Any organisation where Cameron Bagrie is the chair I’ll pay attention to.
Apart from his in-built advantages of being a proud son of Central Otago and an old boy of Waitaki Boys High School, he’s been a beacon of economic common sense in this country for twenty years.
One of his long standing mantra is that “ if you want to see the state of a nation’s economy in thirty years, look at its education system and achievement now.”
Like many of us he’s looked on with dismay as our educational standards, as measured by international testing, have slipped dramatically this century.
Recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results point at least to a slight turnaround.
To recap, in the year 2000 New Zealand was 5th on the overall list combining maths, reading and science.
By 2012 we’d slipped to 20th but last year we’d climbed back up to 10th.
Amidst all the various contributors to the education system and policies - politicians, teacher unions and bureaucrats - there’s one group that has till now never had a voice or been able to offer ideas as to how and what children are taught - their parents.
Hence the formation of a new education lobby group: The Parents Alliance of which Bagrie is the inaugural chair.
The organisation, launching officially on Tuesday, 22 September, has lined up some heavy hitters and well connected types to make the parents’ case in the education of their children.
The core values of The Parents Alliance are these:
Recent PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) results point at least to a slight turnaround.
To recap, in the year 2000 New Zealand was 5th on the overall list combining maths, reading and science.
By 2012 we’d slipped to 20th but last year we’d climbed back up to 10th.
Amidst all the various contributors to the education system and policies - politicians, teacher unions and bureaucrats - there’s one group that has till now never had a voice or been able to offer ideas as to how and what children are taught - their parents.
Hence the formation of a new education lobby group: The Parents Alliance of which Bagrie is the inaugural chair.
The organisation, launching officially on Tuesday, 22 September, has lined up some heavy hitters and well connected types to make the parents’ case in the education of their children.
The core values of The Parents Alliance are these:
1. Ensuring educational achievement and progress for students is the top priority for our schools.
2. Ensuring teachers are well trained and ready for the classroom.
3. School reports are meaningful.
4. There must be more early support for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
5. There needs to be fewer zoning barriers for high schools meaning parents can send their child to the one most appropriate.
6. An insistence that schools are surveyed annually by the parents so that schools know what they must do to improve.
It’s hardly radical policy yet for many parents it’s far from reality.
The Parents Alliance appears to be the brainchild of Wellington mother Anya Zohrab, a former parliamentary staffer for Annette King and David Seymour.
She’s tapped her Wellington network well, getting not just Bagrie on board but also pollster and Taxpayers Union co-founder David Farrar, former Labour Cabinet Minister turned Insurance Council boss Kris Faafoi and two other businesswomen and mothers, Cat Moody and Joanne Chaplow.
I don’t know the political leanings of the last two but having Faafoi as a board member alongside Bagrie and Farrar assumes this is a non-partisan outfit with only education outcomes in mind and that the needs and wishes of parents are an integral part of the way schools are run.
So far just under 3000 supporters have signed up at parentsalliance.nz
I’m a father of three and grandfather seven. As the son of school teachers the value of education was always a given in our house growing up.
I like to think that value was passed on to my children as they grew up and I watched on proudly as they accumulated six university degrees between them.
(I hasten to say that’s six more than their old man.)
But looking back to their school days in the eighties and nineties, i remember - perhaps with rose tinted glasses- easy access for me as a parent to any of their schools at any time for any reservations I might have had about my children’s progress or learning.
Now I hear things from and about my New Zealand grandchildren ( two are in London) which really make me wonder about the direction primary education especially is taking.
The worst story of all is of my Wellington granddaughter doing her only maths for the week at 2 pm on a Friday afternoon.
Soon after the young lady’s parents removed her from that school!
As Cameron Bagrie says, the teacher unions have carried far too much influence for far too long in education.
Having the likes of Bagrie, Farrar and Faafoi pushing the case for what parents need and deserve in education can only be a good thing.
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
6 comments:
NO! NO! and thrice NO!
Read the six points. They are exactly the same "points" as every other outfit pretending to "think of the kiddies" and there are plenty of them.
In fact I suspect there are more "concerned organisations" in this area than there are children.
Each one has one aim: to tell others what to do (and get paid to do so).
For example"4. There must be more early support for those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds."
Why? There are so many outfits purporting to offer this type of support now the sector must be the richest in New Zealand but their results are abysmal.
Far better New Zealand parents set up an organisation that forces themselves and their co-parents to raise their children so they (the children) can think, can process knowlege and WANT TO LEARN.
That force will probably be social pressure but, personally, I'd call for stocks and whips.
Only by installing the desire for knowlege and making the search for knowlege fun and exiting for children from a VERY early age will parents do right by their children.
Teenagers think they know everything. If we help the very young in this respect they will be correct - and still want more.
THIS IS THE PARENT'S JOB!
It is my understanding that rather than us climbing from 20th to 10th, it is more that those above have failed even worse than we have, this allowing us to feel good about continuing failure.
Having been involved in the 1980s in having a court case over truancy which contributed to homeschooling , and involved in the reading wars , since 1970s , during which I helped my mother taught 1500 reading failure students, I have some very decided ideas and believe strongly in the involvement of parents in, basic education . My intense annoyance is with how academia has wrecked our once world class education system , beginning in 1950, with the introduction of progressive education.
Literacy is the quintessential element of schooling and before 1950 it was equally shared between parents and schools.
My observation of the current apparent enlightened but reinventing the wheel, approach in returning to systematic phonics as we used to have is to put it bluntly hopeless.
Developed by academics who have very little experience , clearly , of classroom experience and practical parental involvement .
My solution is that basic literacy and numeracy be taken completely out of the hands of the Ministry of Mis -education and academia and given to parents , who actually mostly care about children.
Here are some suggestions -
Have the early reading / arithmetic materials all available very cheaply to everyone .Have the whole population learn how to teach elementary reading and arithmetic It is too important to have' elite 'academics, messing this up, yet again as they have in NZ for about 70 years .
This would include cognitively developed workbooks with instruction in ordinary English ( not educabble ) for parents or extended family. These would include copious amounts of spelling which is tragically missing now and the secret to orthographic mapping - educabble for getting words into long term memory .
100s of Phonic and high frequency word story books . Not the very pathetic number of readers they have now, which many parents never see anyway.
Banish those infernal whole Language , guessing books . Cut them up for the pictures .
Paper and pencil exercises., not screens .
In the 1930s , My mother , practiced Universal Literacy by having every child in the class reading
. at the correct level for their age. In the 1970s --2000 she had semi -literate parents teach their own reading failure children using home based workbooks .
Don't waffle on about equal opportunity , equity etc ,do something practical . Gaynor .
.
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A worse story I have about maths teaching is of a teacher who 'didn't see any point of doing maths . For TWO whole years her class had no maths instruction at all
Can I offer a suggestion to The Education Sector.
" Disestablish the NZQA Quango ".
Since inception, this organization has done nothing, but change how the students will learn, whilst 'offering a treat' - namely NZQA Credits, to show the 'student' that they have achieved - something.
It became mandatory if, providing an education profile, you had to registered as an an education provider.
This meant 'oversight' by NZQA also they 'dabbled in subject matter', for which those
who did the dabbling were not, in many cases, conversant with subject matter.
In the midst of their younger years, NZQA had 'a finger' pointed at them', that many teachers [of both schools & other like minded education outlets] of subjects - any & everything - were awarding 'credits' just because they could.
NZQA denied this, sadly our MSM proved them wrong.
I have accomplished studies, via distance learning, yes there was NZQA Credits, but my 'mentors' stated that, they meant little to what my end goal was, A Degree, which was awarded on work achieved by my own hand.
Does the student coming out of High School have the same 'advice' in their ears.
One has to question this, as MSM reports show that many have no abilities at all, but possibly lots of NZQA Credits - for what??
When I read the article, I recall my years at High School (1962 to 1966) and those fellow students -
- who had a goal
- who had ideas of learning a trade
- who could not wait till their 16th Birthday, so they could leave school.
Are our High Schools still like this?
>"I have accomplished studies, via distance learning, yes there was NZQA Credits, but my 'mentors' stated that, they meant little to what my end goal was, A Degree, which was awarded on work achieved by my own hand."
Anon 903, I do hope this degree is not one of those unrecognised ones from a 'diploma mill' that awards phoney quals in return for lots of suckers' bucks..
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