New instalment from John Key impersonater “Plumedekiwi”, in which the PM gets his linguistic knickers in a twist over national standards….
If you haven’t seen the other vids by Plumedekiwi, check him out here
Which minister will be next to go? Rodney Hide or Anne Tolley? If competence was a condition of keeping their job, both would […]
Anne Tolley put out an odd media statement on Friday. She reckons Trevor Mallard, opposition spokesperson for Education, dominated two public meetings in Auckland on her Government’s unpopular national standards policy. Which begs the question, was she actually all there at either meeting?
Lorraine Kerr, head of the NZ School Trustees Association is one of National’s few supporters on National Standards. She says a survey of boards of trustees gives her a mandate for this position, with only four boards opposing the Standards. Now, she has been forced to admit that only 14 schools were included in the survey result.
We keep hearing, from the Key government, statements about education that make no logical or factual sense at all. Here are two examples. Help me choose — which is the stupider statement, and why?
Let’s face facts. Anne Tolley is a dangerous minister. She is undermining the education system at every turn and the damage will last lifetime. But is National doing the responsible thing and removing her from the portfolio? No. In fact, a guest poster reports they’re so desperate to help her out that they’ve got plants in her audiences to ask patsy questions.
Have a listen to Education Minister Anne Tolley on Morning Report today trying to explain the $25 million cut to the education budget.
It really was a shocker, even for her.
While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.
“Tolley finds ally in school mum” screams the headline of Audrey Young’s piece today.
When National runs a bus tour the Herald is desperate in its attempts to drum up support, when it’s Labour all they want to talk about is how much the bus is costing the taxpayer.
So Steven Joyce’s big bright idea for tertiary education (which he recently inherited from the hopeless Anne Tolley) is to punish institutions with low pass rates by cutting their funding. It’s basically the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.It reflects the typical short-term thinking of the capitalist class and its political party.
A contact at the Ministry of Transport tells me that 15 year old drivers have been involved in only a handful of fatal crashes, 1 to 1.5% of the total, in recent years and they’re not all the 15 year old’s fault. But no, National’s solution is to prevent all 15 year olds from driving. Dumb. It’s a carpet-bombing approach to policy
mickysavage reports on Anne Tolley’s meeting in West Auckland. He relates her complete inability to understand the issues. He concludes that national standards was a dog whistle policy that in action will actually only consist of spending $50 million a year on reports with pretty graphs and standardising grading for writing. Everything else is already standardised. There will be no improvements in education standards.< more>
All available evidence and expert opinion suggests that National Standards, as the government intends to introduce them in our primary schools, won’t work. They may even do damage. Will Key and Tolley ever take heed of the evidence, or is this just a blind ideological crusade? Bring on Diane Ravitch…
Beloved Leader of People’s Constitutional Monarchy of New Zealand, Honourable John Key, attended glorious opening of school building on Tuesday.
Several youths were overcome by the glory of Honourable Leader’s appearance as were several members of the press corps.
A guest contributor reports that if you want your chance to quiz Anne Tolley and you live in West Auckland your chance is on Thursday but it sounds like the Nats would rather you didn’t come. Another guest contributor pans Tolley’s meeting last night.
Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.
A Price Waterhouse Coopers report has highlighted the huge returns from each dollar spent on Adult and Community Education (ACE). Farrar and other bloggers have attacked the conclusions of the report and the credibility of PWC, but the attack is bizarre…
The Post Primary Teachers’ Association have just launched a YouTube video protesting National’s hugely unpopular cuts to night classes.
Click through to check it out.
The letter warning school boards not to speak out over national standards is an outrage, but John Key and his National Party have a long and dishonourable record of trying to shut down those who speak out to oppose them.
While measures to fix problems in investments are good, the best approach is increase financial literacy. However Anne Tolly has already shown she does not understand education. Her idiotic decisions to destroy adult community education has removed the best channel for promoting knowledge amongst current investors. This suggests that the government isn’t serious and we are seeing more PR than substantive measures.
John Armstrong: “Anne Tolley’s reluctance to explain [national standards] left the distinct impression she was less than 100 per cent sure.†It was a bit more than an impression, and it was a bit less than 100%. Tolley clearly had no clue what she was talking about.
Bill English claimed in the House today that the economy only grew by 0.9% a year in Labour’s last three years in power. Unfortunately for him the problem was his maths, not Labour’s economic policy. English can’t get simple percentages right, can we trust him with the nation’s finances?
When the Government came under fire over National Standards John Key was quick to raise the anti-union bogey. The old stereotypes are certainly still strong in National, but they have led Key into a trap. What might have worked for Muldoon or Maggie in the past won’t work now for a number of reasons.
National love to tell us what we want to hear. Among their many pre-election policy lies they waxed lyrical about the value of education, before effectively cutting funding in the budget. On Adult and Community Education (ACE), Bill English was particularly supportive…
You’ll recall that last week National spent $200,000 of taxpayer dollars on a proganda drop defending its national standards. This was a targeted […]
I don’t recall the date or anything, but I remember the exact moment I decided to get politically active. Rob Muldoon was called […]
All teachers are feminist pinkos. And they’re badly dressed. And too nice to the kids. It wasn’t like that in my day. And […]
The Herald reports: “[Key] also raised the 15 per cent Maori unemployment rate, saying improving education outcomes for Maori children would help address […]
School principal Pat Newman posted the following as a comment on Red Alert. It’s not a polished piece written with distribution in mind, […]
The Tax Working Group’s summary presentation at their December seminar came from a senior partner from one of the Big 4 accountancy firms, […]
I wasn’t expecting to do another in this series so soon, but then I’m much too polite to decline a clear invitation like […]
Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had […]
Welcome back, John Armstrong. In your piece today you wrote about John Key’s emergency efforts to cover for Anne Tolley’s disasterious handling of […]
TVNZ reports: “Associate Education Minister Pita Sharples has labelled the National Standards policy as damaging to Maori but later refused to comment after […]
Colin Espiner’s back with his first blog of the year. It’s so much fun having him back. In his first outing, he comes […]
