education

Categories under education

Shameful

Written By: - Date published: 5:08 pm, December 15th, 2008 - 79 comments

And so the Maori Party’s sell-out of its own people continues. Hot on the heels of the party’s vote to take money out of the pockets of the poor to pay for tax cuts for the rich, this morning’s Dominion Post reports: Green Party MP Mitiria Turei has accused the Maori Party of disgraceful behaviour […]

Kids need fun, politicians need to think

Written By: - Date published: 12:31 am, December 12th, 2008 - 29 comments

It seems like only yesterday that we listened to arguments about how exams unfairly punished some students. The National Party initiated the NCEA in office, but now thinks that introducing a national standard testing system for five and six year olds is the way to go. At least we think they do. At the time […]

Minister of Education lies to teachers

Written By: - Date published: 2:55 pm, December 11th, 2008 - 36 comments

Here’s Anne Tolley telling teachers before the election that they would not be covered by the fire at will legislation. Turns out she was lying. Teachers at at least 800 schools nationwide will now have no work rights in their first 90 days on the job. Whatever it takes to win, eh National?

Ad rant

Written By: - Date published: 11:28 am, December 4th, 2008 - 25 comments

I despair at the mentality behind this ad. Why should universities, which are all publically-owned, be advertising to try and take students off each other? I mean, it’s one thing to compete on quality but this kind of vacuous ‘marketing’ nonsense just shows we’re losing our universities. Universities were once places to learn how to […]

The Bard offers chance for new Minister

Written By: - Date published: 7:43 pm, November 15th, 2008 - 46 comments

This afternoon I read with a degree of surprise that Shakespeare’s days as standard classroom fare could be numbered: Shakespeare’s plays and other great works of literature considered too difficult for some pupils will disappear from classrooms under proposed changes to the curriculum, alarmed principals say. There are also fears that basic content in maths, […]

Scratch a Tory…

Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, October 22nd, 2008 - 40 comments

…and you still reveal a bigot, it seems. Here is National’s Immigration spokesperson, Lockwood Smith, (he who likes to swallow dead fish) on taking more Asian seasonal worker migrants instead of Polynesians: “There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at, for example some of the pruning … some of […]

Nat vs Nat on National policy

Written By: - Date published: 10:50 am, October 15th, 2008 - 22 comments

National wants to introduce a 90 Day no work rights period for new employees. Now, in the face of very strong opposition to the policy, they have been forced to scale it back to only workplaces where there are 20 or fewer employees. But big questions still remain – not least of all whether teachers […]

Video: TV3 on Key’s campaign day 2

Written By: - Date published: 4:52 pm, October 14th, 2008 - Comments Off on Video: TV3 on Key’s campaign day 2

Media coverage of the campaign is coming thick and fast – a helpful reader pointed out this excerpt from TV3 on Key’s day yesterday.

Down with literacy

Written By: - Date published: 9:31 am, October 14th, 2008 - 45 comments

A crusade on illiteracy, surely. Um, I’m not sure we want to entrust these guys with improving language skills. [Update: true to form, the people in the sector don’t know what the hell National is talking about. Teachers say National seems to be taking about some vague reporting system, not more resources to actually improve […]

Universal allowance – Labour joins rest of Left

Written By: - Date published: 3:25 pm, October 13th, 2008 - 59 comments

Good to see Labour joining the Greens and Progressives with a universal student allowance policy. It has been a crying shame that many people who are trying to get an education and whose parents can’t support them have had to borrow to get a fraction of the money that one gets on a benefit or […]

Nats testing plan proves unpopular

Written By: - Date published: 8:51 pm, October 1st, 2008 - 18 comments

Just one in 10 school principals support the type of national standards for pupils being proposed by the National Party, a study reported in the NZ Herald suggests: National education standards are favoured by: * 10% of the 196 primary school principals surveyed. * 13% of the 912 primary school teachers surveyed. * 38% of […]

Nats: Pay cuts for you, tax cuts for the rich

Written By: - Date published: 3:07 pm, September 30th, 2008 - 15 comments

Bill English has put out a press release whingeing about Helen Clark’s promise to lift wages for low-paid school support staff, and fearmongering that it might mean Michael Cullen will cancel his tax cuts. Presumably, English’s statement means National would cancel the planned pay increase to help fund its tax cuts for the rich. These […]

Social Report shows Kiwis better off

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, August 28th, 2008 - 31 comments

MSD released its Social Report today, an annual publication that collates a wide variety of standard of living measures, and produces this awesome graph. The circle represents the status quo in 1995-97 each spoke represents a different measure (income, crimes per capita etc). If the spoke is longer than the circle than the measure has improved between 1995-97 […]

What will National do on student allowances?

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, August 27th, 2008 - 32 comments

Spotted in the Waikato Times: Cambridge High School students did their best to get a policy out of him, but National leader John Key stayed tight-lipped on his party’s student allowance stance yesterday: Of National’s policy, Mr Key said: “We haven’t announced it yet, but we’re looking at it very closely … I think we […]

Foss puts foot in it

Written By: - Date published: 1:22 pm, August 22nd, 2008 - 58 comments

Craig Foss annoyed some students in Napier when he described early childhood teachers as “glorified babysitters”, according to a recent story in the Hawke’s Bay Today (sent in by a bemused reader). He admitted that he used the term “babysitting” yet also tried to argue he was taken out of context. Perhaps he realised his […]

Lightening the load

Written By: - Date published: 12:35 pm, July 18th, 2008 - 12 comments

A universal student allowance of $350 isn’t going to happen. It’s too expensive and would bar major new spending in any other area. But more relief from debt would be welcome. There’s an increasing recognition that student loans are locking young people out of the housing market, making them perpetual cash-cows for the property speculators […]

Remarkably unambitious ECE policy

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, July 11th, 2008 - 21 comments

Another one-page excuse for a policy from National, this one on early childhood education. After vehemently opposing 20Free, National would now keep it but not because it wants to, only because ‘thousands of parents are now using 20 Hours and we do not want to cause them uncertainty’. Gee, thanks, National. The headline change is […]

Hollow politics at work

Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, June 30th, 2008 - 22 comments

Brand Key on Waatea news: “A National government will be a lot more demanding about educational standards, a lot more demanding about under-performance in schools, a lot more demanding on failing schools” There is no ‘how we will fix things’ here, simply a statement of problems. If schools don’t perform would National cut their funding? […]

Food Police State fails to eventuate

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, June 4th, 2008 - 86 comments

Remember the tories and the Kiwiblog Right getting all flustered about the ‘Food Police’, when guidelines were announced to control junk food in school tuck shops? Remember how this was the Nanny State at its most perverse and surely one step from us all being fed a daily ration of Soylent Green? Well, now the […]

Telling porkies

Written By: - Date published: 9:50 am, May 22nd, 2008 - 44 comments

The Herald and National have started attacking every piece of government spending as pork-barrelling. Here’s some of what they’re calling ‘wasteful, needless spending’: $750 million of new health spending ($160 million for elective services) -Pork $700 million for Fast Forward Fund, food and pastoral sector research -Pork $665 million to buy the national rail operations […]

Nats’ school funding policy under attack

Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 33 comments

Stuff reports that “Principals and teachers have savaged a National Party plan to increase funding for private schools, calling it a thinly disguised tax break for the rich.” New Zealand Secondary Principals’ Council chairman Arthur Graves called Key’s proposal to increase funding to private schools at the expense of the public system “a deliberate attempt […]

Key’s record on Te Wānanga o Aotearoa

Written By: - Date published: 1:45 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 7 comments

The Herald is really doing its best to help out National. Today it proclaims ‘Key’s wananga visit undoes Brash legacy‘. That nice Mr Key has undone all the harm caused by that nasty old Dr Brash, we’re meant to believe. But check the record. It wasn’t Brash who led the attack on Te Wānanga o […]

Student debt, it’s the interest that matters

Written By: - Date published: 4:36 pm, April 10th, 2008 - 48 comments

Today, outstanding student loan debt reaches $10 billion. That’s a fair old swag of money but what has been ignored in the coverage so far is that this debt is interest-free. Now, an economist will tell you that the price of money is the interest rate, so student loans are free money. It’s not quite […]

National’s last moderate falls on her sword

Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, February 13th, 2008 - 36 comments

Katherine Rich was one of only 2 women on National’s front bench and its last moderate MP. The only surprise in her resignation is that she resisted the National hierarchy’s pressure to leave for so long. National’s all-male inner circle never had any time for this young, independent-minded woman with a social conscience who wouldn’t […]

National Party U-turn on student loans

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, January 31st, 2008 - 84 comments

National have just backed down on their opposition to interest free student loans. Back in 2005 Key called this ‘a policy that tells young New Zealanders to go and borrow to the hilt What a cost to the country! What an unaffordable and irresponsible cost to the country! It is a sad day National members […]

Students as stakeholders

Written By: - Date published: 5:17 pm, November 14th, 2007 - 40 comments

Interesting to see Onslow College is giving its students a say over the hiring of their teachers. Recognising students as stakeholders in their schools is a fundamentally progressive and democratic move, and it’d be good to see it happening in other schools too. From this morning’s Dom Post: Pupils at Wellington’s Onslow College now have […]

More confusion from National over bulk funding

Written By: - Date published: 5:02 pm, November 7th, 2007 - 39 comments

Some people just never learn. After National’s conflicting statements on bulk funding the other day you’d have thought they’d get their messages in order, if not their policies. But take a look at these comments from Alan Peachey in Parliament yesterday: Hon Marian Hobbs: Has the Minister seen any reports on alternative approaches to supporting […]

National doublespeak

Written By: - Date published: 12:46 pm, November 3rd, 2007 - 31 comments

It’s happened again. The Nelson Mail reports that: National MP and former principal Allan Peachey has broken ranks with front-bench colleague Katherine Rich over education policy, arguing in favour of the bulk-funding of teacher salaries… The Tamaki MP and associate education spokesman… publicly endorsed the controversial model of funding schools. This directly contradicted Ms Rich, […]

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