http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10624503

You quote Mr Buutveld as saying that their would accept standards if the information was not available to the public. Their are two interpretations of this statement, and, for reasons of your own, you elect to take the view that this is an entirely self-interested stance to protect teachers from the wrath of a dissatisfied public.

But there is another, equally valid interpretation which is that because the standards are untested, the chances are high that early results will require careful analysis to determine what they really indicate. Unless there is this at least temporary stipulation to standards, three groups of people may suffer unjust opprobrium – disproportionately, undoubtedly, in the lower decile schools – the kids (because there is grading embedded in the standards), teachers and the individual schools.

I have seen plenty of managers’ initiatives to improve productivity imposed from on high on workers who were not consulted and who, if they were, could have pointed out more potentially successful avenues to pursue. Consequently, the workers only pay lip service and the initiative fails. It’s pretty well axiomatic these days that worker input is sought BEFORE enacting improvement programmes. Why not with teachers?

Research and consultation, as happened in the example you presented, is at the heart of the NZEI demands.

Furthermore, the OECD and the Cambridge Report detail why these standards are doomed to fail. Japan is jettisoning theirs after only three years. These examples surely should cause us to pause what will perhaps become a headlong rush to mediocrity.

And while typing this, I hear yet again the claim that too many kids are leaving school without qualifications. Let’s ignore that this is a secondary school statistic being (mis)applied to the primary school sector: what is an acceptable number of kids leaving school without qualifications? Convey that to the sector and set to work achieving this.

One more thing, as this all can get complicated very quickly, and I like to keep things simple, the 150,000 figure bandied about refers, I believe, to kids leaving school without completing Core Literacy. But Core Literacy consists of a number of papers, I’m not sure how many, and a kid leaving school one paper short is still recorded as having failed. Many kids leave school legally, even before they can complete the full unit.

But does any of this matter? Maybe it just gets in the way of an outdated ideology.

Declaration of interest: I am a parent who has put three children through school and tech/university and I am about to start all over again!

The seats are being sold by the union members. Ringside seats same price as seats in the carpark. All seats equal and the bout will be decided by the unions before the first punch is thrown. It’s the only fair way……

Also, the quality of the teacher may well be paramount, but I’d argue it’s easier for good teacher to teach a small class well than a large one.

Absolutely agree with you Colin. But we had better not dare prove we are correct via comparison of educational outcomes or all parents will want good teachers and small class sizes and that’s not going to make life easy for the administrators or the not so good teachers. Just put you cloth cap on, pay your taxes and chant the line Colin;
All teachers are equal, all schools are equal – we do not need consistent standards in education.

Thanks for responding. My response in turn.

1 First of all this is not radical change. This is not implementing (for example) a new curricululm or national testing. It is basically a requirement that schools report whether a student is above, at, below or significantly below the expected literacy or numeracy standard for their age. How they make that assessment is up to the school, and for most schools will mean no change. So again this is not radical change. You say you are not arguing for a veto by the unions, yet you advocate if the Government can’t persuade them to be supportive they should not do it. Sounds close to a veto to me. Of course it would be nice if the NZEI supported the standards, but it would be nice if we had a warmer summer also.

2. Treasury was oppossed to interest free student loans, for very sound reasons. I don’t recall columns calling on the Government not to implement them, because of Treasury opposition. As for my other example of Telecom, I think you are a few years out of date saying Telecom gets its way more often than not. Think operational separation, mobile phone termination, fibre to the home and the recent TSO reviewi – none have been that favourable to Telecom.

3. I do not accept the premise that the union is equal to the Government, and they have some right to set education policy. Do we see Business NZ telling businesses to refuse to pay income tax unless tax rates drop? The union has every right to lobby the Government not to implement the policy. I think it goes too far when it advocates the schools refuse to implement them.

4. The Government will compile raw data. This is vitally important as the article I linked to showed what you can learn from that data. The media will be able to access that data also. How they sort, format and present that data is a decision of media outlets. If league tables are so bad, then lobby your editor not do publish them, or insist they do ones that are less simplistic – which for example take into account deciles, or (more usefully) the progress made over time by a school.

I’m all in favour of the media being able to access the data and publish it. But if the problem is that some media will publish it in a form that is misleading to parents, I do not accept the correct response is to stop the Government from even being able to collate the data.

5. Of course if all otehr things are equal, a smaller class size is better than a larger class size. But that isn’t the question. The question is (IMO) if we have say $100 million to spend on improving primary education, what will do the most for improving educational outcomes. Is it to merely keep the system the same and hire more teachers? I think targetting the extra money towards students and schools that are not achieving would be a better way to go – but to do that, we need to know who they are.

6. I agree the Government could well be politically damaged by a bruising fight with the teacher unions. It is not something you do lightly. But I ask, is there an alternative? When they vow to obstruct a policy which was your major election pledge for primary education, what does the Government do? Give up?

he also noted in last year’s seminal report that he hadn’t explored socio-economic status as a factor in student outcomes.

Well as long as we have zoning dividing the school system to keep the have’s and the have-not’s separate looking into the effect of socioeconomic differences is not something the dept Ed want exposed. The answers are obvious to all but the central administrators and the unions – both of which just want status quo and don’t care about outcomes for individuals.

All teachers are equal, all schools are equal.

Now repeat that 1m times and forget all you have learnt about the diversity of people and the differences good leaders make to organistations – when you have lost all your ability to think for yourself you will be ready to join the union.

Dim, you make a common mistake. Teachers arent Teachers Unions.

TEACHERS may care about their students education, thats their job.

TEACHERS UNIONS care about TEACHERS, thats their job.

I wish the country would wake the hell up and realise that teachers unions do not have to care about their member’s student’s education. Their primary focus is and always will be the pay and conditions of teachers. Providing quality education is necessarily a second priority.

We would like to think that the Union cares as much about the students needs as we do. That is, we would like to think that they place them ahead of the needs of teachers, just like we do. Education is about educating the students, not providing a job for teachers. So it makes perfect sense to us that students are more important than teachers. Without students there would be no need for teachers, but without teachers there are still children needing education.

So all the Unions have to do is make it SOUND as if they care about students, while advocating things to their disadvantage. The general public usually accept their statements, because, hell, they wouldnt be AGAINST student welfare now would they? That would be ridiculous.

So if the provision of quality education disadvantages teachers (like if it meant that poor performing teachers or schools can be identified, with the possibility of those teachers facing the consequences of their failure to perform) the Teachers Unions will fight it.

Individual teachers may well be willing to sacrifice some job standards to help the students, but this compassion is not necessarily shared by their Union. The Unions own statements on this issue are showing their true priorities.

What was there before. Obviously a modern student and therefore completely ignorant of history.

Yeah? and what would take its place?

1. Teacher assualts student who laughs during a karakia (13yr old girl) by dragging through the class by her hair. Teacher gets full union support, cannot be fired becuase it was cultural (she was HOD Maori, funnything was the girl was Maori as well). we had to pay out her sick leave (over 300 days), and no police action.

2. Teacher fails the assessment that BC raved about so the school refused to put her up a step (so no payrise), and had damning reports from pupils and parents. Union gets involved and demands she get the payrise, causes such a stink principal had to give in as it was distracting the school.

i have other stories, but thats good enough.

also, if you don;t join the union you cannot get the payrises when they redo the collective contract. the union demanded this.

i like some teachers, but overall my experience dealing with over 1000 of them for 3 years made me mortified at how they are allowed to run amok with no real oversight.

AL

No he doesn’t actually Pete. Can you please cease these false allegations and vicious and unwarranted personal attacks?

Teachers don’t actually teach, they fill childrens heads with bullshit lefty thoughts.

Not you obviously, you sound a bit thoughtless.