Ha … so its about teacher and programme effectiveness then …. what a revelation!

National Standards are beginning to emerge in the media again. The groundswell of opposition from the professional and other education organisations is building.
NZPF:

The Otago Primary Principals Association:

OPPA executive supports the stance taken by other regions to boycott the National Standards training, and recommends Otago schools also boycott the training.
The OPPA understands that schools are entitled to make their own decisions in relation to National Standards, and it also seeks to offer its support to schools that are looking for some guidance and direction about the matter.
The executive has taken its position in response to the feedback received from principals in the survey undertaken earlier this week. The survey was to get a clear expression of principal‚s thinking about the initiative. Of the 74 principals that responded to the survey, 87.5% do not support the standards (2 did not respond to that question); 66% do not support the training and a similar percentage (63.5%) support a boycott of the training.

Teachers and others are posting their thoughts on Social Media sites as well:

this is very clever!! Well worth watching and makes some good points …

and this one is good too ….

It would seem Anne Tolley doesn’t read my blog after all Otherwise she would have known about the Parliamentary Library article ….
The NZ Hearld had an article today:

Education Minister Anne Tolley is to complain to the Speaker Lockwood Smith over a Parliamentary Library research paper on national standards in primary schools.
Mrs Tolley said the paper was “unprofessional”, “highly political” and so biased it could have been written by the union opposing the policy.

LINK

I wrote about the article weeks ago. I actually thought it summed things up well.

It would seem that anyone who doesn’t agree, even if a professional parliamentary library researcher, is wrong if they don’t agree with the minister and government policy. What happened to informed debate and being knowledgeable about issues for our profession?  Isn’t that a responsibility of a minister in any portfolio – to know it well?  To find people who disagree and get them to challenge the ideas and proposals before they get loose on the world.
As a principal if I didn’t listen and went it alone in the face of overwhelming conflicting information I would have to face up to a major challenge from BoT, staff and community.

I would contend that we could reverse the critiques Ms Tolley has made of the research paper to apply to the Standards themselves – “unprofessional”, “highly political”

The link from the Herald article has now been removed. A good indication of the nervousness of the government about any criticism on this; particularly from anyone or any organisation close to home, with credibility, and non-aligned.  Now we don’t even get to read it and make up our own minds.  Control the information and you control everything – dictatorships understand this well.

Derek had this video in his blog post today.

Powerful stuff and a challenge there for us all.  What is it about schooling and your school that is not simply replicating what we do and how our children will live their lives in relation to ours; but making it better.  Preparing them for their futures not our current realities.

Check out THIS from the Parliamentary Library.
It includes this summary of some of the issues with the Standards:

This section looks at potential issues with the National Standards initiative. These include the speed in which the standards have been designed and are being implemented. This has left no time to trial the standards to establish if they have been set at the correct level. Teachers also may not have had sufficient time and professional development to develop effective moderation processes before implementing the standards. Also discussed is the issue that National Standards alone do not improve educational achievement; student achievement is assisted by support in the classroom, and this may not be adequately provided for under the Standards. The next issues analysed are the effect that being labelled ‘below standard’ may have on a student’s achievement, and the potential for bias in the main means of assessment, that of overall teacher judgement. Moderation processes are then investigated. Though they are needed to ensure standards are nationally consistent, there is a potential for between-school moderation to be insufficient. Finally, this section discusses the potential for media-created league tables to unfairly label schools, and the possibility that teachers will narrow the curriculum to teach to the Standards.

… And this is NOT an educationalist saying these things. It is an analyst at Parliament. Wonder when the Minister and MoE will listen to the advice they are paying for?
The MoE has been critiqued recently for being too PC and not responsive enough. Time to prove us wrong?

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?