Second S&M - the controversy around the Kohanga Reo and Serious Fraud Office. Lets all stay focused on that, while the School Funding shakeup program is progressed with hardly any parents noticing. 1) If you thought that JK was Teflon, well, Hekia has exactly the same coating. She is the wife of Sir Wira Gardiner, a man of Mana. Also, from the Nats perspective she hasnt played too bad a hand. She drove through the National Standards in a way that Anne Tolley, the previous Minister was never going to be able to. Hekia is far smarter than Anne, plus she came from the Public Service and knows exactly how things are done. She is savvy. The turnover in her office is such that no one really gets a chance to get the dirt on her, as she has done away with any trust being built up. She is highly networked. 2) The two hiccups that she had were some aspects of the Chch school mergers; she didnt get 100% on that. And the other was the closure of the Girls School for special needs students. The Nelson School bettered her, and they did so because some of the feminists in that camp knew the Law, knew how to campaign, and they secured support from the UN via the Committee overseeing CEDAW (Convention for the Elimination of All forms of discrimination Against Women). As soon as it was moved into that realm, the game was over, because the next step would have been OP-CEDAW, the Optional Protocol - a complaints mechanism. This would have resulted in the NZ Govt being investigated. The fact that the Government wanted to put these vulnerable girls into a Boys School, which would have been illegal in itself, just worsened the botch-up. The Minister had to retreat from that one. 3) Currently the media airwaves are going yet another botch-up by Hekia over the Kohanga Reo - but have any of you as parents thought about what the funding changes will mean for your kids??? 4) On this particular occasion I can say that I was tested on how I felt about a competitive model of funding being applied so that great teachers could be paid more than average or bad teachers. The context was that this is standard practise in all fields so why should education be any different. At that time (6+ years ago), I certainly thought yeah fine. However, Ive learnt a lot more since then and I got to see how the competitive funding system works in the Government Agencies, and frankly it is not good. 5) So as parents what you can expect is this (relates to Public schools only): a) many schools are already booting out the hard to teach kids, so that they can register great National Standards scores. This translates into high registration numbers, and publicly good reputations. The funding model will further exacerbate this trend. b) currently teachers are encouraged to share innovations, techniques, skills etc. This is because a competitive funding model isnt being applied. The benefit of that is collaboration and cooperation across the school, so that the kids remain at the centre of the learning. c) if you introduce a competitive model, this will give rise to patch-protection, or more accurately IP protection. It will stymie innovations, because there is no financial advantage to be had, if a teacher shares ideas with the other teachers. The advantage only comes into play when the teacher protects her IP from the other teachers. She can then demonstrate her superior skills, get the payrise and the promotions. So if you kid is in her class, great. If not, thems the breaks. d) under the current system, most teachers are still sharing with their colleagues - at least at the primary school level they are. e) this is going to hit the lower decile schools the most. The good teachers will increasingly populate the higher decile schools; this happens to some degree now... again this situation will be exacerbated. f) Im also hearing that when the lower decile schools start to fully under-perform, we can expect a further rollout of Charter Schools. This will be identified as the only means of assisting poor kids to get an education. Yet internationally, the success of Charter Schools has been very patchy. Plus these schools are required to meet the level of transparency that we expect and enjoy from our current Public schools. g) final point - psychology teaches us that intelligence isnt determined by genetics alone; this was the fallacy from the Victorian times when only the upper classes children were permitted an education. When I was a kid, the most intelligent person in the world (yes a woman then) was a lady in England who worked in a Laundromat. She was picked up on because she could remember the docket number for every garment and customer... Environment, nurture is the other determinant of intelligence and it is argued that this has the greatest impact on a childs success or failure. I personally think it is wrong that the socio-economic standing of a childs family will ultimately be the determinant in how much opportunity kiwi kids get to learn in NZ. This completely goes against the spirit and intent of the Education Act!! Sorry if there are typos... its getting late.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:25:15 +0000
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