Its embarrassing that China, India, Malaysia, Siganpore, Hong Kong and Australia all fare better than us. We used to lead the world when it came to representation of women. Kate Sheppard must be turning in her grave.

I thought Institute of Directors Ralph Chivers hit the nail on the head when he said:”There is no shortage of women who aspire to work at that level, or potentially suitable candidates. Women have told us they have difficulty getting noticed for opportunities to be promoted.” How refreshingly honest! He wasn’t prepared to use the tired, worn-out excuse that the problem is women dont want to be directors, or that they weren’t good enough and needed “mentoring.” If I had a dollar for everytime I’ve heard that one, I would be a wealthy woman.

Despite the National Government having a glitzy launch of a “Women on Boards” initiative aimed at the private sector in 2009, the reality is they had just scrapped the target Labour had set of getting 50% women on public sector boards. And so the survey shows that there has been no increase in the proportion of women on our boards and in the public sector (where the Government itself appoints board members) there has been no improvement on the 41% representation Labour had achieved by the time we left office. And its important, because research shows that companies do better with women involved in their decision-making. Women directors are better at risk management, less prone to group thinking, better at problem-solving and better able to link to diverse customers. That’s what research tells us.

Across the ditch, they have made some quick progress on this issue by simply requiring companies to report the facts of the organisation’s gender balance. The result has been that women now make up 25% of new appointments to ASX company boards, compared to just 5% in 2009 before the measure was brought in. In less than a year, the number of women appointed to Australia’s corporate boards has gone from 8% to 14% by just taking this simple measure.It seems that when companies are required to look at their own dismal records, that’s when women start to get noticed. We could do the same – actually we were doing something remarkably similar to this with pay equity audits in the public sector before National scrapped it when they came into Government.

Funny that!

Seems they dont want students to have a strong voice when it comes to tertiary education. I wonder what they have in store for them?

Our policy ensures that parents get plain language information they require on their child’s achievement, progress and next learning steps without schools having the flawed national standards imposed on them. Labour will require schools to use recognised assessment tools and teacher judgement to assess children against the celebrated NZ Curriculum. Simple really – no major drama.

Meanwhile, the Government has resorted to having the Ministry write national standard targets for the non-compliant schools. So much for self-managing schools! As we speak, those school boards are now being threatened with the sack if they return those charters to the Ministry with the words “under duress” on them. This Government seems determined to go to war with the education sector, rather than work with them to get good outcomes. As Labour’s policy shows, its all so unnecessary.

It is telling that Mrs Tolley hasnt been able to work out how to attack our policy. She started off with ” the policy is written by the unions,” but then changed tack later on to say it was a “watered down version of national standards.” Of course, neither is true – but the contradiction in her statements demonstrates how Crosby Textor are struggling to find the attack line on our policy. Which all adds up to it being just more great policy from Labour.

I prefer for our educators and school boards to be focused on providing excellent education for our children, than going to war with the Ministry of Education. Labour’s policy lets them get on with the job, while making sure parents are kept in the loop too. After all, we know that our kids’ education thrives when parents and teachers work in partnership.

Gifted Awareness Week (June 13-19) gives us a chance to reflect on the huge diversity of students in our education system.

Gifted students are not always the ones doing fabulously well. They may be the student with behavioural problems, the student who has trouble relating to their peers or the student who is disrupting the class.

Last week I visited the Correspondence School and was told that many gifted students use that service because the school environment doesn’t meet their needs.

It caused me to think about National’s national standards and how much harm the “one size fits all” approach does, not only to those students who are labelled failures but also those who need different challenges than most of their peers.

If a school’s worth is to be judged on how many students they get “over the bar” then not only will the under-achievers lose out, but so will those capable of very high-achievement.

Under that scenario it would be “human nature” for schools to direct their biggest effort into those who are just failing to reach the standard to get them “over the bar” and this could come at the expense of the others.

I would appreciate some feedback from those who have some experience with gifted children – either as family or in a professional capacity. What do you think?

Have a look and see what you think: Sue Moroney to the Prime Minister

Its a sound and wise decision made in the interests of New Zealand. It honours those who lost their lives in the earthquake and the suffering of those left behind.

In contrast, The Government has used the situation to sneak out at least one controversial announcement – allowing much larger numbers of pre-schoolers to attend individual early childhood education centres.

The decision allows for up to 75 under two-year-olds in a centre. Sounds like the battery hen scenario for children.

Apparently, the decision was supposed to go to the Ministry’s early childhood advisory committee for consultation but that meeting was called off because off the earthquake.

So the Ministry just went ahead anyway.

Ironically, it flies in the face of findings by the Children’s Commissioner who’s launch of the report on care of infants and babies has been delayed because of the earthquake.

This is very bad form from the Government.

Their insistence that there have not been funding cuts to the sector bears no resemblance to the reality and last night their poor Botany Candidate had been advised to trot the line out in front of an audience who largely worked in ECE or had children going to ECE.

I say largely, because Jason Ede from the PMs office and right wing muck-raker Cameron Slater didnt quite fit the mould and neither did the dozen young nats who turned up with a great flourish of bravado.

That bravado evaporated quickly when they had to listen to excellent speeches from teachers, parents and academics on the effect of the funding cuts their party told them didnt exist.

I hope they found it educational.

Even the Act candidate pledged her total opposition to the ECE funding cuts, despite her party voting for them. 

Unfortunately, the Nat candidate blundered on to deny the cuts were happening, despite all the evidence laid out in front of him.

To be fair, he’s only following the lead of Prime Minister John Key who is also denying the cuts are happening and that fees are rising as a result. The PM is not telling the truth – just like the ministerial cars.

But what’s Rahui Katene’s excuse?  She had a speech delivered in her absence to new ECE students this week saying she valued qualified staff in the sector, when her party also voted for the budget cuts to ECE.

Instead of apologising for not being there in person, she should have been apologising for voting to cut funding for qualified staff.

And for the record, Labour’s Botany Candidate Michael Wood gave an outstanding performance at last night’s debate on ECE. Expected nothing less.