While there is a questionable moral imperative for the implementation on the National Standards from our government, I must share a gem of an attitude shared with us during the Michael Fullan seminars from early November.

National Standards are to be exploited, not implemented.

This brings in to question our real moral imperative.  I believe our moral imperative as educators is now to use the standards to make a difference to our kids.  If the policy makers make this difficult, we need to stick to our guns.

While I commend all of the work being done by our academic educational experts. it is now time to accept that this is being done whether we like it or not, for better or for worse until cabinet reshuffle do us part…

There is so much going on in education at the moment… I wonder about the moral imperative of our policy makers?

Yep, that sums it up.  Got a message this morning…

from after L@S in 2010, the direct ICT cluster funding cannot be spent on national or international conferences. This will be emailed as a message to schools from the MOE and is about the govt signalling fiscal restraint. This does not prevent schools from sending people to these events but payment for such things will have to come from school budgets not from the direct ICT cluster funding.

Well, ‘fiscal restraint’, that’s fresh coming from a bunch of people (politicians in this country) who very rarely exhibit such a characteristic.  This won’t be my last entry on this matter as it is frustrating for it to happen at such a time and very difficult for educators in this country.  The message is clear, ‘we undervalue conferences’ as a learning, networking and capacity building tool.  Clearly if ICT-PD cluster funding cannot be spent on this, then it perceived to be of little value by the Minister and this Government.

I don’t expect that they will stop taxpayer funded Political Party Conferences in a hurry?

The money promised to provide ‘wider access’ to private schooling is ridiculous!  For a start, the means tested eligibility means the applicants must be earning less than $65k gross per annum AND have a net worth of less than $150k!  So conceivably, someone who is doing well enough (thank you) can apply for this grant to pay for private schooling for their kids!  What is more, the selection process is by ballot – a clear indication that selection is not based on highest need (which, is obviously not the intent).  Therefore I have to draw the conclusion that this scheme is not targeted at the ‘lower income bracket’ at all… my thoughts here are; if you want to send your kids to private school, YOU pay for it.

The money being poured into private education is crazy.  This money should be used to support the public sector, in particular focusing on areas of highest need  and for me, this means supporting learning lower decile schools… these are where the ‘truly’ low income families have to send their kids.  How often do the ‘truly ‘ poor get access to private health care?  (I don’t actually know but suggest that it would not be much, if anything).

The direct correlation between poverty and educational underachievement cannot be ignored, and certainly cannot be resolved by pumping another $2.6m into private schooling (not withstanding the other $50m going into private schooling over the next 3 years).

Time to acknowledge the wonderful work being done by many of our lower decile schools and to work with them to provide the resourcing to help them (and therefore all schools) lift under-achievement among our poorest.

I read with great concern that the Government is going to be making big cuts to funding for physical therapy for students with special needs, here is the question time dialogue from the House on the 3rd of August.

I am not prepared to take sides here, nor am I ignoring the fact that we are still in a significant recession and spending cuts are to be expected.  However, I agree with the Hon. Clayton Cosgrove’s question regarding the extra 35 million dollars that is now being pumped into private schooling in this country (which is to happen over the next 4 years – reading the question time responses, you could be forgiven for missing this important detail) and whether that situation is fair.  I also agree that it is a ‘fair’ question, and that the response was unacceptable.  What I am struggling with here, is the fact that special needs kids have great needs and should NOT be the top priority for spending cuts.

I see that there has been a small ‘about turn‘ by the Minister and while the comments on that link are not very objective, they are certainly better that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s comments on the Labour Party Blog!  For the record here are his comments, and for some balance, the Minister’s comments are also provided.  This is not a swipe at the Minister or this Government over the special needs issue, the extra funding which has gone into the ORRS funding scheme has made the funding more accessible and the process tolerable.

The issue for me, is that when we enrol the child next year who needs extra physical therapy, where is the funding going to come from to help us support the child and the family?  While I value the support the MOE gives, it is the actual therapy that will make the greatest difference.

Aside from the obvious concerns around so much more funding going to private schools (surely if someone chooses private schools – it must be like going private in the health care system… the user pays!  Not the taxpayer!), I would feel so much more comfortable if the Minister would consider cutting costs where there was not a direct effect on student achievement, such as printing and sending of all of the online documents generated by the MOE and ERO to every school.  This documentation is very valuable, but I imagine that many schools cannot read it all – and it is duplicating what is already available.

That would be a good place to start, it would easily save the 2.5 million for the kids who need the physical therapy support.

Enough!  I am now over National Standards and have moved through all of the stages of grief and am now on to ‘acceptance’…

I accept that these standards will:

• Make Schools and teachers accountable (I am convinced that this is the ‘not so hidden’ agenda) for nationwide student achievement
• Allow the Government to standardise reporting on student achievement
• If used well, could inform school improvement
• Be implemented regardless of the fuss kicked up by the sector and other experts
• Lead to ‘plain language’ reporting to parents
• Will lead to direct comparison of ‘perceived’ school performance
• Detract from teaching and learning as we build the learning around the assessment, rather than the assessment around the learning.

And as part of my ‘acceptance’ our team will implement these in a way that is morally responsible for our learners and ensuring that our learning culture and learning focus is at the forefront of what we do.

I will speak no more of these ‘Stand DUD s’ in this forum.

Here endeth the lesson.

Up until now I have not heard much from Mr Hattie regarding National Standards. He clearly is a man who likes to take time to make a measured and reasoned response.  Congratulations to him. This is indeed a worthy response (assuming the source is accurate!!).

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/education/news/article.cfm?c_id=35&objectid=10587936

I have read two blog posts this week which came to me through Twitter. Both posts talk about the impact that technology is currently having on education and the possible future of education that now that we have such amazing tools at our disposal.  Including the question: ’if every student had a computer’ (can’t find tweet and lost the link – but it was a very good read).  Plus the ever-present impact that social media is having on education.  Both have potentially far reaching and deeply profound impacts on learning and as such, have piqued my interest.

I believe that learning is very much a socially constructed activity which is strongly centered around the way the individual responds to the stimulus and learns from and with others – I could extend that to ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds.  I also believe, that for the teaching profession to survive these incredible developments we must adapt our own learning and the learning of others with the support of these incredible ‘virtual’ tools.  We are not at a ‘teaching’ crossroads… we are reaching a ’societal’ cataclysm, a series of events and developments within our control which could be disastrous if we do not: a) move with it, understand it and use it effectively; and b) make some serious ethical decisions regarding how to use this in a way which progresses humanity and doesn’t see us become a world of people locked in isolated rooms interacting with avatars at screens.  Many of us may have seen the future for humanity predicted in Wall-E?  For the record however, Hollywood has a horribly poor record of getting things anywhere close to accurate when it attempts to predict the future!

The point I am getting to is the ethical decision that e-learning must be balanced, I am sure we all understand that it is equally important that our learners learn to interact with each other in the real world! I would have grave concerns if our vision is that all children had a laptop in front of them (the only difference between the classrooms of the 19th and 20th Centuries is that in the 21st Century there is now a laptops on every desk and an interactive whiteboard at the front of the room!).  This has significant impact on the environment, our health and our future as society.  My assumptions are based on a belief that if you are engaged with a community on the computer, you are often disengaged with the others physically in your presence.

This post is not about being ‘anti’ social networks and eLearning (please don’t read that as anti-social!), as I am a proponent of both… it is about ensuring a balance to protect our future and understanding that our vision for our children’s future should not be one of ‘virtual connectedness’ and ‘real-world isolation’.  I am sure we all realise this, but I just wanted to say it because, as educators, we have a moral responsibility to ensure ‘real-world connectedness’ maintains its importance.  :-)

I read with a great deal of concern two new outcomes from recent news reporting on issues to do with national interest.  The first is to do with international ratings agency Fitch, saying it was worried about New Zealand’s high debt levels and reliance on overseas borrowing… frightening enough (whose footsteps are we following in here?)  However, I won’t go into this in detail – there is another media ‘bone’ I will briefly address.

The second pressing issue ‘bone’ that our media dog is onto, is that our fit and outdoorsy national identity has gone out the window with the revelation that we are now the 3rd fattest nation in the world (only Mexico and the US are ahead of us).  I am unsure of the accuracy of the study or the point in placing a hierarchical order to it… as if winning something like that is something to be proud of.  This does however raise some very interesting discussions for our Nation.

As per previous interventions, such as the ‘anti-smacking’ bill, we seem to have governments who place legislative measures on the nation rather than dealing with the actual problem.  Another popular measure are those endless multi-million dollar ‘hard-hitting’ advertising campaigns, where the only outcomes involve advertising agencies becoming better off than the rest of the nation… not fewer kids being hit, fewer people dying of smoking related illness, OR fewer people dying at the hands of speeding, and/or drunk drivers!

I firmly believe that to sort out the issue of obesity, we do not place further sanctions on Schools, remove the right for junk food retailers to advertise or any other archaic attempt to change the ingrained habits of poor diet, poor lifestyle and poor parenting.  All such attempts will serve to strike at the branches of the problem, not the roots!  Find the problem and deal with the problem, whatever that may be… and if there is a causal factor which is parental, genetic, ethnic or gender related… deal with that, and don’t waste our time on changing the laws for everybody!

Hopefully that may mean we can save up some money in the national coffers too!  Now, anyone for some folate in their bread?

I have reflected a little more on these delightful little gems being proposed by the current National Government. Aside from my concerns about the lack of a clear policy direction in education, this government is really assuming that teachers and schools are incapable of collecting student achievement information to inform school improvement and improve learning outcomes for students. Therefore they are going to do it themselves??? Isn’t that a little like them telling the surgeon how to perform the triple bypass?

If we have the Public Finance Act to prevent governments from having too much control over our nations finances (ok yes, it has it’s flaws too!)… Shouldn’t the Education Act be updated to prevent them from making decisions which, regardless of the intent, can prevent politicians from making poorly informed decisions in education. It is only fair that our students are protected.

Yes, this is a little bit of a rant… but I do that sometimes!