It could be a seismic shift in education, tearing apart the model schools have operated on for more than 30 years.
School leaders are “cautiously optimistic” about radical reforms recommended by an independent taskforce last week, which said there was no evidence self-governance had helped schools improve equity or lift student achievement.
Its proposals are open for public consultation until April 7, when Education Minister Chris Hipkins will consider what changes to pursue.
The taskforce’s main recommendation is that New Zealand establish 20 ‘Education Hubs’ to act as the middlemen between the Government and individual schools.
The hubs would take over many of school boards of trustees’ business and governance responsibilities, leaving them to focus on student achievement, strategic planning, community engagement and local fundraising.
The idea has caused some uneasiness in the education sector, partly because it is not known exactly who or how many people would act as minister-appointed directors of these Crown entities.
But the main cause of angst has been the hubs’ potentially wide-reaching powers over property, employment, advisory services, professional development, and funding for up to 125 schools each.
“The one thing I do like is the personalisation and communication to communities that we currently have; I would hate to lose that,” Canterbury West Coast Principals’ Association president and Burnside High School principal Phil Holstein said.
“It’s another layer of administration and I’m not sure how that would look.”
Beyond a massive restructure of school governance, the independent taskforce has made several other game-changing recommendations.
…
The taskforce has proposed principals spend only five years at a school before they are moved elsewhere.
The proposal came as a surprise to New Zealand Principals’ Federation president and Bathgate Park School principal Whetu Cormick.
”We would all be thinking, what does this mean for ourselves? I would expect we would still have a permanent position within the hub arrangement,” he said.
“The idea of us moving across and sharing knowledge in schools … is an idea we haven’t had for a very, very long time.”
Under the taskforce’s plan, principals would be appointed by the hubs rather than by boards of trustees.
Several principals welcomed these ideas as a way to keep them accountable – even if they lost some job stability.
But it could take five years just to become established in a school community and “white knights” were rarely well received, they said.
While a resounding cheer went up at ‘The Stadium’ when given the option of striking for two days, numerous teachers looked at each other and shook their heads. Minutes before we were told of two possible further actions, one that made no sense, and another which was striking for two days. ‘Now shout for which you want…’ Needless to say, without the clarity of thought or time to process either option, the cheer was for the less confusing option.
Crowd mentality.
However, the last thing teachers need is the voice of an Auckland principal speaking for the profession like he owns the place.
His words come from a place of self imposed importance. He’s welcome to his opinion though. So we’ll just make a few notes here.
Alwyn Poole, all alone in a dimly lit corridor, putting up a folded arm barrier between him and the teaching profession.
“The current collective agreement round for teachers takes us back to the 1970s, and teachers and their unions (with the approval of their members) are screwing this up very, very badly. They have already lost even if they “win”.
They have attempted to frame this as a solution to the apparent shortage of teachers. If so, they should provide researched evidence that an increase in pay will solve the problem, not anecdotes from whingeing 25-year-olds complaining about their chosen career.
If New Zealand is to avoid a genuine crisis in education provision for our young people in the near future, a few things need to happen. As a start, the bar to entry for primary school teaching needs to go much higher in terms of prerequisite qualifications in maths, science and English. Lift the entry requirements and create a genuine bar for aspiring teachers to strive for, thus lifting the intake quality and enhancing the reputation of the profession in the eyes of Kiwi families.”
Where do we start. Firstly, don’t discriminate based on age. These 25 year olds are the future teachers we’re trying to keep in the job. And if they’re complaining, you can bet your bottom dollar, the rest of us have been complaining and have given up.
Secondly, raising the bar for entry to primary school teacher training isn’t the answer. As it is, when I trained in the late 2000’s, I was required to maintain a B average across all subjects of my degree. I’ve met some very smart people, with copious degrees, who I wouldn’t want (and who wouldn’t survive) in front of a class. Similarly, I know some people who would make incredible teachers, but whom aren’t academically motivated or interested in pursuing the career because of the university requirements. Kiwi families aren’t asking for smart teachers. They just want good teachers to be the best for their kids. Aspiring teachers shouldn’t need to strive academically for the thing that they know they were born to do. Furthermore, I’m not sure anything I learned in tertiary education (in terms of my Bachelor of Arts) has ever come in useful in my Year 5/6 Primary school classroom. Just saying…
Alwyn goes on… and on…
“Teachers and their unions need to stop whingeing about their jobs. Seriously, nowhere else on the planet does a profession have 12-14 holiday weeks a year. If you have to do some work in those holidays – woolly-boolly – you still have huge choices about how you go about that while in Fiji or Bali.
Stop complaining about the greatest job in the world: working with young people for the good of their future. Have teachers even considered that the children might be just a little upset that they are regarded as a burden and a chore, and that the normal things that go with teaching require a little extra work? How on earth does all this moaning and complaining inspire the next generation into this amazing career? It doesn’t. The unions are making it embarrassing to want to be a teacher.”
Seriously? How much were you paid to say this Alwyn?
You are right… though you used the word ‘else’ incorrectly in that sentence. No where on the planet does a profession have 12-14 holiday weeks a year. Not even in teaching. Seriously. As a principal, with experience, I would have thought you’d know this. Teachers work in their holidays, constantly. They work, it’s just that they don’t have 30 children around them at the time – which is the same as a normal day of work for most New Zealanders!
Obviously principals are getting paid too much if they’re taking holidays to Fiji and Bali all the time. Not sure I’ve ever had the chance in my nine years of teaching, nor can imagine taking work with me if I did.
I guess if we all only had 15 students in our class (as is the case for Alwyn and his staff), we might not have to work as much during the holidays. That’s right… Alwyn is a principal of two charter schools in Auckland, and his schools only have 48 students and 180 students in them. Both have the same website and school logo design. Brilliant.
I mean, let’s look at other professions that might be more appealing. Doctor? Lawyer? ICT?
All of these have significant pay associated with them. The average wage for a GP is $97,000. Lawyers in large firms around $87K per annum (after four years experience). ICT is a wide field of possible jobs, but an IT Manager gets between $90-$130K each year.
In comparison, the average primary school teacher gets $56K. I continually tell people, you don’t become a teacher for the pay. Nor should you. But come on. How are you meant to suggest that anyone take that kind of pay for this kind of job, and expect words like ‘love’ and ‘passion’ to pick up the slack?
Shirley Maihi, showing what teaching is actually about – arms wrapped in aroha for the kids
In response, this was written by Shirley Maihi, a decile 1 principal from South Auckland.
“In a column published on Stuff on Tuesday, Mt Hobson Middle School principal Alwyn Poole said in focusing negotiations on pay, teachers and unions were “screwing this up very, very badly“.
Responding to this, Maihi said the demands for a pay increase were “absolutely right”.
When teachers’ pay competed with other sectors in the past, people were attracted to the profession, she said – New Zealand needed to get back to that point.
“It’s impossible to get staff,” she said. She has been advertising for one position since November and is yet to get a single applicant. Two other vacancies also lie dormant.
This only made teachers’ lives more stressful, she said. If a class had to be split when no relievers could be found, teachers might end up with five or six extra kids in their class.
This was on top of a workload that already caused “huge mental stress”, Maihi said.
Teachers spent much of their time dealing with social issues before they could even get to delivering an education, she said.
A teacher could not expect to start the year with 25 students and see the same 25 children at the end, so a lot of time was spent resettling children and getting them ready to learn.
That’s before the extra time they spent pouring into sports, study centres and after school care, and the hours spent working in the evenings.
As for holidays, she scoffed at Poole’s suggestion that if teachers had to work in the holidays “you still have huge choices about how you go about that while in Fiji or Bali”.
“Most of my teachers are trying to pay mortgages or living expenses,” she said. “They’re not going abroad.”
For most teachers, time away from school was an opportunity for family time that was sorely missed during term time, she said.
And – yes – for work.
“‘Holidays’ – in inverted commas – are not holidays.”
Finlayson Park ran its professional development courses in the first week of mid-year holidays, and the second week was spent preparing and setting up the classroom. Teachers might have a day or two to do shopping, but that was about it, Maihi said.
Over the summer break, she encouraged staff to take four weeks away from school work.
“Most other professions get four weeks off – so do we.”
This has been an issue that I believe is one of the biggest shifts in society in the last 20 years. As parents get so wrapped up in their own lives, their career, their jobs, the things they love to do, children get left by the wayside. They become an afterthought, a burden, even an inconvenience to some parents continuing their self absorbed lives.
Don’t get me wrong. This is certainly not all parents, and not all children. But increasingly so, there are so many things that schools are picking up the slack on that traditionally have been parents and families roles. This puts additional pressures on schools, teachers, staff, resourcing and funding that are far in a way more than should be expected under the umbrella of ‘education’.
A Dunedin school principal is increasingly concerned by the social expectations imposed on schools, and says some parents need to take more responsibility for their children’s actions.
During the recent King’s High School senior prizegiving, rector Dan Reddiex praised his present cohort of pupils for their outstanding achievements during the year, but went on to express deep concern about the future of education in New Zealand.
He said the school’s ability to educate boys “in mind and in heart” was under threat.
“Alarmingly, in my view, we are increasingly becoming as much a social institution as we are an educational one.
“The expectations imposed upon us now as a school, to attend to and reverse the ills of our society, are completely unrealistic and they are beyond our resource capability.
“It seems now, the first questions about the inappropriate text message sent by a school-age person in the weekend, or the under-age young person attending a party that goes wrong, are not ‘what were the parents thinking and what will the parents do about it’?
“The first questions now are ‘what school does the young person go to and what is the school going to do about it’? And we’ve seen that in the national media this year…
“I believe it’s not our parent body who thrust these expectations upon us. It’s the media and it’s increasingly a broader societal expectation.”
Mr Reddiex said the lines of demarcation between parental and school responsibility and accountability had been “completely obliterated”.
Following the prizegiving, he told the Otago Daily Times there was an expectation that schools would, in part, fulfil the function that historically had been the role of a parent.
“The vast majority of parents are doing a fantastic job, but there are some who need to take more responsibility for their child’s behaviour.”
Otago Secondary Principals’ Association secretary Gordon Wilson said it was a widespread issue.
“Schools are under increasing pressure to help the community solve some of its issues, and often schools are seen as the last place where some of these issues can be addressed.
“That’s not where schools should be. A lot of these issues that schools are being asked to deal with are not internal issues. They are issues that have arisen from outside the school.”
The principal of a top Taranaki school has resigned after 12 years in the role – and says other school leaders have congratulated him for getting out of an increasingly stressful profession.
Charles Gibson is one of five Taranaki principals and deputy principals leaving their posts this year.
While Gibson said he was mostly leaving Lepperton Primary School because it is “the right time to do something a little different”, he warned the stresses of the job, national standards, and a lack of respect for teachers from the Ministry of Education had all been contributing factors and were putting others off taking up top positions.
“Many teachers and principals are feeling increasingly undermined not only by government and MOE but by some who feel they know better about how children learn.”
He would like to see the end of national standards, he said.
“Have the MOE support and respect us. Part of their brief should be to make our job easier. We need more wraparound support for our children at risk without having to spend ten hours on an application.
“One of the biggest frustrations I have had is with the MOE and the rebuilding of our new school. It has been about eight years since approval and in that time it keeps going over budget and still not a single piece of dirt has been overturned.”
This follows on from this ongoing saga for this school and this principal that has been happening since the start of last year.
Finally someone in the media has hooked onto this. Quite ready for John Campbell to get back in the NZ Media spotlight! He would have been all over this!
It seems like a very bad situation to be in, one that could only be seen in a movie.
But it’s not. It’s real. And it is happening now.
Kelvin Smythe has been a long time education reporter and writer, and has picked up on this issue since it happened.
Both of these articles are reasonably lengthy, but given the multitude of steps taken in this saga, it isn’t any wonder! I implore you to read them, and then form your opinion on whether you agree with what has happened. Obviously, Kelvin has his angle on any of these issues, but also gets his information from a variety of sources. However anti-government he appears to be, I do believe his intent is always to write the truth.
And if this is anything to go by, its a terrifying series of events.
It sucks to have to make my first posting of 2016 about something so horrific.
