education

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schools (159)
tertiary education (55)

Aussie national standards hurting education

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:26 pm, June 8th, 2010 - 28 comments

We all know what a disaster America’s ‘No Child Left Behind’, the inspiration for the Nats’ National Standards has been. It seems Australia has gone down a very similar track and the results have been the same – teaching to the test, grade inflation, and institutional cheating as teachers and schools find themselves being judged solely on their students’ grades.

Won’t Somebody Think of the Children?

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 10:20 am, June 8th, 2010 - 24 comments

According to a new report: “New Zealand is a great place for children if their parents have a good income, live in a warm dry house and are well educated.” However if you’re not born into a privileged household, then death and disease “is worse than that of all but two [developed] countries, Mexico and Turkey.”

Misdirection can’t hide Nat attacks on education

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 12:18 pm, June 1st, 2010 - 21 comments

You’ve got to hand it to John Key. He’s so good at distraction he could be a rodeo clown. Yesterday, a classic case in point. Asked about his government’s cuts to early childhood education, Key talked about getting the cruelest cut instead. The journos were so surprised they forgot their questions. Mission accomplished. But we can still examine what the Nats are cutting.

The Anti-Education Government

Written By: Bunji - Date published: 12:00 pm, May 25th, 2010 - 38 comments

Last year ACE, this year ECE. What has this government got against education? Once again it’s the big loser in a National budget. It’s enough to make you believe a conspiracy theory that they want to keep us ignorant so we’ll be more likely to vote them in… The massive cut in Early Childhood Education […]

What to watch for

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 2:44 pm, May 19th, 2010 - 4 comments

We already know that National’s big economic plan this budget is a tax swap from working Kiwis to the rich that will not affect growth but will increase inequality. There’s some money for science and Kiwirail, which is good but only partially reverses the cuts that National imposed last year. The two big items in the budget that the Nats have control over (assuming no cuts to benefits or super) are education and health. The increases in these two sectors are the things to watch.

Public money funding to keep children ignorant

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:58 am, May 10th, 2010 - 65 comments

The Herald looks at the Exclusive Brethren’s state-funded, schools. The lengths the cult goes to in an effort to keep their children ignorant is astounding. Everything is censored. Books in school libraries have pages torn out and passages blacked out. Ignorance is strength. All conservative movements realise they need to restrict knowledge and debate to prevent change.

Rising education costs undermine our future

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:41 pm, May 5th, 2010 - 27 comments

You might say that National’s new $50 a year graduate fee is a small thing. But it’s another discouragement for a young person who is looking at either going straight into low-skill, low-pay work or borrowing thousands to get some skills. The last thing we need to be doing is discouraging more people from going on to polytech or uni.

Govt treat Maori kids as 2nd class citizens

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 12:22 pm, April 29th, 2010 - 7 comments

Last week, the Maori Party endlessly praised National for the meaningless DRIP. Yesterday, we got deathly silence as Trevor Mallard revealed that the Government is giving whare kura schools only $50,000 in base operating funding. Mainstream schools get $130,000. The Government is treating kids at Maori immersion schools as second-class citizens and the Maori Party is OK with it.

Nats paving the way for ECE cuts

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 7:40 pm, April 28th, 2010 - 19 comments

The Nats are getting ready to cut 20 Hours Free Early Childhood Education, after having promised during the election campaign not only to keep it but extend it. The Nats don’t have to lie. If they want to break their promises they should just say ‘we just wanted to get elected, so we said what you wanted to hear. We’re going to break our promises and cut ECE’.

Another blow to families

Written By: r0b - Date published: 10:07 am, April 28th, 2010 - 42 comments

Not content with raising the cost of living through a GST increase, the Nats are clearly planning another blow to young families. In a move that breaks yet another election promise, Bill English is preparing the ground for the axing of 20 hours free early childhood education.

Big fat Tolley folly

Written By: r0b - Date published: 12:45 pm, April 26th, 2010 - 35 comments

Comment from an international expert reported in The Herald today reminded me that National Standards aren’t the only ideologically driven folly that Tolley is forcing down the throats of schools. She’s also doing her bit to contribute to a major health problem…

Under-invest now, reap what you sow later

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:31 am, April 19th, 2010 - 22 comments

The most over-rated man in politics, Steven Joyce, has come up with a bright idea: let’s increase the fees for getting high skill degrees in areas where there are big skill shortages. This is typical short-term National thinking: save pennies now, and pay the big bucks later when heavily indebted and highly skilled graduates are forced to go overseas to pay off their debt in a reasonable time frame.

Tertiary education under attack

Written By: r0b - Date published: 3:57 pm, April 12th, 2010 - 2 comments

Before the election National promised that they would “Ensure that institutions have greater autonomy”. What does greater autonomy look like, National style? It looks like yet another National attack on democratic governance.

Over-promise, under-deliver

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:48 am, March 31st, 2010 - 7 comments

The Key Government is constantly promising us great results and actually do nothing that improves things for New Zealanders. English, Bennett, Brownlee, and Tolley are prime examples of this MO. While they promise great things and fail to deliver unemployment is rising, wages are falling, crime is up, and the government has no plan to move us forward.

One in five children

Written By: r0b - Date published: 6:18 am, March 22nd, 2010 - 28 comments

Anne Tolley has promised that national standards have been introduced so that “every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school”.

The depths of arrogance and ignorance in that claim leave me at a loss for words…

Another big empty promise

Written By: r0b - Date published: 6:15 am, March 20th, 2010 - 41 comments

Education Minister Anne Tolley has made an extraordinary promise: “New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school. That is what the country voted for.” We would all love to see National deliver, but they can’t, and they know that they can’t. It’s an empty promise.

Sadistics office backs National Standards

Written By: Demeter - Date published: 3:55 pm, March 19th, 2010 - 19 comments

New instalment from John Key impersonater “Plumedekiwi”, in which the PM gets his linguistic knickers in a twist over national standards….
If you haven’t seen the other vids by Plumedekiwi, check him out here

‘Oh, oh’: sound of a minister floundering

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 8:23 am, March 18th, 2010 - 30 comments

Which minister will be next to go? Rodney Hide or Anne Tolley? If competence was a condition of keeping their job, both would be long gone. But doing a good minister has never been a job requirement in John Key’s government. It comes down to which of them makes a spectacular mistake so serious that […]

Tolley losing the plot?

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 16th, 2010 - 14 comments

Anne Tolley put out an odd media statement on Friday. She reckons Trevor Mallard, opposition spokesperson for Education, dominated two public meetings in Auckland on her Government’s unpopular national standards policy. Which begs the question, was she actually all there at either meeting?

Lorraine Kerr, National Standards & Schools Money

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:22 pm, March 15th, 2010 - 19 comments

Lorraine Kerr, head of the NZ School Trustees Association is one of National’s few supporters on National Standards. She says a survey of boards of trustees gives her a mandate for this position, with only four boards opposing the Standards. Now, she has been forced to admit that only 14 schools were included in the survey result.

Stupid competition

Written By: r0b - Date published: 9:54 am, March 13th, 2010 - 30 comments

We keep hearing, from the Key government, statements about education that make no logical or factual sense at all. Here are two examples. Help me choose — which is the stupider statement, and why?

Nats resort to plants to help Tolley

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 11:54 pm, March 11th, 2010 - 57 comments

Let’s face facts. Anne Tolley is a dangerous minister. She is undermining the education system at every turn and the damage will last lifetime. But is National doing the responsible thing and removing her from the portfolio? No. In fact, a guest poster reports they’re so desperate to help her out that they’ve got plants in her audiences to ask patsy questions.

Education cuts good for kids in bizarro Tolley world

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 4:30 pm, March 11th, 2010 - 20 comments

Have a listen to Education Minister Anne Tolley on Morning Report today trying to explain the $25 million cut to the education budget.

It really was a shocker, even for her.

High unemployment helps Nats keep wages down

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 9:12 am, March 11th, 2010 - 21 comments

While other countries have used their strong public sectors to steady the private sector and keep unemployment down during the economic downturn, our government is compounding unemployment by cutting the public sector, throwing people out of jobs and feeding worker insecurity.

But how much did the bus cost?

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:49 am, March 10th, 2010 - 24 comments

“Tolley finds ally in school mum” screams the headline of Audrey Young’s piece today.

When National runs a bus tour the Herald is desperate in its attempts to drum up support, when it’s Labour all they want to talk about is how much the bus is costing the taxpayer.

Joyce dumbing down education

Written By: Marty G - Date published: 11:10 pm, March 9th, 2010 - 28 comments

So Steven Joyce’s big bright idea for tertiary education (which he recently inherited from the hopeless Anne Tolley) is to punish institutions with low pass rates by cutting their funding. It’s basically the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard.It reflects the typical short-term thinking of the capitalist class and its political party.

Hartevelt on bashing the yoof

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:02 am, March 7th, 2010 - 26 comments

A contact at the Ministry of Transport tells me that 15 year old drivers have been involved in only a handful of fatal crashes, 1 to 1.5% of the total, in recent years and they’re not all the 15 year old’s fault. But no, National’s solution is to prevent all 15 year olds from driving. Dumb. It’s a carpet-bombing approach to policy

Mickysavage on Tolley’s standards meetings

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:55 am, March 5th, 2010 - 10 comments

mickysavage reports on Anne Tolley’s meeting in West Auckland. He relates her complete inability to understand the issues. He concludes that national standards was a dog whistle policy that in action will actually only consist of spending $50 million a year on reports with pretty graphs and standardising grading for writing. Everything else is already standardised. There will be no improvements in education standards.< more>

Listening to the evidence on national standards

Written By: r0b - Date published: 7:37 am, March 5th, 2010 - 14 comments

All available evidence and expert opinion suggests that National Standards, as the government intends to introduce them in our primary schools, won’t work. They may even do damage. Will Key and Tolley ever take heed of the evidence, or is this just a blind ideological crusade? Bring on Diane Ravitch…

Glorious school building opened by honourable leader

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:20 am, March 4th, 2010 - 62 comments

Beloved Leader of People’s Constitutional Monarchy of New Zealand, Honourable John Key, attended glorious opening of school building on Tuesday.
Several youths were overcome by the glory of Honourable Leader’s appearance as were several members of the press corps.

Tolley’s road tour

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:54 pm, March 2nd, 2010 - 22 comments

A guest contributor reports that if you want your chance to quiz Anne Tolley and you live in West Auckland your chance is on Thursday but it sounds like the Nats would rather you didn’t come. Another guest contributor pans Tolley’s meeting last night.