Paid Parental Leave, Charter schools, compulsory early childhood education for beneficiaries: for NAct it’s all about money, and they use ‘shonky’ figures to justify their ‘shonkey’ policies and vetos. This is ostrich and patriarchal behaviour, ignoring the evidence of the wider benefits to communities and society of good quality child care, education and Paid Parental Leave.
Did you know that national standards must be completed in written form and there is no provision for extra time or oral answers from students (oops, sorry, ‘learners’ in Parata-speak) with disabilities? At high school and uni, if you have the need, you get these things. National’s stupid national standards have no such flexibility. Instead, they label you a failure.
Teachers are terrible at national standards. Almost half of them get them wrong, on one standard 97% of teachers were wrong. This is an outrage! Teachers are terrible!! Right? Am I right? Or is there an alternative hypothesis…
If it weren’t for the fact that the Prime Minister is a) covering up for a corrupt, lying minister because he heads a support party and is, therefore, above accountability on Planet Key and b) being exposed as an inept and asleep at the wheel in his oversight of the nation’s spies, then Hekia Parata would be clinging on to her political career by her fingernails right now. Still, plenty of time for that.
Parata is trying to close schools based on data that is (as even the Ministry now admits) massively incorrect. The attack on the social fabric of Christchurch was already inexcusable. This latest fiasco makes it even worse.
The Christchurch Press as part of Fairfax released National Standards data, but had a number of articles with a curiously sensible line on it: “…the standards’ main effects will be to impose on schools a crude, misleading and unhelpful form of accountability and to focus attention on learning targets that are inappropriate for many children.”
Reprinted with permission from Dave Kennedy (bsprout) at Local Bodies. “While National Standards has cost around $60 million to force onto schools many programmes designed to address the causes of underachievement have been under resourced or cut altogether.”
The Righties are wetting themselves because the national standards supposedly show higher results in larger classes. But the data is unmoderated – you can’t compare schools to get national data. And the apparent link is down to special schools and deciles. So, what have we learned? Nothing. Certainly nothing about the impact of class sizes, anyway. But maybe a little more about the Rights’ willful blindness.
So the first ‘ropey’ National Standards data is slipping out. It may not bear comparison, and not be moderated or indeed standardised, but Hekia Parata can now divulge the great wisdom that National’s StandardsTM provides.
No Right Turn on the waste and divisiveness of charter schools in the UK.
Welcome to Poverty Watch, a weekly update on National’s lack of response to the urgent and growing issue of poverty in NZ. This week: Shearer’s education speech stirs up the debate, the Greens start Champions for Children, and the Nats are in denial…
Brownlee and Parata announced school closures and explained the rationale. Now they’ve backed down and they’re trying to blame a Ministry mistake. This was the quickest U-turn in the history of politics. Update: And this morning it seems that closures and mergers are back on again – does anyone know what is going on?
Shearer’s speech on Sunday has sparked the discussions that this country needed to have about education, about poverty, and about the sad link between them. With every statement the Nats show how deeply in denial they are about these issues.
Shearer gets some traction with a policy that neatly targets parents’ concerns about education, hits a link in the poverty cycle, and is third way enough that National can’t really object. And what happens? National runs a little beat up on how Shearer’s masters thesis says you can’t ignore Maori beliefs in taniwha when allocating water rights. Wonder how long they were sitting on that.
While Labour and the Greens are laying out concrete policies to tackle poverty and its consequences that lead to life-long problems (child payment and home insulation from the Greens, food in schools and reading recovery from Labour), National MPs are acting as slum landlords, refusing to spend a few thousand dollars to bring their rentals up to standard.
Shearer has set out some bold new ideas for education. Key is clinging to failed national standards. Shearer’s views are well supported by the successful Finnish model, while Key’s are condemned by failures in the UK and USA. Does the evidence matter?
David Shearer’s education speech today was excellent in every way. Core Labour values, a sound understanding of the issues, significant concrete policy, and the promise of more to come. “Under Labour, the world’s best education will be available at your local school”.
A stinging report from the Ministry of Education condemns the proposed use of unqualified teachers in charter schools. The Nats won’t listen because the Nats don’t care about the quality of education, they only care about privatising it.
Decile ratings of schools are to be dropped from ERO reports because they are “confusing” and “unfair” and lead to “white flight”. Unlike, say, ropey national standards data. Uh huh.
How to explain National’s blatant inconsistency in not requiring national standards for charter schools? After further reflection, I think it makes sense after all…
As usual it is the kids who will suffer.
No one can fix the tail of educational underachievement without fixing poverty.
So, the Nats want unqualified teachers teaching the country’s most disadvantaged kids in charter schools. This is meant to close the gap with rich kids. Oddly, private schools opt for trained teachers. Also, oddly, it was only 2 months ago that the Nats were saying they wanted all teachers to have post-grad qualifications. Why the back-flip? It’s all about that well known route to economic and social success: driving down teachers’ wages.
The right hand of National’s education policy doesn’t know what the far-right hand is up to…
A post (reprinted with permission) from bsprout at the Local Bodies blog…
School league tables are harmful to education. Tables based on “ropey data” are even worse. In this open letter 100 academics speak out against league tables.
Threats to schools over the contents of their newsletters? The “brighter future” doesn’t like dissent.
I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring). This week: the bread & butter line, bankers, racism and the corporate speak of John Key.
It seems that Parata was fully briefed on teacher cuts after all, but she somehow “did not have enough time to mention it”. The government’s most recent humiliating bungle just got worse.
Competition is the wrong model for education, and National’s nonsense “league tables” are going to make it worse…
John Key wants to debate school league tables. Presumably he thinks that this will do the double whammy of getting middle class parents back on his side in the education debate, and distract from asset sales. But he’s not checked with his Minister, or the Ministry of Education, or presumably read any of the official advice about how damaging league tables would be.
Scott thoroughly fisks libertarian Damien Grant’s Herald on Sunday Column. And if teacher development is so important (as indeed it is) why have National cut it massively since they came to power, and are now dropping their budget plans to expand it. Money could be found from those tax cuts if they wanted…
Parents and teachers are calling for Key to apologise over the stress and anxiety that Key’s government has caused them over the last 2 weeks. Want to guess how Key handled it?
The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet, which signs the Budget off policy by policy. A competent Prime Minister would be intimately familiar with the major policy changes. So, it was very interesting to see Audrey Young’s ‘insider’ piece on the education debacle yesterday. Chock full of tidbits supplied by Murray McCully. All the blame sleeted home to Bill English and Hekia Parata. Crucially, John Key barely mentioned.
