The idea of several classes and their teachers all being in a single room, with the noise and disruptions that would ensue sounds like a place of suffering rather than learning.
Thankfully the government is ending that educational experiment:
The Government has put an end to building open-plan classrooms, ensuring all new classrooms are designed in a flexible way to ensure better student outcomes.
“Overwhelming feedback I’ve received from schools across New Zealand is open-plan classrooms aren’t meeting the needs of students. While open-plan designs were originally intended to foster collaboration, they have often created challenges for schools, particularly around noise and managing student behaviour,” Education Minister Erica Stanford says.
“This Government is focused on raising achievement and closing the equity gap and an important part of our reform package is ensuring learning spaces are designed to improve student outcomes.
“In many cases, open-plan classrooms reduce flexibility, rather than enhance it. We have listened to the sector and new classrooms will no longer be open plan.” . .
There will be times when there is a need to, or benefit from, having more than one class in the same room. That’s what halls are for.
Most of the time one class in one room is challenge enough for pupils and teachers. Both learning and teaching will be easier, and quieter, with the end to single-class classrooms.
Ele Ludemann is a North Otago farmer and journalist, who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
5 comments:
If you want to see how useless and impractical all the educational "experts" are, just look at how they've brought up their own kids.
But sure the mao of old had one big classroom, not a bunch of small ones. It is an insult to tikanga to remove these big rooms.
Like most of NZs purposefully degraded education system, open classrooms were implemented for the teachers, not the students.
The only advantage of open classrooms and combined classes is teachers can have a natter during class time.
The teachers unions, complicit teachers, and the ministry of education are responsible for poor education in NZ.
Thank goodness for the brave, intelligent Erica Stanford. Erica is standing up to the unions and the DOE and she is winning.
Our children will be the real winners, particularly brown children to whom an effective education is the best way to avoid gangs (studies show most gang members want out) and jail time.
I can't explain why Stanford left the school board maori and treaty mumbo jumbo in place.
It would be great if Erica or her associate, Seymour could explain why the time and money wasting treaty land mine has been maintained.
Anywhere else in the world that big open classrooms have been a outstanding success ?
A failed experiment to solve a problem that didn't exist.
Over centuries, it's been proven that seperate classrooms gave the best results.
Stop wasting our children's lives.
What muddled headed committee of buffoons dreamed up that bone headed idea?
Post a Comment
Thanks for engaging in the debate!
Because this is a public forum, we will only publish comments that are respectful and do NOT contain links to other sites. We appreciate your cooperation.