel Tower (for example) out of matchsticks was amazing.

They may have the ability to fixate on single complex tasks for hours on end, often at the expense of eating, sleeping and interacting with others, then once having completed the task losing complete interest in it.

Ask a bright kid what they would do if they were President of the World for a day and they may say they’d choose to go to Disneyland with twenty friends and eat ice cream. Ask the same question of a G&T kid and they’d probably say they’d like to settle the Palestinian/ Israeli conflict, design earthquake proof homes to rebuild Haiti,  and negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of American and allied troops from Iraq.

G&T kids may get in trouble in class because they understand concepts immediately but get bored because they have to wait while lessons are repeated over for others.

Often they don’t do work, get caught staring out the window or antagonising other kids who they know they can manipulate. Chances are teachers think they are trouble makers or lazy or both.

Not all G&T kids behave like this, but it is wrong to suggest that the top 5% of achievers are G&T. It shows a lack of understanding of the G&T issue by the authors of the report.

Many teachers don’t have the skills to recognise the gifted kids in their midst.

Sending them off to another school that is perceived to be a ‘good’ school may not make a difference to G&T kids if the teacher they are put in front of is unable to recognize a G&T child and how to address their needs.

The best way to cater for the needs of G&T kids is to provide professional development for teachers to be able to identify them, assist schools to pay for the assessment to determine exactly where their gift or talent lies and then provide teachers with the professional development to cater for those specific needs.

I’ve said it before that the way to raise achievement is to invest in teachers.

Heather Roy released her “Step Change” report yesterday. I got a copy last night and am working my way through it.

I’m into educational innovation and initiatives based on research, so won’t bash it for the sake of it. If there are bits I like, I’ll say and if there are bits I think won’t make a difference I’ll say.

I do get wary when I hear about parental choice which sounds great in theory, but, if this report is targeted at the choices of the bottom 20% and top 5%, I wonder about the impact on choices of the remaining 75%. That’s just something to keep in the back of the mind as debate about this heats up.

I do support ‘personalised learning’, but whether this report’s take on personalised learning, and my take are the same thing, remains to be seen.

I’m wary of language where students become ‘clients’ and the people who help them learn become ‘brokers’. I prefer to use the terms ‘kids’ and ‘teachers’, but at the end of the day the most important result is raised achievement, so I can get over the terminology.

I’m also wary when expectations are that this will be fiscally neutral.

Someone will need to explain whether kids in the country will have the same opportunities as those in the city. The logistics of accessing various ‘brokers’ just aren’t the same up north as they will be in say Whangarei even.

Page 12 of the report talks about several permutations within this initiative (sorry don’t have time to elaborate this morning). The on- the- ground logistics of those permutations seem pretty complicated, so I have to get my head around them all.

There will be more to come. I’ve really only got into the 15 page “Step Change” report and will need to read it over a few times to let it sink in, there’s a bigger report called “Free to Learn” that came with this that needs digesting as well.