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Posts Tagged ‘tolley’

ACE vs ACC – they win, we all lose

Posted by Maryan Street on February 23rd, 2010

Tomorrow (Wednesday) the Education and Science Select Committee was meant to be hearing my submission on the 51,000+ signature petitions opposing the cuts to Adult and Community Education (ACE). But the government decided to go into urgency to pass wretched Nick Smith’s wretched ACC legislation – you know the one, where we pay more and get less in the way of supportive entitlements to get us working and playing again after an injury. More on that in another post.

You might have seen this already elsewhere, but it deserves to go up here as well, as a great characterisation of what Anne Tolley has done to ACE in our local communities. It’s PPTA’s clever cartoon:

It’s an amusing antidote to being depressed by the systematic destruction of our ACC system causing heated debate in the House. But whatever it was going to be tomorrow – ACE or ACC – we are all losing. It’s either our easy to access, community-based, second chance education, or our world-class compensation scheme. And people said they wanted a change. :-(

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Filed under: ACC, community, education
7 Comments

National Standards: Stop with the Myths

Posted by Grant Robertson on February 2nd, 2010

I have spent a lot of time in schools and with parents and teachers since becoming an MP (and indeed beforehand).  There is one thing I can say with certainty. I am yet to meet a parent or teacher who did not want the children they care for or teach to progress, succeed and fulfil their potential.

In that light what is disappointing to me in the debate about National Standards is that the National Party and its cheerleaders are trying to create the impression that schools and teachers have no idea how children are progressing and are somehow deliberately hiding this from parents.

Take this from Richard Long, former National Party Chief of Staff in the Dominion Post this morning.

I can’t help but feel sorry for Education Minister Anne Tolley as she valiantly battles away on this one. It would, after all, be easier to abandon the field to the teachers’ union, as previous governments have done, continuing to leave pupils and their parents in the dark over performance and standards.

What utter nonsense. The notion of “the field being abandoned to the teachers union” is reds under the beds stuff. In the last government Labour implemented ASttLE a world leading assessment system, along with massive investment in literacy and numeracy programmes and professional development. We wanted and still want parents and teachers to have quality information about how their children are progressing.

Further, pupils and parents are most certainly not “in the dark over performance and standards”. I am not sure if Richard Long has been near a school lately, but I have, and most every school has robust assessment and reporting practices. The schools I deal with are also all extremely open to parents talking with them regularly about their children’s progress, and working out how they can help with it.

Of course there are some schools that could do better- and much more importantly there are children who are not achieving their potential. The National Party is fond of quoting the statistic that 1 in 5 children leave school without the literacy and numeracy skills they need. That is a bad thing. But what teachers tells us is that we know who those children are from an early stage. Shouldn’t we be focusing on those children and improving their progress, than implementing an unproven blunt instrument such as national standards?

At the very least something that the National Party see as the most important issue in education deserves a trial period. National pushed this through under urgency to meet their 100 days of action programme. This meant it did not get the scruitiny it deserved then, and that has still not occured.

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Filed under: education
44 Comments

The effects of cuts to talented and gifted programmes are still being felt

Posted by Carmel Sepuloni on November 4th, 2009

Recently I was approached by two dedicated and hardworking secondary school teachers.  They were on a quest to get funding restored for their gifted and talented programme.  They’d run the pilot (with phenomenal success); done the research and were on the brink of implementing a revised programme for Pasifika students (a programme which other schools were interested in also adopting).  The programme would have tackled ‘peer culture’ in a way that it hasn’t been approached before and this culturally affirmative model had the potential to raise achievement and drastically improve educational outcomes for Maori and Pasifika in mainstream secondary schools.  The National Ministers they spoke to – would not help – NO FUNDING FOR FOR WORTHWHILE PROGRAMMES IN EDUCATION BUT $35 MILLION DOLLARS FOR PRIVATE SCHOOLS – NOT A PROBLEM!

The difficult thing is that this school, just like many other schools/ organisations/ people – don’t want to come out publically and criticise the Government.  They fear that they will put themselves in a position where they may actually stand to lose much more.  TOLLEY and all of the National Ministers, have a lot to answer for.

I’ve copy and pasted one of the emails I received from one of the teachers – but I’ve kept her identity and school anonymous:

“Funding for gifted education has been cut.   After huge investments being made in the development of gifted education we are now left with zero funding.  This appears to be totally illogical.  Why, when we are on the cusp of real change do we see a cut in funding?.   The Talent Development Initiative contestable funding pool supported the implementation of government policy for gifted education.  This initiative allowed educational providers to pilot, implement and develop programmes for gifted students.  ERO evaluated programmes within schools and released a summary of findings. The Ministry of Education funded formal research projects to evaluate the outcomes of selected  programmes from the Talent Development Initiatives.  At the conclusion of these contracts/funding some models of good practice were either established or near completion.  Improved outcomes for gifted students on these programmes could be translated to improved outcomes for gifted students nationally.  Good practice in gifted education could be utilised in educational practice as a whole.   The recent work being undertaken on affirmative models and culturally affirmative models in the education of gifted students needs to be continued as preliminary outcomes suggest that these have the potential to provide alternatives models for raising the achievement rates of our Maori and Pasifika students.”

   

 

 

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Filed under: education
9 Comments

Tolley on numeracy doesn’t add up

Posted by Trevor Mallard on August 16th, 2009

Anne Tolley is either really slow or she just rubber stamps her media advisors silly suggestions. In her push for exams for primary school kids she has provided a link that shows how well researched programmes are put together – an absolute contrast to her own “Anne knows best” approach.

National Standards in mathematics will build on the progress and achievement highlighted in the 2008 Numeracy Research and Evaluation reports, Education Minister Anne Tolley said when launching the reports today.

How?

The evaluation shows that in 2008, students improved their performance and progress in mathematics when their teachers had been involved in the Numeracy Development Projects and continued to focus on numeracy.

As previous reports have. That is why the Labour government put tons of money in.

“National Standards, to be implemented in all English-medium primary and intermediate schools next year, will mean even bigger improvements,” said Mrs Tolley.

How?  And why are Maori excluded anyway?

“National Standards aim to lift achievement for all students through the sound use of assessment data, early intervention for students who are having difficulty and plain language reporting to families and whanau.

As was happening under the numeracy project until teacher professional development funding was slashed by 25% in the budget.

“I congratulate all the schools and students involved in the Numeracy Development Projects, and look forward to seeing even better results.”

So do I and it could have happened if the focus of just about every school numeracy expert in the country hadn’t been focussed onto national exams for primary school kids.

National Standards in reading, writing and mathematics will be introduced in 2010.

Didn’t anyone tell Tolley that she had delayed full implementation until 2012 by media statement last week?

The reports are available online here. I do suggest that people have a look. It shows what a well developed, properly researched project looks like. Is there anything like this on Tolley’s National Standards – no. But that hasn’t stopped her cutting the funding to programmes that are proven to work.

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Filed under: education
4 Comments

Another 1990s failure back on the agenda

Posted by Chris Hipkins on July 27th, 2009

Twelve years ago as a first year university student I attended my first ever student protest march. The 25th of September 1997 has stuck in my mind ever since because it was the first and only time I have been arrested. Thankfully neither the District Court nor the High Court agreed with the Police decision to arrest 75 of us for trespass while we were protesting in parliament grounds.

It was an important test case because it confirmed the principle that all citizens have the right to protest peacefully at parliament. That case finally came to a conclusion a few weeks ago when the Police agreed to pay compensation and parliament’s speaker (which was actually Doug Kidd at the time) agreed to issue apologies.

Twelve years later, it’s interesting to see the issues that led to that protest march once again emerging from the new National government. Back in 1997 the then Bolger-led National government released a Green Paper on tertiary education. They proposed to introduce a corporatized, pro-market system for university and polytechnic funding. Democratically elected governing councils made up of stakeholders were to be replaced by boards of directors appointed by the government.

The Tertiary Review Green Paper followed hot on the heels of Max Bradford’s pro-market electricity reforms and came at a time when the public had tired of the privatisation agenda. It was yet another sign that the National government’s continued trumpeting of the New Right free market agenda was out of step with ordinary New Zealanders. Two years later Helen Clark’s Labour team comfortably won the 1999 general election.

Interesting to see, therefore, that the new Minister of Education Anne Tolley is putting some of those issues back on the table. The Sunday Star Times reports the government plans a radical overhaul of polytechnic governance, dumping about 250 of the 400 existing councillors. Maori and Pasifika representatives would be axed, along with representatives of employers, unions, and former students.

Tolley’s decision to resuscitate elements of the controversial and failed Tertiary Review Green Paper reforms is another signal that pro-market corporatisation and privatisation is firmly back on the government’s agenda. Education will be viewed as a commodity to be bought and sold, while students will be viewed as consumers, not learners.

Twelve years ago my opposition to these very reforms compelled me to join a protest march. What happened next was one of the key events that led me towards a life in politics. When Tolley brings her legislation before parliament, this time I won’t just be protesting outside, I’ll be fighting her every step of the way inside the House too.

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Filed under: democracy, education, national, parliament, public services
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Lifelong learning?

Posted by Grant Robertson on June 24th, 2009

It would be fair to say that when the current Speaker was the Minister of Education in the 1990s, we had a somewhat fractous relationship. He refused to come to Dunedin where  at the time I was the Student Association President. So we drove to Christchurch to find him. This carried on for a year or so, and culminated with Lockwood climbing out a window at Canterbury University. Ah, those were the days.

But through it all, one thing I could say for Lockwood was that he took seriously his commitment to ‘life-long learning’. I disagreed with many of the policy ideas, but the concept that we should never stop learning, up-skilling, training and developing is one where I was in total agreement. It is only with this kind of view of education that society will continue to develop and productivity improve.

Sadly, the recent actions of the National Government, and Minister Tolley make it clear that there is very little commitment to the concept of lifelong learning at the moment. The roll call is sad:

  • a lack of real initatives on training as part of the Jobs Summit or the nine day fortnight;
  • no plan to implement the Skills Strategy;
  • cutting back the Training Incentive Allowance;
  • cuts to Adult and Community Education in schools that puts at risk the further education of thousands of people;
  • and now today we see Anne Tolley is reviewing the ability of seniors to access student loans.

This is short-sighted nonsense from National. Lockwood Smith understood that lifelong learning was part of a cohesive, productive society. Just like not properly funding super, we might not see all the effects of this immediately, but over time we will all pay for not making these investments.

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Filed under: education
8 Comments