I wonder if it has ever occurred to John Key or John Banks that the fact so many people leave school without an adequate education might not always be the school's fault.
Now they are embarked on an ideological crusade to introduce Charter Schools in an effort to improve the lot of children. Unfortunately for Key and Banks, the answer is not to set up schools with public money but no public accountability (I thought National were meant to be the fiscally responsible ones...), but instead to help lift families out of poverty.
In general there's not a lot wrong with our school system. It's not perfect, but it is miles ahead of the education systems in many other countries. Education is one of the things we do well, even if the results aren't always obvious.
But when the kids you're trying to educate come from broken homes, have behavioural issues and are coming to school hungry, it doesn't really matter what you try to teach them, because it probably won't make a difference.
I have a theory that John Key is more than happy to be seen to cave in to John Banks' demands, because they're things he'd quite like to do but doesn't have the political courage to announce as National policy. Now he gets to have his way while the other John looks like the villain.
Did you vote for this?
Monday, December 5, 2011
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An excellent analysis.
ReplyDeleteJohn Key, the smiling crocodile, get's to keep his word that it wasn't National's policy before the election, but it is very clear that they wanted John Banks to win Epsom for Act so that Act could make it a bottom line policy in coalition negotiations.
And Act only got less than 1% of the party vote.
Silly, silly people who voted for them.
RIP to our quality public education system.
Yes indeed.
ReplyDeleteRIP to an education system that consistently scores in the top 5 of the OECD.
Imagine copying Corporate America whose education system languishes much further down the ranks!
You are sooo right - these students come from homes of poverty and deprivation.
Spot on. The new CEO of the Ministry of Education (appointed July 2011) has a long background selling 'free' (charter) schools in the UK. This process has been underway for a long time, and John Banks had nothing todo with it.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are lots of other terrible things we can expect from the cabal of Key and the Minister of Small Minds (oops i means business, of course).
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteThing is? Charter schools will probably produce quite good results. The fact that they will do this, like private schools, by cherrypicking students who do well and "encouraging" poorly performing students to go back to the public system, is the secret proponents ignore.
ReplyDeleteJames, abusive trolling isn't tolerated here.
ReplyDeleteYou know, I have always wondered how the education tables by the OECD are scored. Because I went to school both in the UK and NZ. I was fortunate enough to go to 'top schools' in both countries.
ReplyDeleteThe New Zealand Education system is actually quite bad. Not the teachers or the schools. But what you guys learn in Year 11, I had already learnt in Year 9 in England. There's a two year gap which means most of NCEA Level 3 seems like a GCSE exam and not a A Level exam, which would be its equivalent.
I mainly put this down to Intermediate Schools. High School starts in Year 7 in the UK.
From TVNZ website: "PPTA president Robin Duff agreed, telling Newstalk ZB Stanford University research shows students do better academically at just 17 per cent of charter schools, compared to traditional schools.
ReplyDeleteMr Duff said having charter schools in low-decile areas will place the country's most vulnerable young people in a worse situation."
Nice bit of cherry picking there Mr Duff. The Stanford report (http://credo.stanford.edu/reports/MULTIPLE_CHOICE_CREDO.pdf) quite clearly states the following:
* "...two subgroups fare better in charters than in the traditional system:
students in poverty and ELL [English language learning] students."
* "Charter schools that are organized
around a mission to teach the most economically disadvantaged students in particular seem to
have developed expertise in serving these communities."
* "The flip‐side of this insight should not be ignored either. Students not in poverty and students who are not English language learners on average do notably worse than the same students who remain in the traditional public school system."
Rather than just picking numbers to support his own agenda, perhaps a proper analysis of the study conducted is in order?
I don't know enough about Charter Schools and the NZ system to form a proper opinion at this stage, but what is the harm of taking the positive findings from the Stanford study and seeing whether they can be put to good use in NZ?