UNLEASH

ED

Tag: policy

  • Uncertainty

    Uncertainty

    Teachers and Schools are facing an uphill battle; one that is seemingly never ending in the current climate.

    We have a government hell-bent on reforming every aspect of education. Thankfully for them, they inherited the beginnings of a curriculum change from the previous government. However, rather than continuing in the same vain, they chopped it up and replaced it with their own ideology, jumping on the “structured literacy” bandwagon that many schools had begun moving to, invented a phrase “structured maths” to fake legitimacy in the idea and rewrote the curriculum in both areas, somewhat overnight with very little consultation. It comes as no surprise to those who have unpacked the new new curriculum that it was heavily written by AI and this explains the speed in which the revision happened.

    I could spend a whole series of essays outlining the motivation behind these changes, but that is not the objective of writing this.

    No. This article is to outline the plight of the teacher.

    Teachers got told about the changes to the draft curriculum at the end of August of 2024, whilst of course, we were still familiarising ourselves with the ‘old’ draft curriculum. Somewhat hilariously, schools were still receiving professional development from the Ministry of Education around the Mathematicss curriculum when the curriculum changed. During the course of Term 3, teachers were somehow expected to continue teaching from the old curriculum, prepare for reports, carry out assessments, and now review and give feedback about the new draft curriculum.  The shut off for consultation happened and in October 2024 the ‘draft’ was finalised. 

    It was then announced that primary schools would have to begin teaching Reading, Writing and Mathematics from the new curriculum in Term 1 of 2025, giving mere months for the changes to be implemented school-wide. In those months, teachers would be focussed on end of year activities, conducting final assessments, finalising reports, organising end of year activities, organising transition to next years classes, prize givings and senior end of year functions, finishing off the year and farewelling the students leaving. Add in the only ACTUAL break teachers have due to rules around when leave is allowed to be taken, with Christmas and New Year taking priority. If teachers granted themselves two weeks “off”, this would leave a mere 3 weeks before beginning school. Thats three weeks to get your new class organised, synthesise assessment to get an understanding on where your class sits, read notes on the students in your class, arrange desks and implement new or better refined routines, class lists, seating plans, wall displays, and begin to formulate unit plans for the first term.

    Somewhere in all of that, teachers were expected to read and implement a new curriculum for the two biggest subjects in the curriculum. Let’s not forget as well, that not only did the content of the curriculum change, but how it is formatted changed as well. Curriculum Levels are out and ‘Phases’ are in. No longer did we have a curriculum that spanned two years per level, but now every single year had a series of expectations of what was to be taught (despite most schools in the country running composite year classes). On top of this, for the first time in recent history (this century at least!) the curriculum not only outlined WHAT teachers had to teach, but HOW they were to teach it. Whole class, explicit instruction, exposure to many concepts instead of mastery of a few, all methods inspired by the ‘Science’ of Learning ideology that is the latest concoction of pedagogy. If you could ever set up an entire workforce to “learn on the job”, the government had just done it with the entire primary school sector. Teachers were literally teaching from a curriculum that they were still reading and coming to grips with. It is no wonder that teachers were ill equipped for this change, and there was zero confidence in what they were teaching or how they were teaching it, relying heavily on intuition if they had any left, and additional hours spent watching webinars and video clips to try and best follow the curriculum they’d been dealt. 

    Before you knew it, the next lot of curriculum changes were being pushed into draft, and suddenly the ball continued rolling, as well as expanding the existing new curriculum to include Years 7 – 10, completely confusing the entire procedure. Furthermore, with the expansion of the English and Maths curriculum for Year 0-10 came with it amendments and changes to the existing curriculum that Year 0-6 had already been teaching from! So now teachers had a new, new curriculum to unpack; but now they had to figure out what the changes were and make the changes themselves to what they had been teaching. 

    Why would teachers invest their energy in getting to know a curriculum and implement it if there is a high likelihood it is just going to change on them as soon as they do?

    The uncertainty of this very thing leaves teachers in no man’s land.

    Then there’s the uncertainty around the messaging schools receive from the Minister and the Ministry of Education.

    When ‘Structured Maths’ was dreamt up on the coattails of ‘Structured Literacy’, the Minister announced four providers that schools could choose from to implement this new venture. 

    Certain programmes schools were using were discarded and millions upon millions of dollars went into providing workbooks and teacher guides and online subscriptions around the country. Schools didn’t want to miss out on the funding for these resources, and had to decide fairly quickly as to which provider they were going to go with.

    However, looking into it, this was never mandated. The language used was never legally binding, instead this was announced at the same time as Minister Stanford gazetted the implementation of the new Maths Curriculum for Term 1 2025. It was stated that the Ministry would provide supplementary, Ministry-funded classroom workbooks, sourced from four suppliers. So you can see how it would appear that use of the resources was mandated, when in actuality, it was not. They were merely provided to support the mandate that was made regarding the curriculum.

    This has lead many principals to now check with any of the changes being made (mostly to protect themselves, their staff and their schools from unnecessary changes given the sheer volume of changes there have been) whether the change has been gazetted (mandated) or is it merely a suggestion or recommendation by the Ministry?

    The mere fact that this due diligence needs to be done over Ministry announcements just goes to show the complete distrust, lack of faith and complete uncertainty that exists throughout the sector.

    The Minister announced in Term 2 of 2026 that she has pushed back the roll out of the other curriculum areas, to give teachers the time that they have been asking for.

    Unfortunately, this does nothing except delay the inevitable. It doesn’t give teachers more time to study the curriculum and get their heads around it. Why would any teacher do that when the track record would suggest that they’re just as likely to change it between now and then. So instead, just as with the current changes that have already been implemented, teachers will simply have to continue to learn on the job, teach on the fly, given they complete uncertainty and zero faith they can have in the curriculum changes. 

    The uncertainty that exists is stress inducing. It’s additional workload and time-based pressure that could all be alleviated with proper implementation plans that aren’t being rushed through. Carefully implemented plans that work with the sector would go a long way in actually making a difference. However, the whole process has been forced and rushed, and an insurmountable about of pressure out on schools and teachers to just get on and do it.

    Solution Focussed

    A more considered approach is required.

    Measured steps need to be taken instead of rushing widespread changes.

    The changes in curriculum implementation I want to see are as follows:

    Draft curriculum released in its entirety for all to see. 

    Appropriate avenues of feedback provided and actively engaged with the sector – not just giving deadlines for feedback that are adverse to what else teachers are required to do.

    Once a draft is finalised, provide the sector with the finalised version. It should be legalised that this then needs to be in printed form. (One of the reasons I believe they are so prolific with changes is that it doesn’t cost anything much to update content on a website, which is currently all they have to do to change the curriculum. By having to print it, the Ministry will be less likely to make changes, given the cost that it would take)

    Once the curriculum is finalised, give the sector a year to begin exploring the curriculum and implement it during that year if they’re comfortable with it, and only mandate teaching from it in the following year.

    That would provide a clear, and certain plan for schools and teachers to work to. It provides fair and legitimate time for implementation and confidence can return to the sector because of the lack of uncertainty. 

  • The pendulum swings back on school tests | BBC

    Let’s hope that NZ Government can make the change before they have to go back on this. Let’s ditch any National based assessment for primary schoolers. It’s too much. Too much pressure on the children. Too much pressure on the teachers. All for what? Thankfully the UK Government are beginning to see that what they’re doing isn’t helping…

    30 March 2017

    If news stories could have a soundtrack, then this scrapping of tests in the early years of primary school would have the creaking sound of a pendulum slowly swinging back.

    The Department for Education is proposing that national curriculum tests taken by seven-year-olds in England could be ditched.

    Instead there would be an assessment of five-year-olds by a teacher – a so-called “baseline test” – which would be used as a starting point for measuring progress through primary school.

    It represents a step backwards from more and more testing – a shift in attitude as much as policy.

    And it raises again the thorny question of what kind of tests young children should face in primary school.

    Are such tests a helpful indicator for identifying pupils’ needs? Or are they an unnecessary pressure – a case of too much, too young? And are such tests going to mean a paper mountain of extra bureaucracy for teachers, hindering rather than helping learning?

    ‘Hope over experience’

    The teachers’ unions have broadly given their support to the government’s announcement to row back on the tests for seven year olds in reading, writing, maths and science.

    But the National Union of Teachers still says the idea of a baseline test for four or five-year-olds remains a “triumph of hope over experience”.

    The teachers’ union questions whether this can ever be a sufficiently reliable test to be used as a fixed point against which to measure all the following years of a child’s progress.

    But the counter-argument to this is that you have to start somewhere.

    If schools are to be held to account for how much progress children have made by the age of 11 – then it has to be measured against a starting point.

    And isn’t the natural starting point in the first year?

    There is also a strong argument that it is the low achievers and the disadvantaged who will be most in need of the extra help that a test might identify.

    And at the last general election, all three main political parties were sympathetic to the principle of baseline testing.

    But the announcement on testing also raises another great back and forth of the education pendulum. How much data is too much?

    Parents’ evenings, with spreadsheets and targets, can feel like a chat with the accountants.

    And for the schools themselves, the accumulation and analysis of data has become a major part of their working lives.

    Read more here.

    Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-39444999

  • Welsh schoolchildren to receive early help with mental health problems

    Children with emotional and mental health problems are to receive early help at school from teams of experts as part of a “unique” initiative being set up by the Welsh government. Pupils at more than 200 schools in Wales will be able to access on-site help as part of the £1.4m pilot scheme.

    The Welsh government’s announcement comes as concern grows about the ability of schools to look after children with mental health problems. Research published last week found that more than half of primary school teachers in England do not feel adequately trained to support pupils with mental health problems.

    NHS data for England gathered by the Guardian showed girls and young women are experiencing a “gathering crisis” in their mental health linked to conflict with friends, fears about their body image and pressures created by social media.

    The Welsh government said on Monday that its scheme was unique in the UK. It will cover 28 secondary schools, six middle schools and 190 primary schools in three pilot areas in north-east, south-east and west Wales.

    Dedicated child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS) practitioners will be recruited to work with pilot schools.

    The practitioners will provide teachers with on-site help and advice to try to ensure pupils experiencing difficulties such as anxiety, low mood and compulsive self-harm or conduct disorders receive early help in schools from trained staff. It is not known yet how many staff will be recruited.

    The Welsh health secretary, Vaughan Gething, said: “One in four people in Wales will experience mental health problems at some point in their lives. Getting the right treatment at an early stage can in many cases prevent long-term adverse impacts.

    Read more here.

    Imagine if the NZ Government had the same sort of commitment?

    Source: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/25/wales-schoolchildren-receive-early-help-mental-health-problems

  • No More Sense from Seymour

    And so it begins.

    The non-sensical dribble spews forth from the under-secretary of Education, who gets into a lucrative position on the back of one electorate described on Wikipedia as an “exclusive, affluent suburb of Auckland”.

    That’s right. Mr. Seymour is at it again as he launches the ACT Party campaign.

    We will pay good teachers more. And great ones even more. No doubt David will be the judge as to which teachers make good teachers and which ones make great ones. I would put money on schools not being able to decide that themselves, and even more money on it being based on student results i.e. National Standards ala Performance Pay.

    Of course, one can see his point when he opens with the statement that the average teacher is paid a pittance, and deserve to be paid more.

    To fix that, the party is proposing an extra $1 billion in funding for education. “ACT’s proposed good teacher grants will give your average teacher a pay rise of $20,000 per year,” Mr Seymour claimed.

    But to receive the extra money, schools “need to opt out of the centralised payroll system and collective agreements”.

    This has rubbed a lot of people (in particular teachers) up the wrong way. No surprises there.

    But here’s why his solution makes no sense.

    Hypothetically Synonymous Seymoronous

    Let’s assume that schools go for this, and EVERY school in the country pays their teachers an average of $20,000 per year more than they are already. That is going to cost a lot.

    However, none of that has anything to do with collective agreements, the unions, or any centralised payroll system. They are not synonymous with each other.

    It’s illogical.

    In fact, under Seymour’s scheme, teachers could stay in the union with the collective agreement, and they could still get paid $20,000 more if he really means it; just get a new collective agreement ratified between the government and the union, or have both – give a bit more to schools to ‘top up’ teacher salaries that are paid through the collective agreement. It’s only because ACT are notoriously anti-union that he is dangling the carrot for principals and teachers to consider.

    Pay more Seymour

    The second factor is that given the current climate in education, there are teachers leaving in droves, and not always because they aren’t being paid enough. On many occasions, the workload is too much. Refer to this article in March. As a teacher, like many others, I would probably take less workload over getting paid more to ‘compensate’ for the increased workload that is currently expected of us.

    In Conclusion

    While paying teachers more is a genuinely nice touch, Mr. S, if you really cared and were really in touch with the education sector, and you actually wanted to value teachers, then maybe the first step is to work with the union rather than trying to sabotage it into non-existence.

    Illogical. Blackmail. Numpty.

     

  • Winter is coming

    Other things than teacher shortages that can be blamed on the winter season…

    • Charter schools aren’t really working because it’s winter…
    • Winter is largely responsible for Māori student underachievement…
    • Overcrowded homes with multiple families living under one roof is only a factor because of winter…
    • There is no mental health crisis, it’s just winter…
    • Cold and damp living situations only happen because of winter…
    • Underfunding schools happens because of each year’s winter…
    • House prices are only high because it’s winter…
    • Teacher stress and workload is only an issue because of winter…
    • Winter causes families to want to live in cars…
    • There is no child poverty, it’s just winter…
    • Youth suicide. Winter…
    • Terrorism. Winter…
    • North Korea vs. US. Winter…
    • Titanic, Hindenburg, Tangiwai, Wahine. Winter…

     

    In response to: There isn’t really a teacher shortage…

  • National Standards Plus

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Mum is running late for work, driving over the hill to her 9 til 5 job in the city centre. A notification comes through on her phone at 9:01am, and although she knows she shouldn’t, she checks her phone anyway. The message preview reads “Sally Burgess*: Reading – Below, Writing – Below, Mathematics – Wel…” before it gets truncated to fit on the screen. Opening it up to see the $45 million dollar app in all it’s glory, Mum forgets about the upcoming corner and drives off the road into the fence of the unfortunate homeowner. This instantly lands her in hospital. It could have been so much worse though. She probably counts herself lucky not to have plowed through multiple crowds of children at the local school 300 metres down the road.

    That’s right. The government would have parents being updated in real time every and any progress their child is making in National Standards throughout the school day.

    They’re calling this ‘National Standards Plus’, largely because of the additional time and energy that is going to be chewing into teachers already busy schedule. The additional testing, the additional data gathering, the additional reporting and notifying and uploading to the app’s system. All this PLUS actually teaching the children.

    National Standards Plus would allow parents to track their child’s progress in more detail online.

    “We will show you your child’s progress on your mobile phone, English said. “Some schools have already rolled out tools that support this approach.

    – Stuff, 28 August 2017

     

    The benefit to this will be of course that parents are kept up to date with their child’s progress as it happens.

    Of course, to get this, teachers will be required to input data as it happens. Which will have to be regularly for it to be a worthwhile app to keep on your phone. So now instead of teaching, teachers will be in a constant state of testing, assessing, marking and upload results to the app, for each and every child in their class, each and every day.

    What the government is forgetting however, is the cost of equipping each classroom in the country with one of these:

    Osbourne:  Portable Scale, Wide, Digital.

    Whether you are weighing market hogs to capture packer premiums or weighing show pigs, goats, or lambs, the Osborne ACCU-ARM Portable Scale offers the most “rock solid” portable weighing system available. The solid, animal-friendly scale uses precision levers to reduce sway and bounce and is completely cable free! With Osborne, the entire weighing operation is more efficient and less stressful for both you and your livestock!

    This scale features standard side panels, side-opening gates, a wheel kit for easy transportation, and a weighing meter with digital read out. The scale platform is 20 in. (51 cm) wide and the scale weighs animals up to 500 lbs. (227 kg).

    Find out more here.

    Using these scales to weigh the pigs is one thing, but teaching children so that there is progress to notify parents about is another.

    Labour education spokesman Chris Hipkins said National was ‘”doubling down” on its National Standards system which was not improving student achievement.

    “Kids in New Zealand are over assessed. What we need is less reporting, more teaching.”

    And he questioned how teachers would find the time to update assessment records for continual online access.

    Education union the NZEI said plans to spend millions building a computer tool to track children’s progress as it happened,” based on shonky National Standards, is an obsession with data gone mad”.

    “Requiring teachers to input standardised assessment data across a range of subjects in real time for 30 or more students in a class will reduce the time teachers have with children and increase children’s anxiety about learning,” NZEI Te Riu Roa President Lynda Stuart says.

    “No parent wants their child’s teacher sitting entering data for hours when they need to be face to face with kids.”

    Seriously. How ridiculous?

    Oink.

     

    In relation to – Stuff – National launches official campaign with education bid

  • Education policy won’t tackle the big issues | Stuff.co.nz

    The National Party is showing it is completely out of touch with schools by offering up an education policy that misses the chance to fix crucial issues in the sector, say principals and teachers.

    The plan is part of the four-pronged $380 million education plan revealed by leader Bill English and education spokesperson Nikki Kaye yesterday.

    But Principals’ Federation president Whetu Cormick was less than impressed.

    He said the sector just had a new digital curriculum dumped on their laps in June.

    “At the moment we’ve got about 4000 teachers who are ready, out of 100,000 of us, to do this curriculum.

    “Now we’ve got another idea of languages, pouring in precious millions of dollars into this idea that’s come completely out of left field, just reflects that our Prime Minister’s out of touch.

    “There aren’t enough teachers around to teach our rich curriculum and the basics of reading, writing and maths.”

    His biggest gripe was that the money was not going to be spent where it was desperately needed.

    “We’ve got big, big issues with severe behaviours. Children who are affected by methamphetamine parents, their addictions. They’re causing some concerns in our schools. We’re hearing from our colleagues, principals across the country … they’re at breaking point.”

    Read full article from Jacob McSweeny here: RadioNZ

  • Future of education in NZ for National freightrain

    In response to NZ Herald – Every child’s chance to learn second language: National’s education policy – 27 August 2017.

    Whilst some schools are struggling to get students to learn a first language, we’ll be teaching them coding and a second language as well should National get through to it’s fourth consecutive term.

    National Standards will be extended.

    And low and behold, surprise, surprise, they will be pumping money into improving the teaching of maths to primary schools.

    Seriously. When will they get the message?

    The second part of the package was a $126 million investment to raise maths achievement for primary school students. English said National Standards showed New Zealand needed to lift its game in maths. “So we’ll provide our students and teachers with the tools they need to do that… We’ll help 1200 teachers a year complete extra university papers targeted at teaching maths to primary students… We’ll also provide intensive classroom support for students, where schools have identified the need to improve their maths.”

    Obviously teachers are the reason students aren’t achieving in Mathematics. Rubbish teachers and ineffective teaching. Ignore the fact that there are other factors at play for many students, it MUST be the useless teachers we have that are failing our students.

    So to fix this problem, we’ll send teachers back to university to learn how to teach Mathematics more effectively by ex-teachers-turn-lecturers who couldn’t hack it in the classroom 15 years ago with some kind of trendy fad way of teaching. Probably after school, in teacher’s own time.

    Teachers work out of their skin. Anyone who has visited schools that are supposedly ‘struggling’ knows that there are other factors in any underachievement.

    It’s made even more a joke when you begin to look at the reason behind such a policy. A simple search on our favourite search engine shows that Education Counts has the data for National Standards Results, 2016 (PDF). On the very first graph of this document we see that Reading sits at 77.8%, Maths at 75.4% and 71.2% for Writing. So why are we targeting Maths?

    Quite simple actually.

    Maths is the easiest to address. It has a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’. It’s measurable. It’s quantifiable. It’s the easiest to show progress. It’s assessments are stable and data rich. This is something that Reading and Writing don’t have, being largely subjective – especially Writing. The government want to ride on some success. By investing in Mathematics and measuring the future success of their education budget, they can prove that National Standards work, and legitimise all three subjects.

    However, what teachers really want, and really need, are some resources, assessments, and some structure around how Writing is assessed and taught, and to see how this can impact on all other subjects (including Mathematics). Pumping more money into Mathematics is an easy out for the Government, whilst appearing that they are putting in resources and funding into education before an election, whilst in reality, they are plugging a hole that isn’t leaking (or not leaking as much).

    Are any teacher’s actually excited about this? About having more money put into Mathematics, even after ALiM and other initiatives? About the prospect of having to go back to complete some additional university papers?

  • Primary schools to measure student progress

    In response to https://beehive.govt.nz/release/primary-schools-measure-student-progress – August 26, 2017.

    Measure. Measure. Measure. Weigh. Weigh. Weigh. Data. Data. Data.

    “The Government has made a decision to shift towards a system that measures student progress, alongside National Standards / Ngā Whanaketanga Rumaki Māori, to help ensure every student gets the support they need to achieve…
    Monitoring student progress gives teachers more data on which to tailor learning plans for their students – and we want to roll this out to all primary schools and kura.”

    says Education Minister Nikki Kaye.

    More data. More weighing. More testing. More assessment.

    Guess what. Teacher’s already monitor progress. I can show you the progress each of my students are making (or not making) in each of the three big subjects that now dominate the New Zealand Curriculum. Obviously not enough though.

    “Measuring progression means teachers will be able to see how far children have come in the specific learning areas that make up National Standards.”

    In some regards, it is good that the Minister has acknowledged what teachers have been saying for a while. Some students make incredible progress within a year, but are still below or well below the expected standard set by the Standards.

    “The change also reflects the education sector’s observation that we don’t adequately show a student’s progress over time, particularly for students who may be below the standard, and this will help address that.”

    This is all well and good, but as schools have come to know through the berading from ERO and senior advisers, progress don’t mean jack when it comes to achievement, which is all ‘the Ministry’ and ERO actually care about. 85% At or Above. 85%. 85%. 85%.

    Ultimately however, this will actually just lead to the mandatory use of PaCT.

    To support teachers the Ministry of Education has developed progress tools, such as Learning Progression Frameworks, the Progress and Consistency Tool and Whakatupuranga, that help show how children are doing and how they can progress. These have been developed in a number of areas including reading, writing, maths and digital technologies.

    The Government wants to roll out tools like these to all primary schools and kura as evidence shows they deliver real benefits for teachers and kaiako, by streamlining paperwork and reducing their reporting workload.

    There has been copious amounts written about PaCT and it’s potential. Just have a look at the following

    Education continues down this reform, with National determined on making National Standards legitimate.

     

  • Post-Mortem: UK Public Schooling

    Post Mortem: UK public schooling.

    Family: UK Government – related to: US, NZ.

    Death: Terminated by family.

    Age: 100 years of publicly funded education

    References: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-35814215

    General Body Condition: Diminished frame with minimal experts. Main organs shut down. Donors needed.

    CLINICAL HISTORY:

    The patient had undergone a variety of surgeries recently, and had come under attack from GERM(s) in quite a severe way. The use of GERM had become quite pronounced and at this time, the although the doctors recommended further diagnosis be undertaken from specialists, the family has asked that the life support be switched off and the body be laid to rest.

    POST-MORTEM FINDINGS:

    • Poor academic results according to nationalised testing
    • Poor performing teachers at schools with poor results. (Unconfirmed)
    • Large quantities of GERM infecting the hosts (Department of Education)
    • MGD (Michael Gove Disease) present in host from 2010.
    • Morgan-Nicky Virus spread throughout workforce from 2011.
    • Strong discomfort from Local Authorities.
    • Records show that GERM had affected only 14.5% of the 16,766 Public Schools. It was based on this data that lead family to believe that terminating public schools was a good idea.

    It is with regret that Public Schooling in the UK will be terminated, as of Thursday 17 March, 2016.