In 2022, The New Zealand Initiative published a report on MLEs. Its title was No Evidence, No Evaluation, No Exit, and that seemed to sum it up.
Well, the first two were right, anyway.
The main take-away from the report was that the Ministry pushed MLEs onto schools without a shred of evidence that they would improve education. Officials insisted that these shiny new classrooms would serve ‘student-led learning’ – another educational doctrine with little evidence in its favour.
Having forced schools to accept MLEs, the Ministry conducted no follow-up evaluation to see how they were being used. It undertook no study to find out whether students were really learning better than they had in traditional classrooms. Perhaps the officials didn’t want to know.
But, contrary to the title of the report, it seems that Modern Learning Environments do have exit doors after all.
On the day the report was released, in parliamentary question time, ACT MP Chris Baillie asked then- Education Minister, Chris Hipkins, why schools had to build them. Hipkins responded that they didn’t. And – just like that, it seemed – schools were suddenly free to replace their aging classrooms with new designs of their choice.
To be fair, it seems likely that Hipkins ended the requirement to establish Modern Learning Environments shortly after he became Minister in 2017. But Baillie’s question, prompted by the report, drew a definitive statement from the Minister, that schools could have traditional classrooms if they wanted.
But what of the many MLEs already established, having cost billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money?
Writing in the Waikato Times last weekend, journalist Bridie Witton reported that many schools are putting up walls to reestablish cellular classrooms. “A chorus of teachers assert [the MLE project] was an ill-informed gamble with young people's education”, she wrote.
Yet no mea culpa has come forth from the Ministry. Just a bland assertion that, “We don’t impose … spatial plans on schools.” Not anymore, that is.
What a waste. And the expense of building unsuitable classrooms isn’t even the worst of it. The most outrageous cost has been to children’s educational opportunities.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
Having forced schools to accept MLEs, the Ministry conducted no follow-up evaluation to see how they were being used. It undertook no study to find out whether students were really learning better than they had in traditional classrooms. Perhaps the officials didn’t want to know.
But, contrary to the title of the report, it seems that Modern Learning Environments do have exit doors after all.
On the day the report was released, in parliamentary question time, ACT MP Chris Baillie asked then- Education Minister, Chris Hipkins, why schools had to build them. Hipkins responded that they didn’t. And – just like that, it seemed – schools were suddenly free to replace their aging classrooms with new designs of their choice.
To be fair, it seems likely that Hipkins ended the requirement to establish Modern Learning Environments shortly after he became Minister in 2017. But Baillie’s question, prompted by the report, drew a definitive statement from the Minister, that schools could have traditional classrooms if they wanted.
But what of the many MLEs already established, having cost billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money?
Writing in the Waikato Times last weekend, journalist Bridie Witton reported that many schools are putting up walls to reestablish cellular classrooms. “A chorus of teachers assert [the MLE project] was an ill-informed gamble with young people's education”, she wrote.
Yet no mea culpa has come forth from the Ministry. Just a bland assertion that, “We don’t impose … spatial plans on schools.” Not anymore, that is.
What a waste. And the expense of building unsuitable classrooms isn’t even the worst of it. The most outrageous cost has been to children’s educational opportunities.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
4 comments:
What you have described is pretty much an illustration of the nature of progressive education. It has an insatiable fascination with any new shiny gimmick, in subject matter or in method of or in purposes of education.
Since nothing ever works with the constant experimentation we see fad after fad. This includes project leaning, discovery learning, group learning, multiple intelligence s, the self-esteem movement, integrated learning, whole language, numeracy project, open classrooms .. I have seen it all, over the last six decades..
Consequently our kids are being used as guinea pigs and lab.rats. There is never any concern for the consequences of the experimentation. But then schools to progressive education are a mechanism for social change not stuffy old academic learning with unpleasant hard work and memorizing mere facts with testing.
Seems to me the MLEs were an artful attempt to adopt streaming without it being apparent. Also to enable those teachers chosen for their pro maori inclination to coat tail off those who exhibit objectivity and concern for the real world and real time. And by masking otherwise poor teachers forestalls any move to pay based on ability, a propect which terrifies the profession. How children can learn anything in a bedlam class pursuing several distracting paths at once is a mystery. When teachers were very effective, 100 years ago, despite huge classes, they taught one subject at a time to one class of similar ability, with enforced quiet.
An utter disgrace and, yet again, no-one is held to account!
As Thomas Sowell once said: "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."
Not only are these ideologues wasting our money, but the appalling educational outcomes now speak for themselves. It's way past time we had a purge of those useless idiots in the MoE.
Seems to me that we have many disenchanted parents because of our current education system. I'd suggest that the brighter of our teachers are probably also totally frustrated with the straightjacket they are forced to wear (if they haven't already left or just given up) to retain their employment. There seems to be a market opportunity here. With technology, the best teachers could be teaching large numbers of the kids who value learning and knowledge without the distraction of those who don't - under the present environment, the latter set the overall standard. I know there are unions etc, but the good teachers we still have may be the last that we have for our kids, with the woke, corrupt academia that dominates the education sector.. Maybe ACT might be interested in establishing 'virtual charter schools'. It could all be done very cost effectively, and may in fact inspire more kids to go down this path.
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