education

Categories under education

How long have they been sitting on that?

Written By: - Date published: 8:24 pm, September 10th, 2012 - 75 comments

Shearer gets some traction with a policy that neatly targets parents’ concerns about education, hits a link in the poverty cycle, and is third way enough that National can’t really object. And what happens? National runs a little beat up on how Shearer’s masters thesis says you can’t ignore Maori beliefs in taniwha when allocating water rights. Wonder how long they were sitting on that.

Who’s heading in the right direction?

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, September 10th, 2012 - 13 comments

While Labour and the Greens are laying out concrete policies to tackle poverty and its consequences that lead to life-long problems (child payment and home insulation from the Greens, food in schools and reading recovery from Labour), National MPs are acting as slum landlords, refusing to spend a few thousand dollars to bring their rentals up to standard.

Education, evidence, and a tale of two leaders

Written By: - Date published: 7:20 am, September 10th, 2012 - 86 comments

Shearer has set out some bold new ideas for education. Key is clinging to failed national standards. Shearer’s views are well supported by the successful Finnish model, while Key’s are condemned by failures in the UK and USA. Does the evidence matter?

Shearer – excellent education speech

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, September 9th, 2012 - 115 comments

David Shearer’s education speech today was excellent in every way. Core Labour values, a sound understanding of the issues, significant concrete policy, and the promise of more to come. “Under Labour, the world’s best education will be available at your local school”.

Unqualified teachers in charter schools condemned

Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, September 7th, 2012 - 181 comments

A stinging report from the Ministry of Education condemns the proposed use of unqualified teachers in charter schools.  The Nats won’t listen because the Nats don’t care about the quality of education, they only care about privatising it.

Sex National Standards

Written By: - Date published: 2:46 pm, August 29th, 2012 - 8 comments

On decile ratings of schools

Written By: - Date published: 11:50 am, August 21st, 2012 - 20 comments

Decile ratings of schools are to be dropped from ERO reports because they are “confusing” and “unfair” and lead to “white flight”. Unlike, say, ropey national standards data. Uh huh.

Nats’ education plans make sense after all

Written By: - Date published: 9:16 am, August 11th, 2012 - 33 comments

How to explain National’s blatant inconsistency in not requiring national standards for charter schools? After further reflection, I think it makes sense after all…

Nats don’t believe their own education policy

Written By: - Date published: 12:26 pm, August 7th, 2012 - 28 comments

As usual it is the kids who will suffer.

Education and poverty

Written By: - Date published: 11:32 am, August 5th, 2012 - 45 comments

No one can fix the tail of educational underachievement without fixing poverty.

Robber’s charter

Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, August 3rd, 2012 - 117 comments

So, the Nats want unqualified teachers teaching the country’s most disadvantaged kids in charter schools. This is meant to close the gap with rich kids. Oddly, private schools opt for trained teachers. Also, oddly, it was only 2 months ago that the Nats were saying they wanted all teachers to have post-grad qualifications. Why the back-flip? It’s all about that well known route to economic and social success: driving down teachers’ wages.

Incoherent education policy

Written By: - Date published: 8:22 am, August 3rd, 2012 - 215 comments

The right hand of National’s education policy doesn’t know what the far-right hand is up to…

Local Bodies: NZ Charter Schools Defined

Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, August 2nd, 2012 - 62 comments

A post (reprinted with permission) from bsprout at the Local Bodies blog…

100 academics opposed to league tables

Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, July 17th, 2012 - 154 comments

School league tables are harmful to education.  Tables based on “ropey data” are even worse.  In this open letter 100 academics speak out against league tables.

Bullying schools – again

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, July 16th, 2012 - 29 comments

Threats to schools over the contents of their newsletters?  The “brighter future” doesn’t like dissent.

Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:24 am, July 15th, 2012 - 5 comments

I’m going to try and put up a piece each Sunday of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: the bread & butter line, bankers, racism and the corporate speak of John Key.

Parata was briefed on teacher cuts

Written By: - Date published: 9:56 am, June 30th, 2012 - 26 comments

It seems that Parata was fully briefed on teacher cuts after all, but she somehow “did not have enough time to mention it”. The government’s most recent humiliating bungle just got worse.

Competition, cooperation, schools

Written By: - Date published: 12:14 pm, June 27th, 2012 - 12 comments

Competition is the wrong model for education, and National’s nonsense “league tables” are going to make it worse…

Policy on the hoof

Written By: - Date published: 10:08 am, June 19th, 2012 - 26 comments

John Key wants to debate school league tables. Presumably he thinks that this will do the double whammy of getting middle class parents back on his side in the education debate, and distract from asset sales. But he’s not checked with his Minister, or the Ministry of Education, or presumably read any of the official advice about how damaging league tables would be.

ImperatorFish: Teacher Development and Smaller Class Sizes: We Can Have Both

Written By: - Date published: 2:19 pm, June 18th, 2012 - 60 comments

Scott thoroughly fisks libertarian Damien Grant’s Herald on Sunday Column. And if teacher development is so important (as indeed it is) why have National cut it massively since they came to power, and are now dropping their budget plans to expand it. Money could be found from those tax cuts if they wanted…

What price an apology?

Written By: - Date published: 8:45 am, June 12th, 2012 - 23 comments

Parents and teachers are calling for Key to apologise over the stress and anxiety that Key’s government has caused them over the last 2 weeks. Want to guess how Key handled it?

Nats try and fail to inoculate Key from Budget mess

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, June 10th, 2012 - 64 comments

The Prime Minister chairs Cabinet, which signs the Budget off policy by policy. A competent Prime Minister would be intimately familiar with the major policy changes. So, it was very interesting to see Audrey Young’s ‘insider’ piece on the education debacle yesterday. Chock full of tidbits supplied by Murray McCully. All the blame sleeted home to Bill English and Hekia Parata. Crucially, John Key barely mentioned.

While I have your attention class…

Written By: - Date published: 11:25 am, June 8th, 2012 - 6 comments

While the public’s attention is focused on educational issues, use the platform to press for change on the Nats other damaging educational initiatives, national standards and charter schools.

Schadenfreude

Written By: - Date published: 9:37 am, June 8th, 2012 - 38 comments

The hysterical right are pretty pissed that the Nats have backed down on class sizes. Let them rant all they like – the Nats can’t afford to listen.

Flip-flop still leaves hole in education budget

Written By: - Date published: 6:28 am, June 8th, 2012 - 65 comments

With its polling slip-sliding away, National had no choice but to dump its ideological class size increases. But why did they dump the spending on teacher quality too? If that was such a priority that it justified sacking 1,000 teachers, couldn’t something else be cut? And what other education spending will now be cut to fill National’s budget hole?

Class sizes vox pop

Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, June 7th, 2012 - 14 comments

Public opinion is massively opposed to cutting teachers. When 50,000 people marched down Queen St the Nats dropped plans to mine conservation land. Time for another show of people power.

Coward

Written By: - Date published: 8:44 am, June 6th, 2012 - 79 comments

Hekia Parata has refused to front up to education groups against her bigger class sizes.

Only money matters

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, June 6th, 2012 - 12 comments

How did National get it so wrong on the cuts that would costs too many schools far too many teachers?  Did the Nats do any consultation at all?

Class sizes: show National you care

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, June 5th, 2012 - 23 comments

Here’s a petition against Hekia Parata’s class size increases. Show the government what a big mistake they’ve made. If Federated Farmers can spread it, so can you…

One law for some

Written By: - Date published: 7:48 pm, June 4th, 2012 - 18 comments

Financially troubled private school Wanganui Collegiate received a $3million grant in Budget 2012, 3 times the annual operating grant of the larger Wanganui City College. Since then it has been advertising its low class sizes and ability to  reduce fees significantly. Private schools will no doubt be using the current outrage over increased class sizes for recruiting purposes, but they should not be doing it with taxpayers’ money.

There is no alternative?

Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, June 4th, 2012 - 77 comments

We all know National is on a record borrowing binge. But when they say they need to slash education investment to balance the books, what dumb spending are they leaving untouched? Which leaves the obvious question: why were these Tory sacred cows protected while public education was cut?

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