National’s education policy demonstrably Jurassic
The National party’s two recent eduction announcements, national testing and PPPs for building schools, have drawn criticism from all sorts, and many of them not particularly radical organisations. The NZ Principals Federation today criticised Nationals policy of national testing saying that:
“The NZPF is disappointed that the National Party is taking this approach to education policy. “This policy shows a lack of understanding of what is already happening in our schools,” says Ford. “We have some of the best systems in the world, and with adequate resourcing we could become number one. National needs to concentrate on improving resourcing for programmes such as special needs and reading recovery.“
We also made a comment effectively giving National a big ‘D’ for dorky policy that costs schools and fails students. Funnily enough, their spokesperson Anne Tolley retorted, saying:
“Our national standards policy has been well received by school principals and teachers…”
Well, she clearly failed to ask the NZPF about that, talk about keeping up! Or the teachers either. Newsflash to Anne - Principals and teachers oppose your plans. And they are saying so loud and clear!
And then we had Maurice Williamson saying in the same breath that PPP’s will only be used for major projects, but also for building schools - and then getting into strife with Bill English who retracted Williamson’s comment about paying $50 a week for toll roads.
Notwithstanding their embarrassing confusion over transport policy, National’s failure to have any education policy that is supported by educationalists, whether NZEI, parents or the Principals’ Federation is humiliating. Their early childhood education policy is widely condemned for treating ECE as glorified babysitting.
Rather than making a commitment to a high quality public education for every single child, National instead resort to type, promoting the interest of some businesses over the educational needs of our children and future sustainable growth. Jurassic.
August 26th, 2008 at 9:56 am
“We have some of the best systems in the world, and with adequate resourcing we could become number one. National needs to concentrate on improving resourcing for programmes such as special needs and reading recovery.“
If this were true, we wouldn’t see children of British immigrant parents being put into classes two years ahead of their age-group because they are so far ahead academically!
“We also made a comment effectively giving National a big ‘D’ for dorky policy that fails students”
Sorry old Frog, but some children have to fail, otherwise none succeed! (Yes, I know you used fail’ in another sense, but it needs to be said anyway!
AS an employer, how can I judge a school leaver’s suitability for employment if there is no standard against which they have been tested to give me some indication of their ability?
There are some very committed people in the Ministry of Education. As a Management Consultant working on establishing a ‘Value for Money’ measure there I met some of them. One particular programme of work I observed was establishing an ‘evidence based best practice database’. They were inundated with requests for speeches, copies of their research findings, etc., from overseas. The mandarins at the Ministry categorised the programme a low on the priority scale.
Another piece of work I observed was on a ’strategy for secondary schooling’. As a strategist, I was amazed to be told that the team had specific instructions NOT to include anything that wasn’t already taking place in their recommendations; no one was to be able to take umbrage at what was deemed ’strategic’! They (the Ministry) spend a LOT of money of the form of the report (beautifully printed, bound and coloured it was,) but the substance was, with no fault assigned to the staff who had written it under strict directions, substantially lacking!
When the Ministry starts to understand that abandoning things, that have been tried and tested over generations of young scholars, that work, in favour of someone with influence’s wild ideas is NOT A GOOD IDEA, we may have again a basic education system. One that produces university students who can write cohesive sentences - with or without spelling and grammar checkers!
Long live punctuation! Despite the education system.