NZ records worst ever PISA international test results, amid global decline
NZ school students' performance falling in maths and science: PISA report.
Student hunger, bad teachers revealed in latest PISA tests showing dip in NZ teens' scores.
1, A Crown Agency for “Parenting” to provide information to make New Zealand the very best parenting country on the planet.
- Including “Project 5.75”: Ubiquitous education and support for pregnant women/partners re care for their child in-utero. Huge information/support programmes to counter FASD and other harms.
- Massive parents as first (and most important) leaners and teachers programme age 0 – 5. Including health, reading, numeracy, movement, music, languages. See David Eagleman: The Brain e.g. “If developing brains are not given the proper. “expected” environment – one in which a child is nurtured and looked after – the brain will struggle to develop normally. … Without an environment with emotional care and cognitive stimulation, the human brain cannot develop normally …. The brain can often recover, to varying degrees, once the children are removed to a safe and loving environment. The younger a child is removed, the better his recovery.”
- Language in the home is absolutely key. Many, many words and conversations and words that are positive!
- Information and encouragement for parents to remain fully invested in the education of their children throughout the schooling years.
Believe it or not the Ministry's motto is:
“We shape an education system that delivers equitable and excellent outcomes. “
They simply do not. Every aspect of our system is in dire shape – not just the PISA results. They leadership is incompetent and the Minister should declare no confidence in them. Erica Stanford trying to change the system with these idealogues in charge would be like trying to two an ocean liner up Queen St with a moped. If the All Black coach loses a game or two the nation goes nuts. The Secretary of Education can oversee HUGE systemic failure and very few appear to give a big rat's backside.
In June 2017 there were 2607 Ministry employees. In June 2023 there was 4113. This has been inversely related to school achievement. They do not serve the children and families of NZ and they are very poor at serving the schools. I know of a number of the best Principals who have resigned and left the profession simply due to having just got sick of non-sensical Ministry compliance and how poor they are at their work.
3. Put huge focus on improving our teacher quality and how we train teachers. This is from day 1 in schools when our Primary teachers need to know best methods of teaching math, reading and writing. They must be well qualified themselves and see potential in children – not deficits (which often are used as excuses).
4. Split the collective contract in two and super-fund/incentivise teaching in high equity index (low decile) schools from Year 1 – 13. Provide Principals in those schools with a Business Manager to take care of resourcing, contracts, etc – allowing them to fully focus on academics. trust these Principals with significant incentive payments to attract and keep great teachers. Limit class size to 15. Help the families – provide uniform, stationery and IT and don't ask for donations. Make every year urgent in these schools but also have a 19 year plan so that by the end of that these young people, who will go on to parent the next generation have education levels, that don't offer up an excuse for our school system. The secondary teacher shortage is qualitative as well as quantitative. To attract great degree graduates and second career people they must be paid to train as it is no longer tenable to have them without a year of income in a high employment economy and with so many international opportunities.
5. Emphasise inputs:
- Simplify the NZ curriculum (and dump the current “refresh”). Align it with the international highest standards.
- Attendance, retention until at least 17yo, parental engagement. Make this data publicly available in real time. There is no possible justification for the attendance data to take up to four months to be made available.
- “Movement is medicine” physical fitness and activity is a huge part of human development and oxygen feeds the brain.
- Level 1 ncea for LEAVERS.
- Level 2 NCEA for LEAVERS
- Level 3 NCEA for LEAVERS.
- UE for LEAVERS.
- Progression into further education for LEAVERS (including apprenticeships).
8. Have a superb Designated Character School policy/process to allow for schools to develop that suit the non-cooker cutter kids. Make approval independent of the “network” and aside from Ministry officials.
9. Deal quickly and effectively with the Unions. They offer nothing helpful to the dialogue so throw them a bone and walk on.
10. Mimic Success. Work out the schools in each EQI range that is excelling and make them “lighthouse schools”. Manukura, McAuley High School, St Joseph's Maori Girls.
11. Encourage public discourse from all of our school Principals. I was told by a Deputy Secretary of the Ministry of Education that their main priority was to “protect the Minister”. That is abject nonsense. There is so much IP and experience held by our 2,600 Principals. Encourage them to express their views.
12. Move away from the “stop kids falling through the cracks” mentality. If you don't fall through the cracks you are still on the ground floor. NZ kids need aspiration, and they lead to have leaders! It is the best time ever to grow up and this should be the Da Vinci generation. They have to be led out of the fog of fear.
13. Provide high quality afterschool care in keeping with Harlem Children's Zone who look after all children from 7am – to 7pm (when needed).
Alwyn Poole, a well-known figure in the New Zealand education system, he founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. This article was published HERE
3 comments:
14 Drop the emphasis on maori twaddle. The objective sorts who make good teachers are discouraged by the prospect of a lifetime having to feign enthusiam for maori twaddle and sit through innumerable tedious rituals, speeches, stone age performances, all extensivly in maori time at the expense of other productive effort.
15 Scrap teaching of hobby language te reo. This is a gross diversion. Very able teachers have to spend time coaxing victims to manage English so they might resonably particpate in the real world without developing a huge victim complex.They hold back general classes and contribute to the low standards acheived in tests.
It may be possible to retrain some te reo techers to teach primer arithmetic and primer English
The state of high school biology in New Zealand is sub-third world. I say this because, most 'third world' countries acknowledge their limitations and try to do better. Not so NZ high school biology, in which academic rigour appears to be seen as socially divisive and elitist. The evidence for this is overwhelming. Though the evidence I cite in the document below is a decade old, little has changed. The most widely used textbook today contains so many fundamental errors that it's clear the author is not academically qualified to teach high school biology and by extension, the same can be said for the majority of biology examiners and teachers.
https://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2021/02/guest_post_something_is_rotten_in_the_state_of_education_high_school_biology_in_new_zealand.html
In an attempt to counter this apparent love of mediocrity and fear of excellence, I wrote a number of textbooks designed to encourage students to think. With the exceptions of a few elite schools, they did not do well.
In terms of resistance to academic excellence, NZ is sub-third world. As a first step, therefore, should be to achieve third world status.
No doubt this will be regarded as an outrageous statement. i just wish i could be given the opportunity to present the evidence in a public forum.
NZ education thrived and was world class in about the first half and middle of the 20th century when the whole thing was not dominated by academics but real teachers.
Infant( 5 years-7years) teaching of reading was not full of psychological tripe or technical terminology and it was recognized anyone could teach reading at this level .The reading books were owned by the parents who frequently taught their own four year olds to read using these home -based books with phonic reading and spelling lists in the back. Universal literacy was the ideal and aim using intensive phonics which was achieved although the class sizes were large.
When I was at primary school in the 1950s there were 50 students in the class and every single student could read up to the correct standard for their age as well as do the arithmetic at the correct level . Everyone knew their tables thoroughly
There were always extension exercises for the brighter students. We had ten spelling words for spelling homework everyday and wrote a page of written work everyday which was marked by the teacher and had to be corrected by the student. We did comprehension exercises everyday (SRA). Learning was a serious business , hard work was encouraged and the large class was orderly since discipline was
fair and firm. Ethics like considering others in the class was highly pragmatic.
Even the best modern academics see little of value in our past because they are marinated in progressivist theory which reviles the past while exalting anything new.. Unfortunately for them cognitive and neuroscience are now constantly proving past pedagogies were spot on.
Our past is the key to our future improvements in education. Get rid of all the sociological, psychological and racial drivel and concentrate on real teaching.
Equity now means everyone achieves equally badly. Drop it for Universal achievement in the basics as we used to have.
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