So it begins …
Well the conference has begun. A big crowd as usual …. and met a few people that I only ever see at conferences already.
Well over 1000 people at the conference and a real buzz in the venue.
The minister is opening the gig and it will be interesting to see what she has to say …

Anne Tolley:
* She has thanked people for being her and their commitment to technology education.  (must have read my blog post?) Setting the background of changes in technology and society.  Highlighting the importance of communication.
* “Technology as a to to lift student achievement” … effective professional development is vital.
* ultra-fast internet – “schools are one of our top priorities”.  potential of the digital technologies to enhance learning and teaching.  97% connection by schools to ultra-fast broadband within 6 years as a goal.  Broadband as a teacher learning tool too.
* giving examples of how technology has been used to enhance learning in their schools.  Blogs, wikis, collaborative projects.  Highlighted engagement.  eLearning as key component of effective programmes in schools.
* now “up to one in 5 children ….”  change in the language here.
* “we need to respond quickly where a child is not being challenged enough”
* “formative assessment tools such as e-asttle will also be enhanced”
* National Education Network – education dedicated high speed network. Shame Dunedin seems to be left out of trial?  I don’t know of any schools locally who are on trials of this sort of things.
* “You are the people who have the knowledge and expertise!” - YAY, yes.

Dr Stuart Middleton
* www.stewartmiddleton.co.nz
* “inkwells to free ferry” – are we simply inventing new inkwells or making fundamental change in the education system?  Starting school is a wonderful moment in families.  Society makes the promise that starting school is the beginning of something that will set us up for life.
* making analogy between swine flu stats and education …. eg:80% of those in youth court have no meaningful engagement in schooling.  Cost to the economy is $1billion!
* Shared issues with english speaking, British origin countries.  All have same feature set in societies, economies, and EDUCATION sectors.
* All countries have considerable social and political unease with education.
* disconnect between education and economy
* unprecedented levels of disengagement
* NEET (not in employment, education or training)
* “we don’t export manufactured goods any more we export the factories”  The “used to be the blotting paper” for the bottom achievers in education.
* the groups schools struggle with and are the ‘tail’ are the groups that are growing.  They will form an increasing percentage of our school populations.
* in the 60’s only about 10% of kids completed secondary schooling/7th form.  Schooling was the starting point of what you did next – lots of on the job and later training.
* we have changed from valuing employment to valuing particular jobs.
* ‘disengagement is now part of the system’ – overemphasis on the academic. Differentiated secondary school systems do not have this issue.
* Pacifica students stay in the system but as a group achive the lowest of all groups.
* A lot of what we do in education is excellent, but there is no road to it and no road from it. Bridge to nowhere metaphor.
* progress in NZ education is based on christmas. …. wonderful point
* Language is at the hart of education and personal identity. Bilingual is normal – bilingual brains are better.
* Iceberg of language – only see the part of the picture. Need to build base of the skills that are common to language in general, not just the expressive stuff that is valued in school. There is the cognitive etc aspects below the water line.
* Sectors in the NZ education system have outlived their usefulness – the division between primary, secondary, ECE, etc.
* identifying children at risk before they are in risk
* education is inherently conservative. Not much has really changed over time. Obsessed with access and not equity. Not focusing enough on ‘getting them through’.
*

Lester Flockton has this to say on his website:

Like it or lump it, we have a democratically elected National Government. It openly declared its policy on national standards well before the General Election, and it hasn’t erred from or embellished that policy (yet). So at least they’ve been up front, and we should accept that they are fully entitled to pursue their policy – in a sensible and well-advised way. Was the previous Government equally up front during election campaigns about significant things like school reviews and closures policies? We all know the answer to that! I have no affection for one party over another, but I do have affection for honesty, openness, trustworthiness and unbounded dollops of fairness and sensibility. Let’s see if this government can measure up…

as an introduction to providing a background to the Standards debate.  He has also produced THIS excellent presentation as his summary of the issues and which serves to debunk a number of myths in the Standards debate (for some reason it won’t embed). Lester has his crap detector turned up to MAX and is one of the top thinkers in the country in educational assessment. Interestingly he is NOT on Anne Tolley’s consultation committee.  It is by far the best summary of the issues I have seen to date and much more informed than some of the rubbish we have been subjected to in the media.

He presented this slideshow at the public forum in Dunedin recently and with his commentary it was a very interesting session.  Still makes interesting to be only reading in isolation however.

He gave a balanced and very humorous presentation that was strongly focused on what is to be best for kids and learning.  His respect for teachers as a profession is obvious and based on a long career inside and outside schools, as well as measuring their outcomes.

CUE TV News Room – National Standards discussion from webeditor on Vimeo.

a really interesting discussion and covers a lot of ground about standards an current education policy.

Was having a chat this morning with a colleague who has thought through these sort of things.  His position was we already have significant spending in Special Education in NZ, it is just not always readily accessable to schools:

• RTLB funding apparently equates to aprox $100 per primary aged child in NZ – thats $25 000 for our 250 pupil school
• We have 4 ORRS children and 0.5FTTE of teacher staffing and therefore aprox $32-40 000 of TA time with them.  0.5 of a teacher is what, $30 000+
• Moderate contracts for OT/Physio support a couple of  kids and a couple see a GSE SLT – another $5 000 each year?

That’s $100 000 a year of funding as a minimum for our school of 250.  That is a HEAP of money.  Man what a difference that would make if WE were able to employ the specialists and TA’s we need to fully support all the children in our school who need it.  We do a good job of identifying the children with needs, what we struggle with is for the support programmes to extend as far through the list of needs as we would like.

I have bee a very strong advocate of centralised resourcing of special needs funding but this is a compelling arguement for other models.  There would be loosers though.  Don’t be outside a main centre, don’t have more than your fair share of issues …. the list goes on.

Hence the Spcial Ed review I suppose.  No simple answers but an informed debate worth having!!

Made YOUR submission yet?

follow this link to a very witty Trademe auction of the NZC.

from The Standard blog:

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 exercise – 350,000 of the pamphlets were produced, enough for the parents of each primary school pupil.

So, how did they know what addresses to send them to? You can’t get information on who has primary school kids from the electoral roll or any other public list. They may have gained the addresses by profiling people on the electoral roll, but prolfiling is a hit and miss affair. As far as I can see, there’s only one database that gives you the residential addresses of every school pupil – the Ministry of Education’s National Student Index.

The Education Act limits the use of the National Student Index to: “Monitoring and ensuring student enrollment and attendance, ensuring education providers and students receive appropriate resourcing, statistical purposes, research purposes, and ensuring that students’ educational records are accurately maintained”

Did National use the Index, in violation of the law, to get the list of pupils’ addresses? I can’t be sure but it looks bloody suspicious. I think the possibility that private information may have been misused is serious enough for me to raise the question and ask for clarification.

good question to ask …. what IS the answer?

“politicians use statistics like drunks use lamp posts – for support rather than illumination” …. anon.

Three articles about the Standards in the ODT today:

1.  Opinion piece that is GREAT.  A must read.

2.  The cost to schools of attending the briefings from the MoE/Advisors are huge.  I understand Ms Tolley has offered to meet west coast principals on Sunday 14 February for a breakfast (8:30am!) meeting.  Some of us have real lives, and partners.  Singles education breakfast on ‘the coast’ this weekend folks?!

3.  Report from the fabulous meeting last night.  Lester Flockton gave the most informative critique of the whole standards debate I have heard.  Stunning!!  He is happy to share his slides so am hoping to get a copy.

Just wondering ….

We are told that maori and pacifica children are overrepresented in the tail of achievement that exists in the NZ education system.  Why is it then that the children who are doing best in the system are the ones who are currently the focus of the implementation of the National Standards and the ones who supposedely need the input the most are exempt for quite some time to come yet.

Would it not have made sense to focus on the ‘highest need’ group first?  Should Standards not be culturally inclusive?  Is this not a Treaty issue?  How can a ‘barrier to learning’ be ignored like this?

Perhaps schools should follow the MoE lead and focus our Charter development targets on the high achieving and ‘average’ kids?  The low achievers can have more time to work it our for themselves and we will get to them later…  I can imagine how this would go down when I push send on my report to the MoE.  How is this double standard acceptable?

….. in my cynical wee mind I am just wondering.