National does not really care about education. Not in a way that most teachers I know approve of. They tend to make changes based on what decile 10 parents lobby them about and secretly they'd just like to privitise everything.
You'd think that them announcing they're going to pump a BILLION dollars into education (announced somewhat like Dr Evil) would be a good thing..... that's a lot of money.....
But....
They're funding this through sales of SOEs, so it's a one-off deal (and it means that in the same breath they can brag about getting the goverment back into a surplus within three years).
And it's tagged with the scary phrase 'to transform and modernise education in NZ'. Coming from National that sounds ominous. I'm pretty sure they don't value the Arts or learning for the sake of analysis and higher level thinking..... I'm pretty sure they'd be happy with we produced an army of tech-savvy robots ready for the work-force.
I'm not sure what they have in mind, but I'm pretty sure I won't like it. It will involve more faddish 'self-directed learning' (without lowering student/teacher ratios to allow more time for the necessary individual learning programmes). It will also probably involve something that goes away from NCEA and back towards Bursary (I say that on no authority, just guessing because every year they introduce new ways of 'quantifying' achievement, going against the original philosophy of NCEA). They will obviously be more use of computers - but will they realise that computers are the medium, not the message?
As an English teacher, I can't envision how teaching kids to read and write is going to be revolutionised in the next decade or so. I know it's trendy to buy into all the future-learning buzz, but I'm kinda old school. I like it when they read things, and talk about them, and try to articulate their views using words. Sure they can read it on an ereader, and 'talk' about it using a google-doc or skype, and write about it on a blog...... but that's not really revolutionising the core skills and values of my subject. A lot of teachers have already experimented with those kind of things and decided they're ok
I suspect the revolutionary changes will be loosely based around some research done by NZ academics recently. Remember that it seems that academics and Ministry of Education workers have to justify their own existence by proposing research topics these days (rather than providing teacheres with actual, useful support). We have had a glut of it in recent years. Somebody, in a desperate attempt to save their own job, will have come up with some 'new' philosophy with bangs and whistles on it and made us all fill out a survey about it (bribing us with another 'bagel breakfast').
And the government likes to look like it's 'doing' something, so good old Ann will embrace it without a second thought. When questioned, she will point to the 'evidence' that it worked overseas - look, here's a schooul in some American ghetto school that had great success with this (when they were sponsored by Apple and each kid got a free laptop as bribery). If principals and teachers' unions say it's not actually a great new thing, she will ignore them. What do they know? Teachers always tried to make her feel stupid at school, so she decided at some point to never ever listen to them ever again.
Anyhow.
I am dubious.
And worried.
It may also involve remote-learning via hologram teachers. Actually, that's my best case scenario. I could teach from home and not wear pants (like the newsreaders).
1 comment:
According to the NZEI bulk funding, performance pay, means testing and a voucher system (ACT’s policies) will be pushed through.
John Key will recall parliament under urgency within a week of the election to pass legislation that they have already drafted. NZEI say (and this is a worst case scenario according to them but in my experience they haven’t been too far wrong on their predictions) measuring students' performance will contribute to determining teacher pay, league tables published using the narrow National Standards measuring tool, Public Private Partnerships, plus maybe even the Australian trick of withholding a percentage of your pay if your students don’t ‘perform well’.
You have every right to be afraid, in my opinion. I am very afraid too. In my staffroom one teacher said that they will vote National because there is no competition.
Just be thankful you have yet to become acquainted with National Standards. Our senior staff team have been having huge discussions (read battles) with the Principal because the school now has to report to the Ministry based on data that we do not feel confident in giving. This is because the interpretation of the so-called National Standards (which form just one piece of the data we use) aren’t even consistent in our school! There is no way they are ‘National’. They are guidelines that are open to huge interpretation between schools. The principal is just trying to follow the Minstry's directive but unfortunately has lost touch with what it's like to be at the chalkface. Hopefully they listened today and will re-think.
I also find it interesting (read scary) that the new Secretary of Education is not and has never been a teacher. Her husband is one. She is also from a country that performs below us on OECD tables. Ann Tolley has also never been a teacher. Her parents were (and I would speculate that was many, many years ago in a different teaching world) and two of her siblings trained as teachers.
I could go on forever about issues in education…but teachers should be afraid…very afraid.
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