PRESIDENT'S SPEECH TO NZPF EDUCATION SUMMIT - AUGUST 2011
Welcome everyone and thank you for coming today to help us create a direction for our future education.
Association Presidents, you have come from the deep south and from the far north and from everywhere in between. We really appreciate the huge effort you have made to be here and recognise the commitment you have to your profession and to each other. To sector heads and politicians, welcome and thank you for joining us today to listen and to help us in our work. To all of our speakers we thank you for accepting our invitation to address the participants from your particular perspectives. We will be listening carefully and digesting your messages as we work towards our ultimate goal which is to establish a set of principles which we collectively agree should underpin all education policy in the future, irrespective of which political party is leading the government.
One of the reasons we have called this summit is because our sector is confused and morale is low. The government is trying to implement major policy changes which do not sit comfortably with our sector or with our values. We have been through a major review of our New Zealand Curriculum which has been hugely successful and was achieved with a high degree of consultation with ourselves as professionals, with education experts from the tertiary sector, with expertise from the Ministry and with our school communities. It has been a long process spanning more than five years, and only now are we getting that world class curriculum embedded. Throughout this process, we have managed to maintain our very high rankings as a top performer on the world stage and we rate amongst the top four in the OECD. We have now created an NZC which is right for 21st century learners. It is laden with inquiry learning, discovery, innovation, opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship and ICT skills and a breadth of offerings that match the values of the individual school communities. In digital learning we have as recently as one month ago been ranked number 2 in the OECD world. As world experts are continually telling us, these are the very skills our children need to succeed in their future.
The reforms we face right now are a complete contrast to the objectives of our NZC. Our NZC is designed to take account of individual differences and to be broad enough to allow all children to have the opportunity to find an access point to learning. The National Standards on the other hand assume first that everyone starts from the same learning point, arrives at school with the same experiences, background and cultural knowledge and are all equally capable of learning in the same way and at the same pace. Professional educators know that is not the case.It never was and never will be. Secondly, the standards focus on the 3Rs only and would inevitably undermine the breadth of our NZC and finally, the Standards that we have been presented with are fundamentally flawed.
The rationale offered for introducing the standards was to lift student achievement. Even if they were a useful assessment tool, of themselves the standards never could lift achievement.
It appals us that there is such an over-representation of Maori children in the underachievers’ group and as a Federation executive, this year we have applied ourselves to understanding why that is the case. It is hugely helpful that we have three Maori executive members on our committee this year and they have been inspirational in leading our thinking. It has not escaped our notice that Maori children in Kura Kaupapa schools are doing better than Maori in mainstream schools on most achievement statistics. Nevertheless, the reality is that about 90% of all Maori children are in mainstream schools and that is where we need to make a difference. We have been looking to KaHikitia, the Maori education strategy, which is based on the notion of Maori learning and succeeding as Maori as an important starting point.To progress the integration of kaHikitia into our mainstream schools we need government-funded professional development programmes so that mainstream teachers can develop the skills and knowledge to implementKaHikitia successfully.
Ironically, KaHikitia and its underlying philosophy to treat Maori as Maori, flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of NS, which is treating everyone the same.
As a sector we have not had the opportunity to debate the standardsand solutions to underachievement through constructive dialogue with government policy makers or with the Ministry officials responsible for developing the standards. Professionals have analysed them however and in trying to work out how they would apply them, have found them seriously wanting. So much so that we have almost 600 schools that have refused outright to include them in their charters, and 95% of schools calling for a full review. Surveys we have conducted indicate that only 17% of schools actually say they support them yet as a sector, we have been completely side-lined from all discussion on the standards’ shortcomings.
We do not think this is accidental. We believe it is a deliberate tactic to keep us out of the debate so that the government can continue to drive its agenda for league tables, performance pay, privatisation, competition, greater central control and less self-management of schools. So we are in a constant state of feeling that things are being done to us not with us and who knows what’s coming next?
It comes down to the clash between professionalism and accountability. The way this government wants to be accountable for taxpayers’ investment in education is to create a punitive culture which undermines the trustworthiness and integrity of our profession. It’s about producing achievement data, school by school, and comparing schools irrespective of their decile rating or student make-up. It’s about reducing the burden on the state to fund public schooling, and preferring to leave at least some of that responsibility with the private sector. It’s about reducing principals’ autonomy and increasing state control. And it’s about pitting schools and teachers against each other in a competitive environment. By setting up a system that assumes every child is the same, it is also divesting the government of responsibility for the inequalities in society and issues like child poverty which affect children’s ability to succeed. Social inequality and child poverty become the responsibility of the school in this new regime.
The underlying values inherent in all of these choices this government is making is anathema to our teaching profession, as it has operated for the past 100+ years. Our profession thrives on sharing and collaboration and full and frank debate of educational policy and practice. The conditions for best results are a high trust political environment which creates high trust school communities. If we need any external evidence that this is the best way, we need only look to Finland or Singapore, two countries right up there in the high performance stakes, with us! Schools are doing well under self-management in NZ and our NZC is our crowning jewel. It is hard and totally confusing for us to understand why any political faction would want to destroy so much that is so good about our country’s education system.
In the process of this confusion we believe that the government has lost all sense of direction for education. We feel like a rudderless ship sailing in hostile seas under a starless sky. That is why NZPF has called this summit.
We place high value on the achievements we have made for the children of Aotearoa New Zealand, but we will not be complacent. We want to build on our great world rankings. We want to see a strategic plan for our future digital learning programme so that we can build on the success we have already achieved. We want to respond to Sir Peter Gluckman’s aims for 21st century science learning. At the same time we want to reduce the 14% tail of underachievement and especially focus on achievement for Maori and Pacific Island children and we want to see the very good special education initiative ‘success for all’ fully implemented.
Our wish is that today we will take the first step and establish a set of principles which will not threaten our excellent education system but enhance and strengthen it for the good of our children now and in the future.
Thank you.
Welcome everyone and thank you for coming today to help us create a direction for our future education.
Association Presidents, you have come from the deep south and from the far north and from everywhere in between. We really appreciate the huge effort you have made to be here and recognise the commitment you have to your profession and to each other. To sector heads and politicians, welcome and thank you for joining us today to listen and to help us in our work. To all of our speakers we thank you for accepting our invitation to address the participants from your particular perspectives. We will be listening carefully and digesting your messages as we work towards our ultimate goal which is to establish a set of principles which we collectively agree should underpin all education policy in the future, irrespective of which political party is leading the government.
One of the reasons we have called this summit is because our sector is confused and morale is low. The government is trying to implement major policy changes which do not sit comfortably with our sector or with our values. We have been through a major review of our New Zealand Curriculum which has been hugely successful and was achieved with a high degree of consultation with ourselves as professionals, with education experts from the tertiary sector, with expertise from the Ministry and with our school communities. It has been a long process spanning more than five years, and only now are we getting that world class curriculum embedded. Throughout this process, we have managed to maintain our very high rankings as a top performer on the world stage and we rate amongst the top four in the OECD. We have now created an NZC which is right for 21st century learners. It is laden with inquiry learning, discovery, innovation, opportunities for the development of entrepreneurship and ICT skills and a breadth of offerings that match the values of the individual school communities. In digital learning we have as recently as one month ago been ranked number 2 in the OECD world. As world experts are continually telling us, these are the very skills our children need to succeed in their future.
The reforms we face right now are a complete contrast to the objectives of our NZC. Our NZC is designed to take account of individual differences and to be broad enough to allow all children to have the opportunity to find an access point to learning. The National Standards on the other hand assume first that everyone starts from the same learning point, arrives at school with the same experiences, background and cultural knowledge and are all equally capable of learning in the same way and at the same pace. Professional educators know that is not the case.It never was and never will be. Secondly, the standards focus on the 3Rs only and would inevitably undermine the breadth of our NZC and finally, the Standards that we have been presented with are fundamentally flawed.
The rationale offered for introducing the standards was to lift student achievement. Even if they were a useful assessment tool, of themselves the standards never could lift achievement.
It appals us that there is such an over-representation of Maori children in the underachievers’ group and as a Federation executive, this year we have applied ourselves to understanding why that is the case. It is hugely helpful that we have three Maori executive members on our committee this year and they have been inspirational in leading our thinking. It has not escaped our notice that Maori children in Kura Kaupapa schools are doing better than Maori in mainstream schools on most achievement statistics. Nevertheless, the reality is that about 90% of all Maori children are in mainstream schools and that is where we need to make a difference. We have been looking to KaHikitia, the Maori education strategy, which is based on the notion of Maori learning and succeeding as Maori as an important starting point.To progress the integration of kaHikitia into our mainstream schools we need government-funded professional development programmes so that mainstream teachers can develop the skills and knowledge to implementKaHikitia successfully.
Ironically, KaHikitia and its underlying philosophy to treat Maori as Maori, flies in the face of the underlying philosophy of NS, which is treating everyone the same.
As a sector we have not had the opportunity to debate the standardsand solutions to underachievement through constructive dialogue with government policy makers or with the Ministry officials responsible for developing the standards. Professionals have analysed them however and in trying to work out how they would apply them, have found them seriously wanting. So much so that we have almost 600 schools that have refused outright to include them in their charters, and 95% of schools calling for a full review. Surveys we have conducted indicate that only 17% of schools actually say they support them yet as a sector, we have been completely side-lined from all discussion on the standards’ shortcomings.
We do not think this is accidental. We believe it is a deliberate tactic to keep us out of the debate so that the government can continue to drive its agenda for league tables, performance pay, privatisation, competition, greater central control and less self-management of schools. So we are in a constant state of feeling that things are being done to us not with us and who knows what’s coming next?
It comes down to the clash between professionalism and accountability. The way this government wants to be accountable for taxpayers’ investment in education is to create a punitive culture which undermines the trustworthiness and integrity of our profession. It’s about producing achievement data, school by school, and comparing schools irrespective of their decile rating or student make-up. It’s about reducing the burden on the state to fund public schooling, and preferring to leave at least some of that responsibility with the private sector. It’s about reducing principals’ autonomy and increasing state control. And it’s about pitting schools and teachers against each other in a competitive environment. By setting up a system that assumes every child is the same, it is also divesting the government of responsibility for the inequalities in society and issues like child poverty which affect children’s ability to succeed. Social inequality and child poverty become the responsibility of the school in this new regime.
The underlying values inherent in all of these choices this government is making is anathema to our teaching profession, as it has operated for the past 100+ years. Our profession thrives on sharing and collaboration and full and frank debate of educational policy and practice. The conditions for best results are a high trust political environment which creates high trust school communities. If we need any external evidence that this is the best way, we need only look to Finland or Singapore, two countries right up there in the high performance stakes, with us! Schools are doing well under self-management in NZ and our NZC is our crowning jewel. It is hard and totally confusing for us to understand why any political faction would want to destroy so much that is so good about our country’s education system.
In the process of this confusion we believe that the government has lost all sense of direction for education. We feel like a rudderless ship sailing in hostile seas under a starless sky. That is why NZPF has called this summit.
We place high value on the achievements we have made for the children of Aotearoa New Zealand, but we will not be complacent. We want to build on our great world rankings. We want to see a strategic plan for our future digital learning programme so that we can build on the success we have already achieved. We want to respond to Sir Peter Gluckman’s aims for 21st century science learning. At the same time we want to reduce the 14% tail of underachievement and especially focus on achievement for Maori and Pacific Island children and we want to see the very good special education initiative ‘success for all’ fully implemented.
Our wish is that today we will take the first step and establish a set of principles which will not threaten our excellent education system but enhance and strengthen it for the good of our children now and in the future.
Thank you.
