Hekia Parata has been keeping a low profile as she tries to rebuild her reputation after the class sizes debacle. But she seems to have learned one lesson, as this media release on the Beehive website suggests:
Forum commits to raising achievement goal
The Ministerial Cross-Sector Forum on Raising Achievement has agreed to work together on achieving success for all learners.Forum chair, Education Minister Hekia Parata, welcomed the commitment from all the Forum representatives.“We know that our education system is amongst the best in the world with four out of five kids successfully working towards getting the qualifications they need at school,” says Ms Parata. “But our goal is about getting five out of five.“In the Forum we have the expertise and support of the wider education sector. It was great to agree on a common goal of improving education outcomes for every single learner.”The Forum, which met for the first time today, aims to provide collaborative cross-sector leadership and advice to the Minister on a quality achievement programme for education that will help meet the Government’s Better Public Service Targets of 98 per cent of new school entrants having participated in quality early childhood education and 85 per cent of 18 year-olds having achieved NCEA Level 2 or an equivalent qualification over five years.Today the Forum agreed that New Zealand has an education achievement challenge in front of it and opportunities exist for all learners to improve their educational outcomes.The Forum commenced the task of identifying the key issues which must be addressed in four areas: quality teaching; smarter use of achievement information at individual, school and national levels; strengthening the performance and accountability of schools and education agencies for student achievement; and learning environments that are fit for purpose in the 21st century.Over the coming months the Forum, which includes representatives from primary and secondary schools, early learning and tertiary education sectors, unions, business, academics, iwi and educational experts, will collaborate in small sub groups to identify, clarify, and progress system issues in the four areas.“We have an opportunity to propel our education system, and all our learners, to greater levels of achievement,” says Ms Parata.“I look forward to working with the Forum to identify the steps we can take to achieve this outcome.”The Forum will meet monthly for the rest of the year.
The membership of the Ministerial Forum (which is listed at the foot of the release) is diverse, and representative of all the sector. Many of those on the list have been openly critical of the current and past governments; Ian Leckie from NZEI, Patrick Walsh of the School Trustees' Assn and Robin Duff from the PPTA.
10 comments:
Yes, good on Hekia Parata for putting out a press release saying nothing much at all. That's the way it should be done. We've seen what happens when she actually tries to do something, so this is much better.
I totally agree with you, KS. When over 80% of our children are doing well under the current system and we are leading the world in most areas of achievement, we don't need systemic change. We can always improve and working with the profession rather than dictating to it is the best way of achieving that.
I often refer to the New Zealand Institute's report card for New Zealand where education is the most successful sector. If you look at areas of poor performance, I can't understand why much of the government's energy is diverted to education, growing family poverty should be the main area of focus.
Margaret Wu, an internationally respected authority on assessment (she is a key advisor for the PISA assessments), states that of all the determining factors for academic achievement, teachers make up only 10%. The income and aspirations of families make the biggest difference and when we hear that 50% of children experience poverty at some time-surely this is what needs to be addressed above all else.
Does the profession have any ideas about improving the lot of the 20% who currently fail, bsprout?
Hi KS
Do you really believe that the teaching unions will engage with anything that a National government proposes, no matter how much they kowtow and sugar coat things? The first order of business in changing things in this sector is to smash those unions. First step - make them collect their own union dues.
Brian, I can never understand this blind hatred for education unions, perhaps some of you had a bad experience at school and have never forgiven us. NZEI is 130 years old and started life as a purely professional organisation and and only developed into a union when it also became the obvious bargaining agent for teachers.
There is still a strong professional focus and I myself have been involved with helping write curriculum and documents for special needs students. I think we have only used strike action as a lever twice in 130 years, we are hardly militant and would rather use research and evidence to support claims.
I often read strange accusations that we protect poorly performing members, including sex offenders, and yet if you looked at individual cases you would probably find that the union just ensures good process, which is important no matter who the employee. Our code of ethics and professional standards, like all other professions largely ensures struggling teachers are identified and managed.
Complaints against teachers is about the lowest of all professions and I would say that the professionalism of most teachers has steadily increased since I first started teaching 30 years ago and the hours and demands have certainly increased. The average hours for classroom teachers is around 50 hours per week and for senior staff, 60-70 hours is not unusual.
My wife is a GP and I found it hugely frustrating when I found myself earning half of her income for twice the hours when I was a DP of a large school. In Finland the teaching profession are regarded as higher in status than GPs.
I guess you could smash the union but this would just remove the professional voice from educational change. If you believe that education should be governed by political imperatives rather than educational, perhaps that is necessary.
I am not a big fan of teachers unions because they are uniformly left wing in their views
And I cannot understand my childrens reports.
Take a remedial reading course then, scott. It will make you feel less inadequate.
Thank you Mr Holden. In fact I have 2 university degrees and my wife has one and she cannot understand it either.
The difficulty is that the reports do not spell out how your child is achieving in a simple way. In fact they seem designed to obscure whether your child is going very well or doing very poorly or somewhere in the middle.
I actually think this is deliberate. There is a school of thought in teaching today that says your child's self esteem is the most important thing and they should not be told they are failing. Because this will damage their self esteem.
So out go 'A' 'B' and 'C'. Or even 1 to 5. In comes obscurity. Which in my view is deliberate.
"Does the profession have any ideas about improving the lot of the 20% who currently fail, bsprout?"
Seems not.
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