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Posts Tagged ‘Class Sizes’

10 questions for Hekia Parata

Posted by on August 17th, 2012

There are still a lot of unanswered questions about Hekia Parata’s practice of dobbing in teachers who write to her to complain about government policy to their board of trustees. Fortuitously have an ability to ask them of her! Today I’ve lodged the following Written Parliamentary Questions. I’ll post the answers when I get them here on Red Alert.

  1. How many letters did she receive expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes?
  2. How many letters did she receive from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes?
  3. How many of her responses to letters she has received from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes were sent to the Board of Trustees that employs the teacher concerned?
  4. Is it her policy to send replies to any correspondence she receives from teachers to the Board of Trustees that employs the teacher, if so, why?
  5. How many letters did she receive from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes where the teacher did not identify the school that they work at, and how many of those teachers received a direct response?
  6. How many letters did she receive from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes where the teacher did not identify the school that they work at, and how many of her responses to those letters were sent to that teacher’s employer?
  7. If she sent a reply to a letter from a teacher who did not identify the school they work at to the Board of Trustees that employs the teacher, how did she identify which school board to send the letter to?
  8. Who prepared her replies to letters she received from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes?
  9. Did any of the people involved in preparing her replies to letters she received from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes access any government database or record system to identify the school the teacher worked at?
  10. Why did she send replies to letters she has received from teachers expressing concern about her government’s plan to increase class sizes to the Board of Trustees that employs the teacher concerned?
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Filed under: education, privacy, Teachers
12 Comments

Bullying tactics an abuse of power

Posted by on August 16th, 2012

Today in Parliament I asked some questions about Hekia Parata’s conduct in responding to letters from teachers expressing their concerns about bigger class sizes. In response to those letters Hekia Parata has written to the Boards of Trustees and Principals employing those teachers, rather than responding directly to their correspondence.

That in itself is a real breach of the teachers privacy, but it gets worse when we learn that some of the teachers didn’t identify which school they teach at in their letters. So how did Hekia Parta know which Board of Trustees to send the responses to? If Hekia Parata accessed teachers personal records to identify which schools they worked at, that’s a very serious abuse of her position.

Every citizen has the right to send a letter to a government minister without fear that their concerns will be taken to their employer. But bullying looks to be a deliberate tactic for Hekia Parata. Earlier this year she threatened schools that were using newsletters to inform parents about the effect National’s plan to increase class sizes. Parents have a right to know that information. Hekia Parata’s attempt to bully schools into silence is disgraceful.

How can members of the public have confidence that their views are respected by this government, when teachers have had their privacy breached by the Minister of Education, when beneficiaries have had their personal information splashed all over the media by the Minister for Social Development, and when claimants to ACC can have no confidence that their sensitive information won’t be emailed all over the country?

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Filed under: education, Teachers
24 Comments

Who Reads Hekia’s Advice?

Posted by on June 7th, 2012

OK, I feel like I’m being slightly unfair on Hekia given what a rough day she has had and because the Minister who has been giving me nothing but b.s. in answers to written questions is Jonathon Coleman but this one just takes the cake:

Portfolio: Education
Minister: Hon Hekia Parata
Date Lodged:29/05/2012

Question: What written reports or correspondence, if any, has she received from the Ministry of Education regarding the moratorium on initial teacher education programmes since 26 November 2011?

Answer Text: This is an operational matter for the attention of the Chief Executive.

No, no, no it’s not. It is not the Chief Executive’s responsibility to read reports prepared for and sent to the Minister. That’s her job and it is perfectly reasonable for me to ask what advice she is getting.

Perhaps she got the Chief Executive to read the advice she was given on bigger class sizes rather than reading it herself. Could have saved a whole lot of bother…

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Filed under: education
17 Comments

Counting the lost teachers

Posted by on June 5th, 2012

Last week Hekia Parata tied herself up in knots trying to explain why neither she, nor any Minister in Cabinet, studied the actual list of schools that were going to lose teachers as a result of her change to teacher:pupil ratios. Despite a week of questioning in the House from my colleague Nanaia Mahuta and I, by the end of the week we were still none the wiser as to how many schools stood to lose more than 2 teachers, how many stood to gain teachers and so forth.

Today I pulled up a spreadsheet of every school in the country from the education counts website. A quick calculation of teacher numbers at each school based on the current teacher:pupil ratio and the new teacher:pupil ratio allowed me to get a very rough idea of the scale of the gains and loses schools might experience. I say rough because there are a few very important caveats:

  • Enrolments will be different next year, so any analysis applying the old and new formulas to existing student numbers will naturally be indicative only
  • There are currently some extra staffing entitlements for schools with less than 175 students in order to guarantee a maximum average class size of no more than 25 students. It’s unclear whether this ‘top-up’ teaching will continue. Expect more questions on this…
  • Technology teaching for Years 7&8 is complicated because it presently goes directly to the technology provider (usually an intermediate school) whereas under the new formula it goes to the student’s actual school. This means a crude calculation like the one I’ve done can understate the loses for intermediate schools and overstate the loses for the schools who don’t directly deliver technology programmes.

With all of those caveats in place, there are still some pretty obvious conclusions that leap out:

  • When ranking schools according to the number of teachers they stand to lose, almost all of the top 100 are intermediate schools
  • Around 300 schools stand to lose more than one teacher as a result of the new ratios
  • Fewer than 20 schools will gain more than 1 teacher, and those that do gain are more likely to be in wealthier areas (deciles 8-10)

It defies belief that the Minister of Education took this proposal to Cabinet, it was signed-off and made it all the way through the Budget process without the school-by-school impact being adequately considered. It didn’t take me long to do a very rough analysis, and I’m sure that with all their information and expertise the Minister’s officials could’ve produced her a far more accurate picture in no time.

This doesn’t just reflect poorly on Hekia Parata either. Where were all of the other Ministers when this went through Cabinet? Where was John Key? This was a big decision and it clearly didn’t get the level of scrutiny it should have.

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Filed under: education
14 Comments

The real John Key

Posted by on May 31st, 2012

listener

Have a read of the piece Joanne Black wrote in The Listener in 2005 where she laid out Key’s back story and portrayed him as an egalitarian hero.

The reality has turned out somewhat differently. Perhaps the fact that he chose to send his kids to private schools should have rung warning bells then for our public education system.

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Filed under: #ownourfuture, education
71 Comments

Clear as mud

Posted by on May 31st, 2012

Hekia Parata was asked a number of questions in the House today about her decision to increase class sizes, particularly for intermediate schools. I’ll blog a bit more about the insights we got from these questions over the weekend, but for now you can take a look and judge for yourself.

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Filed under: education, students, Teachers
8 Comments

Ministers just didn’t do the work

Posted by on May 30th, 2012

It took nearly 10 minutes of back and forth in the House today for the Education Minister, Hekia Parata, to admit that she hadn’t even asked for a list of the schools that would lose or gain more than one teacher as a result of her changes to teacher:pupil ratios before she took her proposal to Cabinet.

Quite frankly, this is just not good enough. Hekia Parata took a policy to Cabinet, and it was approved and announced in the Budget, without any Minister taking the time to look at what the actual impact would be on individual schools. If that’s the level of scrutiny the National government are applying to their cost-cutting proposals, it’s no wonder it’s all turning into such a mess.

It simply defies belief that Hekia Parata would come up with a policy that could spell and end to intermediate school education as we know it without doing the most basic analysis. And this from someone who has spent a lifetime as a senior public servant. She should know better. Too much more of this and she’ll end up making Anne Tolley look positively competent by comparison.

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Filed under: education, students, Teachers
13 Comments

The ideal class size

Posted by on May 21st, 2012

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Filed under: education, humour, students, Teachers
18 Comments