Kiwiblog

The Select Committee has reported back the Education Amendment Bill, with some changes.

The majority of us recommend inserting new section 139AAAB, in clause 28, to allow a teacher or staff member to require that a student remove their jacket or outer clothing so that it can be searched, and to require the search to comply with the safeguards detailed in new section 139AAAC. The removal of outer clothing would not be permitted if the student had no other clothing, or only underclothes, under the outer clothing. Students might be suspected of having harmful or illegal items in the pockets of their jackets or outerwear, and the new section proposed would make it clear for teachers how they would be permitted to search for such items.

There was concern, which I had previously blogged on, that the original bill made it impossible for teachers to do any sort of checking of students without their consent.

The recommended new section 139AAAB would allow a teacher or other staff member to require a student to hand over a bag or other container and allow it to be searched, if they believed the student is inpossession of a harmful item. The majority of us are con

cerned that the legislation as introduced would prohibit a teacher from requiring a student to hand over a bag containing a harmful item, leaving the teacher unable to take this step to provide a safe learning environment.

Also sensible. So who would be against teachers being able to check for weapons or drugs?

The Greens of course:

While we agree that a school must be a safe place for students and teachers we do not believe the additional powers in the bill can be justified.

Sigh.

We considered whether partnership schools should be subject to the same oversight as existing state schools, for example via the Ombudsman. On balance it is our view that the Ombudsmen Act 1975 should apply to the exercise of discipline powers relating to suspensions, expulsions, stand-downs, and exclusions, and we therefore recommend amending clause 31, new section 158X, and inserting new clause 43. This provision would have the effect of ensuring that all children and their families would have access to the Ombudsman.

That is a sensible and welcome move.

Sue Fea at Stuff reports:

New Zealand needs to raise the academic achievement of its Maori and Pacific Island students to match those of Pakeha students, Education Minister Hekia Parata said in Queenstown yesterday.

New Zealand had made significant gains, now ranked seventh internationally in Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) reading and literacy proficiency levels.

However, while Pakeha were ranked second in the world, Maori were 34th equal and Pacific students were ranked 44th, Ms Parata said.

As has been said before, our averages are good, but our tail is unacceptably low.

The Government was aiming to get 85 per cent of primary and intermediate school students at, or above, the national standards by 2017.

At the moment 76 per cent of children reached or exceeded the national standard for reading, 72 per cent of learners for mathematics, and 68 per cent for writing.

While some parties think the best way to lift achievement is not to monitor student achievement at all!

Ms Parata said she had told various iwi groups, “good on you, guys” for coming to Wellington to talk about land issues and fisheries, but invited them to come to talk about the education of their children or stay in their area and help support them in the education opportunities available.

“I say the same to Pacific churches and they are all responding.

Maybe we’ll see some Iwi invest in a charter school or two!

Rodney Hide writes in the HoS:

I know I would have a lot to learn if I wanted to teach in a school. But I don’t understand why the Teachers Council gets to demand that prospective teachers attend Auckland University for a full year to get a Graduate Diploma in Teaching before doing so.

I already have three degrees, have taught science and economics at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, have worked in a successful merchant bank and have some knowledge of government and its operation.

In some capacity I would have something to teach students. But I can’t. The Teachers Council declares I must complete a diploma that includes a course called EDPROFST 612, which “explores questions relating to … the Treaty of Waitangi and the socio-political influences that shape the interconnections between learning and context”.

This might explain a lot!

I am amazed we have the many good teachers that we do. But I wonder how many potentially good teachers the Teachers Council and their asinine courses and processes have driven away.

I like the Teach for America programme where top graduates spend two years or more working as teachers, after a five week summer training course.

The Dom Post editorial:

 If saving Wanganui Collegiate is a priority for the cash-strapped Government, the education system must be in very fine health indeed.

At a time when schools across the country have to ask parents to help fund vital learning tools, National has found more than $3 million a year to prop up an institution that is not needed.

Falling rolls meant Wanganui Collegiate was expected to close at the end of last year, but it was thrown a lifeline when the Government agreed to let it integrate into the state system. …

Why would they do that you may wonder?

There is no denying the college has done a superb job in educating its pupils, with a 96 per cent pass rate for NCEA level 2 in 2011.

That’s one reason.

What Ms Parata failed to mention was that the school’s integration flew in the face of sound advice from the Education Ministry and Treasury.

That advice pointed out that there were already more than 1400 unfilled places in secondary schools across the Whanganui-Rangitikei region, a figure that was expected to rise by 50 each year for the next decade.

Many who attend Collegiate are not even from the region.

Meanwhile, the more than $3m the Government will pay to keep it open is money that cannot go towards improving literacy and numeracy for the thousands of pupils who lack the basic skills needed for a good education.

It is also funding that could have gone towards the Government’s aim for 85 per cent of 18-year-olds to have NCEA level 2 or its equivalent by 2017.

This editorial gets a fail in basic literacy and numeracy.

If Wanganui Collegiate closes, then their pupils will all enrol in other schools, which will also cost the taxpayer $3 million. Trying to say that you would save this money if the school closed is absolutely misleading.

Stuff reports:

School principals fear they could soon be powerless to confiscate weapons and illicit drugs from pupils, under changes to the Education Act.

The Education Amendment Bill, now before Parliament, includes changes to the surrender, retention, search and seizure powers held by schools.

Under the proposed changes, teachers would not be allowed to search pupils or their property but would be able to search property owned by the school, such as lockers and desks.

Dogs would no longer be allowed to search schools for drugs, and schools would not be able to test pupils for drug use.

Schools could suspend pupils for refusing to hand over a weapon or drugs.

Wellington College headmaster Roger Moses said the impact of the bill was still unclear, but any move to reduce schools’ ability to search and seize could make them less safe.

“If contraband of any kind is brought into the school we want the ability to search for that stuff. It is going to make it more difficult for schools to police internally.”

I’ve blogged on this before, and I agree with the concerns of principals.

I think the right to privacy should be limited when applying to students on school property. Generally, if you don’t want something discovered or searched – don’t bring it to school. Just brings your textbook and lunch.

Of course some students, especially females, need to have some personal stuff with them. So no one is saying there should be random searches of all property. But if staff have reasonable grounds to believe there could be weapons or drugs, they should have the legal ability to search items on school property.

Hopefully the Select Committee will modify the Bill, to take account of concerns.

The IEA’s Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study has some interesting results.

Maths

Singapore, Korea and Hong Kong are tops, all over 600. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 486. Bottom is Yemen on 248.

Science

Korea, Singapore, and Finland are tops, all over 570. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 497. Bottom is Yemen on 209.

Reading

Hong Kong, Russia and Finland are tops, all over 568. The midpoint is 500 and NZ is 531. Bottom is Morocco on 310.

The graphs are worth looking at, because they show the distribution for each country also. You can also see the results for 2001 and 2006 as well as 2011.

The State Services Commissioner has announced:

The State Services Commissioner Iain Rennie, today announced that he has accepted the resignation of the Secretary for Education and Chief Executive Ms Lesley Longstone.

Mr Rennie said that the last six months have been especially challenging for the Ministry of Education.  Despite the best efforts of the Chief Executive to work through a number of issues, there now needs to be a focus on re-building the critical relationships that have been strained.

Following very careful thought and discussion, Lesley and I have decided that the best interests of the Ministry would be served by her stepping down and the appointment of a new Chief Executive, Mr Rennie said. …

Mr Rennie said he was grateful to Victoria University of Wellington for supporting the secondment of former Public Service chief executive Peter Hughes as the Acting Chief Executive and Secretary for Education. Peter Hughes will take up his role from 9 February 2013. The State Services Commission will advertise for the permanent role in the New Year.

This has the potential to make a significant difference. Peter Hughes is the former CE of MSD and despite the huge complexities of that ministry, was twice judged top performing public sector CE by the Trans-Tasman panel.

By contrast, the Ministry of Education has consistently come near the bottom of the ratings for the 40 or so core public sector agencies. This has always been a huge concern when you consider the importance of education to New Zealand.

The departure of Longstone and appointment (for now) of Hughes, is an opportunity to change things for the better. I look at what I regard as the three main educational stuff ups of the year. They were:

1. The Budget announcement on increased class sizes in return for improved teacher quality
2. The Christchurch schools restructuring
3. The Novopay performance

The 1st issue was a political failure. The Government failed to define what they would do to improve teacher quality, and hence it was like asking for a blank cheque. The policy could have worked if the work had been done on what precisely would be done to improve teacher quality – then people may accept the trade off. The responsibility for that one rests with the Minister, but to be fair to Hekia the decision was a collective one by Cabinet – not hers alone.

The 2nd and 3rd issues were primarily operational failures by the Ministry. The Minister is accountable for their performance, but not directly responsible. In this case, seeing the departure of the CE, and a very competent (temporary) replacement announced is exactly what should happen for such operational failings.

Hughes has a huge task ahead of him, to make changes to the Ministry. There are many good people there, but the structure and culture as a whole are not currently up to the job.

Enemies of the current Government will claim that everything that has happened has been the Minister’s fault. As I have said, she is accountable and there has been political failures also. But to be honest if you really care about improving the NZ education system, you’d be welcoming the appointment of someone like Peter Hughes to be Acting Secretary of Education.

The facts Hughes has agreed to take the role on, is very significant also. He had left the public sector. He would not take on the role unless he had confidence both in the Minister, and in his ability to work with her to make change for the better. He pretty much could have had his choice of any public sector job he wanted when he left MSD.

I look forward to seeing how 2013 goes for Education. It could be very different to 2012.

The Herald reported:

Christchurch Boys’ High School headmaster Trevor McIntyre has resigned to take up an appointment as an executive adviser to the Christchurch Education Renewal Programme. …

Secretary for Education Lesley Longstone said Mr McIntyre had a long history of serving education in Christchurch.

“As executive adviser, Trevor will ensure the sector, parents and school communities have one of their own monitoring the integrity of the programme and facilitating the consultation process. He will act as a voice of the sector within the programme,” she said.

Mr McIntyre said he was privileged to be more closely involved with the Education Renewal Programme.

“I would like to be seen as someone who can support and advise both the Ministry and the schools through the changes that are taking place.

“I’m looking forward to be able make a greater contribution to education in Christchurch,” he said.

Mr McIntyre will also liaise with bodies such as CERA and the Earthquake Recovery Commissioner to ensure wider Christchurch rebuild issues were taken into account as the programme progressed.

This is a very smart move. An experienced respected principal is just the sort of person you want helping manage the change programme. He will understand the needs of schools, and should be able to progress things without rancor.

A great article at The Atlantic.

Nubia Baptiste had spent some 665 days at her Washington, D.C., public school by the time she walked into second period on March 27, 2012. She was an authority on McKinley Technology High School. She knew which security guards to befriend and where to hide out to skip class (try the bleachers). She knew which teachers stayed late to write college recommendation letters for students; she knew which ones patrolled the halls like guards in a prison yard, barking at kids to disperse.

If someone had asked, she could have revealed things about her school that no adult could have known. Once Nubia got talking, she had plenty to say. But until that morning of her senior spring, no one had ever asked.

She sat down at her desk and pulled her long, neat dreadlocks behind her shoulders. Then her teacher passed out a form. Must be another standardized test, Nubia figured, to be finished and forgotten. She picked up her pencil. By senior year, it was a reflex. The only sound was the hum of the air conditioning.

Teachers in the hallway treat me with respect, even if they don’t know me.

Well, this was different. She chose an answer from a list:Sometimes.

This class feels like a happy family.

She arched an eyebrow. Was this a joke? Totally untrue.

In towns around the country this past school year, a quarter-­million students took a special survey designed to capture what they thought of their teachers and their classroom culture. Unlike the vast majority of surveys in human history, this one had been carefully field-tested. That research had shown something remarkable: if you asked kids the right questions, they could identify, with uncanny accuracy, their most—and least—effective teachers.

This does not surprise me at all. I know from my own experience that most kids at school absolutely know who are the teachers who inspire you and make you want to learn, and those who are ineffective. This is not always the same as who the popular ones are. My chemistry teacher was widely mocked as a robot, but everyone said he was a very good teacher.

The point was so obvious, it was almost embarrassing. Kids stared at their teachers for hundreds of hours a year, which might explain their expertise. Their survey answers, it turned out, were more reliable than any other known measure of teacher performance—­including classroom observations and student test-score growth. All of which raised an uncomfortable new question: Should teachers be paid, trained, or dismissed based in part on what children say about them?

I wouldn’t go that far, but I think student evaluations should be routine.

So far, this revolution has been loud but unsatisfying. Most teachers do not consider test-score data a fair measure of what students have learned. Complex algorithms that adjust for students’ income and race have made test-score assessments more fair—but are widely resented, contested, or misunderstood by teachers.

So this is what the NZEI and PPTA should propose as an alternative – student evaluations.

A decade ago, a Harvard economist named Ronald Ferguson went to Ohio to help a small school district figure out why black kids did worse on tests than white kids. He did all kinds of things to analyze the schoolchildren in Shaker Heights, a Cleveland suburb. Maybe because he’d grown up in the area, or maybe because he is African American himself, he suspected that important forces were at work in the classroom that teachers could not see.

So eventually Ferguson gave the kids in Shaker Heights a survey—not about their entire school, but about their specific classrooms. The results were counterintuitive. The same group of kids answered differently from one classroom to the next, but the differences didn’t have as much to do with race as he’d expected; in fact, black students and white students largely agreed.

The variance had to do with the teachers. In one classroom, kids said they worked hard, paid attention, and corrected their mistakes; they liked being there, and they believed that the teacher cared about them. In the next classroom, the very same kids reported that the teacher had trouble explaining things and didn’t notice when students failed to understand a lesson.

The Hattie research confirms this also.

But Kane also wanted to include student perceptions. So he thought of Ferguson’s survey, which he’d heard about at Harvard. With Ferguson’s help, Kane and his colleagues gave an abbreviated version of the survey to the tens of thousands of students in the research study—and compared the results with test scores and other measures of effectiveness. The responses did indeed help predict which classes would have the most test-score improvement at the end of the year. In math, for example, the teachers rated most highly by students delivered the equivalent of about six more months of learning than teachers with the lowest ratings. (By comparison, teachers who get a master’s degree—one of the few ways to earn a pay raise in most schools —delivered about one more month of learning per year than teachers without one.)

Students were better than trained adult observers at evaluating teachers. This wasn’t because they were smarter but because they had months to form an opinion, as opposed to 30 minutes. And there were dozens of them, as opposed to a single principal. Even if one kid had a grudge against a teacher or just blew off the survey, his response alone couldn’t sway the average.

Student evaluation shouldn’t be the only data a school collects, but it should be a near mandatory one.

Of the 36 items included in the Gates Foundation study, the five that most correlated with student learning were very straightforward:

1. Students in this class treat the teacher with respect.

2. My classmates behave the way my teacher wants them to.

3. Our class stays busy and doesn’t waste time.

4. In this class, we learn a lot almost every day.

5. In this class, we learn to correct our mistakes.

When Ferguson and Kane shared these five statements at conferences, teachers were surprised. They had typically thought it most important to care about kids, but what mattered more, according to the study, was whether teachers had control over the classroom and made it a challenging place to be. As most of us remember from our own school days, those two conditions did not always coexist: some teachers had high levels of control, but low levels of rigor.

Again, this meshes with my experience.

No one knows whether the survey data will become less reliable as the stakes rise. (Memphis schools are currently studying their surveys to check for such distortions, with results expected later this year.) Kane thinks surveys should count for 20 to 30 percent of a teacher’s evaluations—enough for teachers and principals to take them seriously, but not enough to motivate teachers to pander to students or to cheat by, say, pressuring students to answer in a certain way.

This would be an excellent Budget 2013 initiative!

This video Whale has done from last night’s news is disturbing.

I’m all for kids getting informed about political issues, but it is obviously the teachers here are just using their kids as weapons. I bet you none of them sat down with their classes and explained the pros and cons of schools having to close or merge because of earthquake damage and/or 3,500 fewer students.

Whale notes:

As the footage shows, teachers were showing kids how to chant, raise their fists in the air, and most worryingly, it even included an 8 year old attacking the Prime Minister. An 8 year old!

One wonders whether any dissent is tolerated by teachers at these schools and how a child who disagreed might get treated. Do you think they had any choice?

Quite sickening really.

Radio NZ reports:

An annual report on education by the OECD says the Government spends more of its budget on education than any of the other 33 countries in the organisation.

The 34-nation organisation’s annual report on education published overnight tues night

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development says New Zealand directed 21.2% of its public spending to education in 2009.

That was enough to push it past the previous biggest spender, Mexico, by nearly one percentage point.

The OECD average is 13%.

Yet the opposition keeps demanding more spending, when we already dedicate the largest share of govternment expenditure in the developed world to education.

Have looked at the source data. Some interesting facts:

•  Average primary teacher salary is US$41,009 vs $37,603 OECD average
• The average primary teachering hours per year have dropped from 985 in 2000 to 930 in 2010, but above OECD average of 782
• Primary student:teacher ratio has dropped from 20.6 to 16.2 – slightly above 15.7 OECD average
• Average Type A tertiary tuition fee for NZ is US$3,031
• NZ spends 57% of tertiary spend directly on institutions, well below 80% OECD average. Our 43% on allowances and loans is highest in OECD. The folly of interest free loans.
• NZ ECE spending is 1.4% of all govt expend and 0.5% of GDP – compared to OECD average of 1.1% and 0.6%.
• NZ school expenditure is 14.1% of all govt expend and 4.8% of GDP – compared to OECD average of 8.7% and 3.8%. This is top in OECD as % of govt expend and 4th top as % of GDP.
• NZ tertiary expenditure is 5.7% of all govt expend and 1.9% of GDP – compared to OECD average of 3.1% and 1.4%. This is top in OECD as % of govt expend and 5th top as % of GDP.
• NZ total education expenditure is 21.2% of all govt expend and 7.2% of GDP – compared to OECD average of 13.0% and 5.8%. This is top in OECD as % of govt expend and 5th top as % of GDP, out of 34 countries.
• NZ spending on education dropped 6.7% of GDP in 2000 to 6.0% in 2005 and in 2009 was up to 7.2%
• IN US$ PPP adjusted NZ spends $11,202 per ECE student, $6,812 per primary school student, $7,960 per secondary student and $10,619 per tertiary student. Note this is total, not govt, spending.

No one can claim we are not spending enough on education – it is the quality of the spend. I;’d rather charge inflation on student loans, and invest that into more ECE.

David Shearer’s full speech on education yesterday is here.

I previously blogged I was supportive of a focus on reading recovery. Other issues Shearer touched on are:

I want to tell you about a school in my electorate.

It takes in a large number of migrant children every year.

When these kids start school most of them have an English comprehension age at the level of a 3 year old.

By the time they finish Year 6, they leave where they should be for their age. In six years, that school has lifted their reading age by eight years.

That school is doing a great job. They are exceeding expectations for their kids.

Yet that school, its teachers and its kids are stamped as failures because for most of their time at school their children’s results fall below the National Standard.

This is in fact an argument absolutely in favour of national standards. Sure if you look at one year’s static results that school doesn’t compare well. But over time national standards will show that they improve the performance of their kids massively. That is exactly the sort of data we will be able to get from national standards. It is all about progression, not labels.

I want to see a school report card. And, if the school is falling short in any area, I want to know what is being done to remedy that.

Another argument for national standards. Parents love the fact that they finally have report cards that tell them in plain English how their kids are doing. Labour have spent four years fighting against meaningful report cards, yet now say they will insist on them. Yeah, right.

If kids turn up to school not having eaten breakfast, without shoes, or sick because their house is cold and damp, it’s obvious they won’t get the best start.

I hear people argue that this is the responsibility of parents.

We can debate that endlessly but it won’t change this reality: tomorrow morning kids will still turn up to school hungry.

And a hungry kid is a distracted kid who can disrupt an entire classroom.

I’m not prepared to sit on the sidelines and hope this problem goes away.

We need to offer these kids a chance, not an excuse.

Labour will be more hands-on, partnering with communities and voluntary organizations to put free food in all decile 1 to 3 schools that want and need it.

A lot of low decile schools are already having this done. While I do worry about the state stepping in for parents, I am pragmatic enough to say it is important that kids are not hungry at school as it does impact their learning. I don’t have a great problem with this proposal as it is targeted towards low decile schools. I believe in targeting.

So overall a couple of good things in the speech, but a couple of areas where the rhetoric is in conflict with the reality of their political stance. Shearer also spoke about teacher quality but of course they fight against any performance pay for good teachers. Their problem is they are captured by the education unions.

There is an article in The Atlantic about how some in the Democrats in the US are breaking free of the education unions.

In a major shift, education reformers are now influential at the highest levels of the party once dominated by the teachers unions.

Michelle Rhee is accustomed to having to insist she’s a Democrat. “It’s funny,” she tells me, “I’m not just a Democrat — I feel like I’m a pretty lefty Democrat, and it is somewhat disappointing when I hear some people saying, ‘She’s not a real Democrat.’”

Rhee, the controversial former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor known for her hard-charging style, has worked with Republican governors to push her reform ideas in states across the country. Her ongoing pitched battle with the teachers unions has put her at odds with one of the Democratic Party’s most important traditional constituencies.

Yet there are signs that Rhee’s persona non grata status in her party is beginning to wane — starting with the fact that the chairman of the Democratic convention, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, spoke at the movie screening Rhee hosted at the convention earlier this week. Another Democratic star, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, spoke at the cocktails-and-canapes reception afterward. Across the country, Democratic officials from governors like Colorado’s John Hickenlooper to former President Clinton — buoyed by the well-funded encouragement of the hedge-fund bigwigs behind much of the charter-school movement — are shifting the party’s consensus away from the union-dictated terms to which it has long been loyal. Instead, they’re moving the party toward a full-fledged embrace of the twin pillars of the reform movement: performance-based incentives for teachers, and increased options, including charter schools, for parents.

If David Shearer can do the same for Labour, that would be a superb thing. Labour once was the party of reform. But in this area they are too often the party of entrenched interests.  Unions are important stakeholders, but they should not get to dictate policy.

David Shearer has announced:

The Labour Party is committing to roll out Reading Recovery to all schools.

Currently only two out of three schools offer the New Zealand-developed scheme, which has an 80 per cent success rate of lifting kids who fall behind in reading.  Just 59 per cent of low decile schools have Reading Recovery.

“Reading Recovery is the gold-standard intervention to help kids that are struggling to learn to read.  It is a proven success, and should be available to every child who needs it,” says David Shearer.

This is a modest, but worthwhile, policy. Having more kids able to read is an excellent thing.

The Government currently spends $40m on reading recovery, and Labour is proposing to lift it to $60m. Only $20m more funding in an overall budget of $10 billion, but it looks to be well targeted towards something that will make a difference.

NZ Herald reports:

Education authorities have no idea how many sex offenders are working in New Zealand classrooms.

If the answer is anything greater than zero, then that is a problem – both potentially that they are working, but more that authorities do not know how many.

But information released by the Teachers Council under the Official Information Act indicates Miki is unlikely to be the only teacher with convictions for sex crimes.

“We are not able to advise how many teachers are working who have convictions for assault or crimes of a sexual nature because we do not hold information on which teachers are working,” said council director Peter Lind.

Why do we have a Teachers Council again?

Stuff reports:

Year 9 students at a Nelson college will be required to bring their own electronic devices to school from next year, in a move the school says will “revolutionise” education.

Garin college is making the devices mandatory for students and has suggested four options with price estimates: netbooks at $300 to 500; laptops at $500 to $2000; MacBooks at $1500 to $2500; and iPads at $500 to $800.

Principal John Boyce said Garin had been researching the move for about three years, had consulted year-eight parents and was ready to take the plunge.

“I believe that if everyone has a computer, the way teachers teach and the way students will learn will be revolutionised.”

It will. I actually think you could start at Year 1.

Lessons and exercises for about 100 year nines would be delivered via a learning management system called Moodle, enabled by fast internet delivered by the Nelson Loop fibre-optic computer network system used by schools in the region.

Why we need fibre, not copper.

He said the move would lead to a “flipped curriculum”, where students would have a lot more control over their independent learning. They would read material put on Moodle by their teachers at night and come to school the next day with questions relating to what they had learned.

“Students will have all the information they need at their fingertips, so over the next few years there will be a real change in mindset. Education will no longer be about facts – it will be about students using facts, thinking, creativity and design.

“Even next year, I expect to see students deepening their understanding of what they learnt [the night before], rather than whole classes marching through material together.”

A group of about 25 student “guinea pigs” were already using electronic devices at school by choice.

“They love it. They know they’re going to be using [modern technology] for the rest of their lives, so why not start now?”

Jordan Howley, 15, said he enjoyed using his laptop because “we don’t have to concentrate so much on what the teacher is putting up on a PowerPoint when we can look at it on our own screens”.

Thinking, not repeating.

Boyce said no family would be turned away if they couldn’t afford an electronic device, with the school committed to helping families with financial constraints, possibly through sponsorship from its parish community.

Excellent.

Sir Bob writes:

The role of Minister of Education has always been a nightmare posting. If you’re Minister of Agriculture then you’re subject to intelligent dialogue with Federated Farmers. If Justice Minister, you can wallow in the ego-inflating pleasure of issuing pompous utterances, interspersed with all-night drunken sessions with the Law Society, and so it goes.

But Minister of Education; God help the poor buggers, confronted as they always have been with embittered, self-important nobodies, as teacher union representatives invariably are.

Sir Bob continues:

Readers may consider I’m being too charitable with that description. Well, I can’t help it, temperance having been my life-long practice. But I’d be a great deal more if instead of endless moaning, the teachers’ union focused on promoting English, science and history and abandoned film studies, Maori wonderfulness, gender studies, et al bogus subjects, now so prevalent.

I’ve speculated why teacher unions are so ghastly when compared with other lobbying bodies. My conclusion is that they have never left the school-room or grown up and that if we resurrected corporal punishment and delivered a daily flogging to these unionists, it might produce a general amelioration.

Bob may need t be careful. If the PPTA affiliates to Labour, they’ll get a vote in the next Labour Leader, and in exchange for their votes may insist the next Leader brings in a hate crime law, so Sir Bob is jailed for hate speech against them

In 1991, I popped over to Georgia to have a look at proceedings when the civil war broke out. One night in Tbilisi, my wife and I were guests of some university academics in an outdoor restaurant near the river. Abruptly the night erupted with explosions and for half an hour, mortars rocketed over our heads from across the river. Our Georgian friends took a nonchalant approach to this. “Relax,” they said, “it’s just the school teachers’ union bombing Parliament,” this over some trivia they were whining about.

Heh. Probably a protest against league tables.

Anyway, after two weeks here and there, we arrived at our Blantyre hotel. At 6pm I turned on the television news. The lead item was the president of the Malawian Women’s Institute carrying on about school teachers having it off with schoolgirls.

She was followed by the Malawian school teachers’ association president.

Never have I witnessed such explosive anger. He was livid and I would describe him as being white with rage, but in the circumstances that would be pushing it.

“Do you realise how little my members are paid?” he shouted at the Women’s Institute president, who began to look remorseful.

“Are you demanding my members risk their lives with you Aids-ridden lot? This is the sole perk of the job,” he exploded

Well that is a novel rationale for a pay rise.

Former Labour MP and principal Kelvin Davis blogs at Maui Street:

When the government says that national standards, charter schools, league tables, performance pay, quality vs quantity of teachers will all raise achievement, they might be right.

That’s because there are very few strategies that teachers (or governments) can implement that actually make students dumber. Teachers can rightly put their hands on their hearts and swear that what they do in class lifts achievement. Just about everything has some positive effect, but some have a large positive effect while others barely register. It would make sense to develop policy based on those strategies that have the greatest positive effect.

The much quoted Professor John Hattie’s research lists, from most effective to least ffective, 138 different ‘things’ that may be implemented in education, and all but five have a positive effect on learning. The five strategies with a negative effect are: Summer vacation (-0.09), Welfare Policies (-0.12) Retention (Holding kids back a year, -0.16), Television (-0.18) and Mobility (-0.34). So unless we prescribe longer Christmas holidays, keep kids back a year or two, or force students to watch an extra 8 hours of TV a day, almost everything else will have SOME positive effect on learning.

That’s quite interesting. I wasn’t aware of that.

Any ‘strategy’ with an effect size of 0.40 or less is practically pointless. Which makes sense. 

In Hattie’s list the strategy with an effect size of 0.40 (Reducing Anxiety) is exactly halfway through the list of possible strategies. Hattie is saying if any particular strategy is to be used it should at least be in the top 50% of strategies.

Also interesting, and I agree you want to focus on those most effective. In fact that was what the Budget announcement was meant to be about.

Charter Schools have an effect size of 0.20, or the 107th out of the 133 strategies that have some positive effect. Charter Schools are therefore an extremely pointless and expensive strategy. 

That’s a fair point the charter schools are not deemed significantly effective. But charter schools are being trialled only. They are not the major focus for the Government. They are something agreed to with ACT, and their future will depend on the outcomes. Davis certainly makes a valid point that charter schools should not be the major focus in education. I agree. But that is not to say I don’t think they should be trialled.

What does the research say about League Tables and Performance Pay? 

Nothing. They don’t rate or feature in any way in Hattie’s research. 

What then is the basis for League Tables and Performance Pay if there is no research evidence to show these two ‘things’ will make a difference? How does the government know these two ‘strategies’ won’t have to be included alongside the five already proven to make students dumber?

Here though Davis is not comparing apples and oranges. As far as I know no one in Government is saying league tables are being done to lift achievement. The reality is that assessment data of schools is public information, and league tables will be done by the media regardless of what the Government does. The issue for the Government is simply given the reality of the media and others doing their own league tables, is there merit in the Government setting up some sort of database or tables of its own which will give more meaningful tables and comparisons than what the media may compile. The Government could do nothing at all, but you will still have league tables – media ones. Unless Davis still subscribes to Labour’s line that school data should be classified as top secret and not made available to the public.

As for performance pay, I presume that is not assessed by Hattie as it is an input. Hattie has found improving teacher quality is the most important factor. Performance pay might help improve teacher quality. As far as I know the Government has not said it is going to implement performance pay. It has said it is one option it is looking at.

I’d be interested in hearing Kelvin’s view on whether he agrees with Hattie that teacher quality or their ability to connect with students is the most important factor, and what measures would he advocate to support and retain the best teachers, improve the performance of the average teachers and get rid of the bad teachers. As a former principal he would have first hand experience, and now he is no longer an MP he doesn’t have to follow the party line.

The Herald proclaims:

 An expert on school league tables says introducing the system here would lead to schools narrowing their teaching focus, competing for the “best” students and rejecting those who fall behind in order to reach national targets.

Professor Martin Thrupp, of Waikato University, spent six years in Britain researching education markets and accountability in schools.

The name of that expert sounds familiar. As it happens, I have blogged previously on him:

A teacher union is fund­ing inde­pen­dent research into the impact of the new National Stan­dards in schools. …

“Given the absence of a trial of National Stan­dards and the deep con­cerns the pro­fes­sion and school com­mu­ni­ties have, NZEI has decided to fund this research in a bid to get robust evi­dence about the impact of National Stan­dards on teach­ing and learn­ing,” he said.

The project is being run through the Wilf Mal­colm Insti­tute for Edu­ca­tional Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Waikato and is headed by Prof Mar­tin Thrupp.

It may just be me, but I think readers would have found it useful to know he is being funded by the NZEI.

Hmmm… I won­der if this is the same “inde­pen­dent Mar­tin Thrupp that has railed against national stan­dards in March 2010, and is it the same Mar­tin Thrupp who is very active on the national Stan­dards protest site, includ­ing this blog post about how to get trac­tion in the media against National Stan­dards and the same mar­tin Thrupp who sent an email of sup­port to the NZPF for their action against National Stan­dards?

The fact that he is also a persistent activist and campaigner against the Government, might also be something readers would want to know. But alas, they are just told he is an “expert” and nothing more.

In no way do I suggest Professor Thrupp should not be quoted. But I think media do the public a dis-service when they do not report he is funded by NZEI and a prominent campaigner against the Government on education policy.

This comes from this OECD study. That huge increase in number of teachers didn’t seem to have much impact did it.

John Hartevelt at Stuff reports:

School class sizes are going up and the Government is working on performance pay for teachers, Education Minister Hekia Parata has announced.

In a pre-Budget announcement to a business audience in Wellington this morning, Parata said there would be an extra $60m invested over four years for boosting teacher recruitment and training.

“We will collaborate in the development of an appraisal system on driving up quality teaching and quality professional leadership.

Performance pay is but one of a basket of options to reward and recognise that,” Parata said.

“We are not investing in more teachers, we are investing in better teaching.”

Ultimately performance pay can only work well if you delegate funding to school boards and allow principals flexibility in deciding pay rates. You might have a nationwide collective setting minimum salary levels, but the funding should be flexible enough so that the best teachers could be earning say double the worst.

There had been “some trade-offs” so that the Government could afford the new investment, she said.

Teacher – student ratios in the mid-years of education (years two to 10) would be increased. Instead of the existing range of anywhere between one to 23 up to one to 29, there would be a single ratio of one to 27.5.

The ratio for students sitting NCEA at years 11, 12 and 13 would be standardised at one to 17.3, instead of the existing range of between one to 17 and one to 23.

“These ratios are a funding formula – they are how we as a Government fund schools. The actual number of children in a classroom is set by the school.”

New entrants (year one) would keep its one to 15 ratio.

The ratio changes would “free up” $43m, on average, in each year over the next four years.

In the last ten years, student numbers had grown by 2.52 per cent, but teacher numbers had grown 12.76 per cent over the same period, Parata said.

About 90 per cent of schools would either gain or have a net loss of less than one full time equivalent teachers as a result of the combined effect of the changes.

The changes look pretty minor.

Professor James Tooley writes:

One of the internation­ally agreed-on development goals the heads of state reviewed was the achieve­ment of universal primary education by 2015. The UN was not happy with progress. There are still officially more than 115 million children out of school, it reported, of which 80 percent are in sub‑Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. But even for those lucky enough to be in school, things are not good: “Most poor children who attend primary school in the developing world learn shockingly little,” the UN reported.

Something had to be done. Fortunately, the UN could call on Jeffrey D. Sachs, special adviser on the Mil­lennium Development Goals to Secretary-General Kofi Annan and author of The End of Poverty. He’s also director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He proposed as the way forward “Quick Wins,” which have “very high potential short-term impact” and that “can be immediately implemented.” Top of his list is “Eliminating school fees,” to be achieved “no later than the end of 2006,” funded through increased international donor aid. To the UN it’s as obvious as motherhood and apple pie.

But the UN’s “Quick Wins” are backing the wrong horse. For the past two and a half years I’ve been directing and conduct­ing research in sub-Saharan Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, and Ghana) and Asia (India and China). And what I’ve found is a remarkable and apparently hitherto unnoticed revolution in education, led by the poor themselves. Across the developing world the poor are eschewing free, disturbed by its low quality and lack of accountability. Meanwhile, educational entrepre­neurs from the poor communities themselves set up affordable private schools to cater to the unfulfilled demand.

When you receive a “free” service, you are less concerned about its quality, than when you pay for it. This is basic logic.

Take Kibera, in Nairobi, Kenya, reportedly the largest slum in Africa, where half a million people live in mud-walled, corrugated iron-roofed huts that huddle along the old Uganda Railway. Kenya is one of the UN’s showcase examples of the virtues of introducing free basic education. Free Primary Education (FPE) was introduced in Kenya in January 2003, with a $55 million donation from the World Bank—apparently the largest straight grant that it has given to any area of social serv­ices. The world has been impressed by the outcomes: Former President Bill Clinton told an American prime-time television audience that the person he most want­ed to meet was President Kibaki of Kenya, “because he has abolished school fees,” which “would affect more lives than any president had done or would ever do.” The British chancellor of the exchequer, Gordon Brown, visiting Olympic Primary School, one of the five gov­ernment schools located on the out­skirts of Kibera, told the gathered crowds that British parents gave their full sup­port to their tax money being used to support FPE. Everyone—including Sir Bob Geldof and Bono—raves on about how an additional 1.3 million children are now enrolled in primary school in Kenya. All these children, the accepted wisdom goes, have been saved from ignorance by the benevolence of the international community—which must give $7 billion to $8 billion per year more so that other countries can emulate Kenya’s success.

The accepted wisdom, however, is entirely wrong. It ignores the remarkable reality that the poor in Africa have not been waiting helplessly for the munificence of pop stars and Western politicians to ensure that their children get a decent education. The reality is that private schools for the poor have emerged in huge numbers in some of the most impoverished slums in Africa and southern Asia. They are catering to a majority of poor children, and outperforming their government counter­parts, for a fraction of the cost.

Really? Can this be true?

 Inspired by what I had found, I recruited a local research team, led by James Shikwati of the Inter-Region Economic Network (IREN), and searched every muddy street and alleyway looking for schools. In total we found 76 private schools, enrolling over 12,000 students. In the five government schools serving Kibera, there were a total of about 8,000 children—but half were from the middle-class suburbs. The private schools, it turned out, even after free public education, were still serving a large majority of the poor slum children.

It seems it is.

Calculating the net decline in private-school enrollment, it turned out that there were many, many more children who had left the private schools than the 3,300 reported to have entered the government schools on Kibera’s periphery and who were part of the much celebrated one million-plus supposedly newly enrolled in education.

In other words, the headlined increase in numbers of enrolled children was fictitious: the net impact of FPE was at best precisely the same number of children enrolled in primary school—only that some had trans­ferred from private to government schools.

Well intentioned policies often end up not working.

Parents compared notes when their children came home from school and saw that in the state schools pupil notebooks remained unmarked for weeks; they contrasted this with the detailed atten­tion given to all children’s work in the private schools. They heard tales from their children of how teachers came to the state school and did their knitting or fell asleep. One summed up the situation succinctly: “If you go to a market and are offered free fruit and vegetables, they will be rotten. If you want fresh fruit and veg, you have to pay for them.”

Indeed.

Perhaps these poor parents are misguided. Certainly that’s what officials believe. But are they right? We test­ed 3,000 children, roughly half from the Nairobi slums and half from the government schools on the periphery, using standardized tests in math, English, and Kiswahili. We tested the chil­dren’s and their teachers’ IQs and gave questionnaires to pupils, their parents, teachers, and school managers so that we could control for all relevant back­ground variables. Although the gov­ernment schools served the privileged middle classes as well as the slum chil­dren, the private schools—serving only slum children—outperformed the government schools in mathemat­ics and Kiswahili, although the latter had a slight advantage in English. But English would be picked up by privi­leged children through television and interaction with parents. When we statistically controlled for all relevant background variables, the private schools outperformed the government schoolchildren in all three subjects.

And it gets better:

But there was a further twist. The private schools outperformed the government schools for considerably lower cost. Even if we ignore the massive costs of the government bureaucracy and focus just on the classroom level, we find the private schools are doing better for about a third of teacher-salary costs: the average month­ly teacher salary in government schools was Ksh. 11,080 ($155) compared to Ksh. 3,735 ($52) in the private schools.

Free primary education in Kenya, a showcase exam­ple of the UN’s “Quick Wins” strategy, has simply transferred children from private schools, where they got a good deal, closely supervised by parents, with teachers who turn up and teach, to state schools, where they are being dramatically let down. One parent was clear what the solution was: “We do not want our children to go to a state school. The government offered free education. Why didn’t it give us the money instead and let us choose where to send our children?” For this parent, a voucher system was the obvious way forward, putting her right back in control.

Now what works in the slums of Kenya is not applicable to all situations. But this is a good lesson about how slogans and good intentions and even money do not necessarily improve things.

I recommend people read the entire article. James Tooley has won several prizes and awards for his work on education.

Tom Pullar-Strecker reports at Stuff:

A select committee inquiry is likely to be held into whether schools are well able to take advantage of the new teaching and learning opportunities created by ultrafast broadband.

National Party MP Nikki Kaye said she would today call on the education and science select committee to kick off an inquiry into “21st century learning environments and digital literacy”.

Ultrafast broadband could open up many more opportunities for online learning, but schools were moving at different paces to embrace the opportunities, she said.

“I hope that the overall outcome is that we are able to identify possible savings in technology and buildings, develop recommendations regarding optimal learning environments, and identify the skills required for teachers and students to achieve their full potential in the modern world.”

As the committee is comprised equally of government and opposition MPs, one opposition member would need to support the inquiry or abstain for the motion to pass.

It’s been announced that the select committee has voted to proceed with such an inquiry. I think it is a good and important issue for Parliament to be looking at.

Schools have been changing somewhat to take account of today’s technology but it has been relatively piecemeal and evolutionary. Some schools are doing absolutely amazing stuff, while others are struggling.

93% of schools will be fibre connected by the end of 2014. This can have significant ramifications for how they operate. You may be able to live-stream classes, so sick students can follow from home. Or classes could be archived on the web for them to catch up. Should every student have an Internet capable mobile device? Should tests be done over the Internet? There may be opportunities for interesting speakers to be webcast into multiple classrooms and schools. Plus you have the potential for five year olds to learn how to read and do maths through interactive applications. The possibilities are almost limitless.

This appears to be a first principles review of what do we want our fibre connected 21st century schools and classrooms to look like. The ramifications could be quite significant.

The good thing is we already have some pockets of excellence around New Zealand for some of this, so it is not about having to start with an empty slate. It is about discovering what is already happening out there, and coming up with a blueprint applicable for the whole sector.

John Hartevelt reports at Stuff:

More accountability for teachers and larger class sizes are again on the political agenda as Treasury Secretary Gabriel Makhlouf shapes up for a scrap with education unions.

He was urged yesterday by a teachers’ union, the New Zealand Educational Institute, to “stick to his knitting” after he went on the offensive, saying it was the quality of teachers that made the greatest difference to student achievement.

Here’s what’s funny. I would have thought a teachers’ union would absolutely agree that the quality of teachers makes the greatest difference to student achievement. They should be proud of the fact, and trumpeting it about how important teachers are.

Research suggested the impact on student learning of a “high-performing teacher” compared with an average teacher was “roughly equivalent” to the effect of a 10-student decrease in class size, Mr Makhlouf said.

So a good teacher with a 30 person class will be as effective as an average teacher with a 20 person class.

He suggested “a number of ways” to assess teacher quality, including in-class observations by other teachers, direct observations by principals, and feedback from students and parents.

At almost every school, students and staff know who are the most and least effective teachers. I certainly knew as a student at Rongotai College. Mr Jackson, Mr Reid, Mr Wilson were all great teachers, and all their students talked about how great they were.

A boost in class sizes of one or two students per classroom could free cash to invest more in quality teachers, he said.

Until we are out of deficit mode, extra funding is limited. So yes I agree investing more in quality teachers is more important than class sizes (within reason).

Kate Chapman at Stuff reports:

A convicted sex offender has been working in schools as a teacher, Education Minister Hekia Parata has announced.

Parata said the schools affected had been notified.

A ministerial inquiry, led by former ombudsman Mel Smith, would be held into how the sex offender was employed. The person had been registered as a teacher since 2000.

“At this stage I cannot discuss the details of this individual case as the matter is now before the courts [in Auckland],” Parata said.

She was “extremely concerned” and was told late last week that the person had been arrested for breaching a condition of their release. The person was in custody.

The Ministry of Education was working with the schools and their communities but it was possible others had been affected, Parata said.

“Parents should be able to send their children to school confident that an individual of this type is not part of that school environment,” she said.

The ministry had asked the courts to vary suppression orders so other schools and parents could be informed.

The ministerial inquiry into the matter would report back by April 30, Parata said.

How appalling. Obviously something has seriously gone wrong for him to have been working as a teacher for 12 years. At this stage the reports don’t state that he has necessarily abused any students, and hopefully he has not. But there will be a huge number of concerned families.

Never thought I would be saying this. Catherine blogs:

I am concerned by media reports that the Ministry of Education is considering taking off boards of trustees the role of hiring their school’s principal.

Rumours about such a significant proposal should not be swirling around in the media without a confirmation or denial from the Ministry. School boards and parents should be formally notified if this change is really on the table.

Prior to the election the National Party gave no signal that the Ministry would be taking over this role. It wasn’t mentioned in their policy.

The Government’s rhetoric around education is extremely contradictory at the moment. One minute National says parents need more choice via charter schools and the next it’s taking away choice from communities by removing the power of boards of trustees to appoint their own principal.

Giving local communities a degree of control over their school was central to the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms. I haven’t seen any evidence that the hiring of principals is too difficult a task for schools. It is more likely that the Government wants to make principals answer directly to them rather than the kids and parents in their local community.

I would be amazed if National is considering any such move, and the story linked to quotes various teacher politicians as their sources, so it is probably just scare-mongering.

But I am glad to see the Greens support school boards being able to appoint their own principals. I hope this means they also support school boards being able to manage their own budgets, decide on their own property needs, hire their own staff and pay them what they think is appropriate for that school?

Because why would you say the board is good enough to appoint their own principal, but not to manage their own budget?