One group who do not seem to mind are the kids from the Vanguard Military School, who sometimes jog alongside me to amuse themselves at my expense. They are a chatty and friendly lot who enjoy a bit of banter and, as we pound the pavement together, speak highly of their school and the teaching staff who are responsible for sending them out on these irregular runs.
Vanguard was one of the original charter schools established by David Seymour’s initiative under the Key government, and when Chris Hipkins became Minister of Education was folded back into the state system as a Designated Character School.
“After considering the assessment and consultation responses, I have decided to approve the school” Hipkins declared back in 2018. Vanguard lost some of its autonomy, but was able to continue mostly as it was, because, as Hipkins acknowledged at the time, Vanguard used the ethos and training of the military to achieve attitude and academic excellence and would continue to have a focus on “second chance” students.
This is at odds with his post on X last week stating that “Charter Schools are an ideological experiment that isn’t supported by the evidence” and committing his party to abolish them once he is back in the refurbished Premier House. Most of the charter schools established while Seymour was Undersecretary for Education continued as designated character schools.
The failure of state education has continued despite who was in office. The last government that that looked seriously at improving the sector was the infamous 4th Labour government, which commissioned the Picot Report into what was wrong with our education system.
The report resulted in Tomorrow’s schools in 1989, whose main innovation was the establishment of school boards with limited authority. The Department of Education retained an oversight role, largely setting the curriculum and testing regime.
This worked reasonably well but in 2002 the simple School Certificate and Bursary graduation regime, based on an understandable A, B,C grading system was replaced with the National Certificate in Education Achievement that has an incomprehensible tier structure with merits and excellence citations.
I suspect that the only purpose of this opaque system is to obscure the decline in our kid’s education. Although state schools are able to offer alternatives to the NCEA, very few do, with the internationally recognised Cambridge and International Baccalaureate mostly limited to private schools.
The OECD has an objective measure, the Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, that looks at students in different nations. It began in 2000 and the 2022 results were released in December.
PISA tests reading, mathematics and science, where the results are scaled so the OECD average is 500 and 100 is one standard deviation. Scores over 500 mean we are above the OECD average, under 500 below.
In 2000 we ranked at 529, 523 and 530 for Reading. Mathematics and Science respectively. In 2022 we’d fallen to 501, 479 and 504. The PISA regime is comprehensive. In New Zealand 4682 students from 169 schools took part in a two-hour assessment.
In some respects, we are doing ok. Most students demonstrated a base level of competence, but it is the trend is in the wrong direction.
The 2022 PISA report found the gap between the highest and lowest scoring students widened in mathematics, although was stable in reading and science. Almost all students declined in math with the low-achievers falling by more than the high-achievers. Overall we have fallen from one of the best OECD nations to the middle of the pack and trending downwards.
Given almost students are enrolled in the state system and taught by university educated teachers, this decline isn’t surprising, but if we want to raise standards, perhaps we need to move away from the regime that has consistently underperformed; and last week Act announced their plan to revive and expand the successful charter school program.
Act’s ambitious policy is not merely to establish more charter schools, but to allow existing schools to opt out the state system to become partnership schools. They will retain state funding but will be given the same autonomy that Vanguard and others enjoyed; to employ teachers lacking the mandatory education requirements and offer alternatives to the set curriculum.
He has funding for fifteen new charter schools and 35 conversions.
Seymour’s strategy is to force into the sector so many charter and partnership schools that Hipkins, or whoever succeeds him as the next Labour Prime Minister, will be unable to squeeze the genie back into the lamp.
Hipkins, to his credit, quietly embraced schools like Vanguard, bringing them into the state system but leaving them largely enough autonomy to continue. Despite his rhetoric, he was unwilling to completely dismantle schools that were delivering for their students.
This is an issue that must transcend the politics of the day......The full article is published HERE
“After considering the assessment and consultation responses, I have decided to approve the school” Hipkins declared back in 2018. Vanguard lost some of its autonomy, but was able to continue mostly as it was, because, as Hipkins acknowledged at the time, Vanguard used the ethos and training of the military to achieve attitude and academic excellence and would continue to have a focus on “second chance” students.
This is at odds with his post on X last week stating that “Charter Schools are an ideological experiment that isn’t supported by the evidence” and committing his party to abolish them once he is back in the refurbished Premier House. Most of the charter schools established while Seymour was Undersecretary for Education continued as designated character schools.
The failure of state education has continued despite who was in office. The last government that that looked seriously at improving the sector was the infamous 4th Labour government, which commissioned the Picot Report into what was wrong with our education system.
The report resulted in Tomorrow’s schools in 1989, whose main innovation was the establishment of school boards with limited authority. The Department of Education retained an oversight role, largely setting the curriculum and testing regime.
This worked reasonably well but in 2002 the simple School Certificate and Bursary graduation regime, based on an understandable A, B,C grading system was replaced with the National Certificate in Education Achievement that has an incomprehensible tier structure with merits and excellence citations.
I suspect that the only purpose of this opaque system is to obscure the decline in our kid’s education. Although state schools are able to offer alternatives to the NCEA, very few do, with the internationally recognised Cambridge and International Baccalaureate mostly limited to private schools.
The OECD has an objective measure, the Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, that looks at students in different nations. It began in 2000 and the 2022 results were released in December.
PISA tests reading, mathematics and science, where the results are scaled so the OECD average is 500 and 100 is one standard deviation. Scores over 500 mean we are above the OECD average, under 500 below.
In 2000 we ranked at 529, 523 and 530 for Reading. Mathematics and Science respectively. In 2022 we’d fallen to 501, 479 and 504. The PISA regime is comprehensive. In New Zealand 4682 students from 169 schools took part in a two-hour assessment.
In some respects, we are doing ok. Most students demonstrated a base level of competence, but it is the trend is in the wrong direction.
The 2022 PISA report found the gap between the highest and lowest scoring students widened in mathematics, although was stable in reading and science. Almost all students declined in math with the low-achievers falling by more than the high-achievers. Overall we have fallen from one of the best OECD nations to the middle of the pack and trending downwards.
Given almost students are enrolled in the state system and taught by university educated teachers, this decline isn’t surprising, but if we want to raise standards, perhaps we need to move away from the regime that has consistently underperformed; and last week Act announced their plan to revive and expand the successful charter school program.
Act’s ambitious policy is not merely to establish more charter schools, but to allow existing schools to opt out the state system to become partnership schools. They will retain state funding but will be given the same autonomy that Vanguard and others enjoyed; to employ teachers lacking the mandatory education requirements and offer alternatives to the set curriculum.
He has funding for fifteen new charter schools and 35 conversions.
Seymour’s strategy is to force into the sector so many charter and partnership schools that Hipkins, or whoever succeeds him as the next Labour Prime Minister, will be unable to squeeze the genie back into the lamp.
Hipkins, to his credit, quietly embraced schools like Vanguard, bringing them into the state system but leaving them largely enough autonomy to continue. Despite his rhetoric, he was unwilling to completely dismantle schools that were delivering for their students.
This is an issue that must transcend the politics of the day......The full article is published HERE
Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner, a member of the Taxpayers’ Union and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective
4 comments:
What is so disappointing to us in NZ is that we used to have a World Class traditional education system and now we are just mediocre.
Also the big gap in achievement is of real concern since those students in the tail of underachievement are potentially going to be on welfare or prison. Also at present heavy Marxism is slyly creeping into the curriculum which leads to student activist who believe they are victims and determined to break down society rather than build it up. See James Lindsay on this and on line .
Lindsay's demonstrates how an innocent looking maths word problem can be converted into a discussion on Critical Race Theory for even small children. Hence even less valuable class time is spent on academic achievement, of basic skills and there is a further widening of the achievement gap.
Is this what Hipkin's desires? Smug middle class parents who have high achieving children need to be alerted to the growth of an underclass caused by Progressive -Marxist ideology in education which fails to focus on the basic skills of the 3Rs using effective and disciplined teaching methods.
Compulsory education has always been about social engineering. When it was first introduced in the United States in was high-ranking Protestants wanting to eliminate the Catholic faith of new migrants. It is and always has been the duty of Parents and not the state to educate their children.
It is time that mothers stop sacrificing their lives as mere labor units in the economy and start sacrificing their lives for their children and the future of the Nation. The role of the mother as homemaker and educator is essential for the wellbeing of families and has been key in all civilisations until very recently. The loss of this cornerstone of the family has led to temporary prosperity and a decline in all other signs of a healthy society.
The magnitude of the damage done by CRT to a generation ( maybe 2) could sink NZ - despite best efforts to salvage the mess.
But one thing is for sure, not only does a lowering in standards detrimentally impact the future livelihoods of our children, it impacts the overall prosperity of New Zealand.
The other thing that is essential to turn the direction of our state education system around is the immediate dismissal of all those in charge, starting with Iona Holsted, for she and her immediate cabal of idealogues, have failed our children now for far too long. There is no excuse, other than corrupt ideologies and incompetence - so they must be gone.
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