Damn. Really loved his TED talk, so I’d like to see this, but my broadband is so slow nowadays (I’ve spent hours on the phone to the techies to no avail), that I can’t watch things like this without tearing my hair out atm. Is there a written text? I’ve had a look around on the link, but can’t find one.
For those struggling with dial-up, TED talks amost always include a written text. You probably won’t find this particular talk, unfortunately . http://www.ted.com/
And if you use or D/Load Fire fox then use an addon called Adblock and there is a thing out there called Firetune So if you don’t know what you are doing it will open up some of the taps even wider. Or if you are happy playing I can give you some settings in the Network Http area that should get it going
This is great. I think his attitude is fantastic, and I really wish there was a school in NZ that subscribed to this kind of philosophy, so that when I have kids, they can go there.
I happen to be naturally academic, so the NZ school system was not terrible for me. I did get good marks, and was never led to believe I was “stupid” – something it results in for many people with different talents.
But at the same time, I believe the education system has done me a huge disservice. Easy success at school led me to expect it in all areas of my life (something I’m still working on), and certainly didn’t encourage hard work. And, even worse, it didn’t foster my creativity at all (in fact rather the opposite), something I have found as an adult that I actually have a fair amount of…
If there was one famous person I could meet, it would be Ken Robinson… Fascinating.
There probably is such a school in NZ. But it would just as probably cost an arm and a leg to send kids to it.
Meanwhile, the entire public education system is a disaster and needs (in the words of KB) to be transformed; not reformed. That’s not a new insight. People have been saying similar things for decades.
But. It appears the spiral is about to take a decidedly steep downward turn. I mean, drugging kids so their exhibited behaviours will conform to instituitional expectations!?
Somebody tell me that’s not an absolute criminal abuse of children.
The point isn’t to have little islands of private schooling established where the innate abilities of children are fostered and the institutions adopt more organic organisational structures. That would leave the bulk of kids on a conveyor belt to a wasteland of conformity that is mostly comprised of thwarted and destroyed human potential… and since they are most of the sum total of tomorrow’s humanity that is going to have to tackle immense environmental and resource problems, well…not hard to join the dots and take a punt at where it all ends up.
Bill – your comments are bizarre. NZ’s education system ranks around 4th in the world (OECD PISA rankings). We’re actually much further along the road toward the Ken Robinson ideal than most developed countries – NZ”s self-managing schools, especially when well resourced, do pretty much what he advocates – learning tailored to individual student needs, with an emphasis on creativity. I too was naturally academic in the 1970s and 80s and found school a bit boring, but these days kids go to public schools in NZ – and they have fun, and they learn really well – my son is thriving and loves school. NZ ranks near the top on educational achievement on a number of international measures, and educationalists come from around the world to see how we do it.
If they’re poor then kids can’t learn (sick, hungry, transient) and of course, there’re are improvements that can be made in the system – but don’t believe the National Party bullshit about the system being in crisis and one-in-five kids failing (simply not true). This manufactured crisis is just so National can get away with policies like National Standards and giving $50m to private schools.
National Standards are a system of factory-farm education, which is why teachers are only making token gestures at implementation.
And BTW – other OECD research shows that once you discount for family background, there is no difference between how well a child will do academically at a public or a private school. Though private schools have been shown to have higher incidences of binge drinking because the kids are under so much pressure.
“…there’re are improvements that can be made in the system…”
No, see. You are entirely missing the point. There is no point in making improvements within the current system; attempting reform. The system is anachronistic and busted.
As I understand it NZ schools were transformed some time ago. Interestingly enough, it seems National actually started it in the 1990s but as they didn’t get immediate results that they understood they decided to change it again. Make improvements the same way they were going and see how they go but another transformation isn’t really due for another 20 years or more. Nationals lack of long term thinking and patience has them now trying to force the schools back into the wrote learning system of the 19th century.
Actually Bill, Ed’s pretty accurate in what he states.
The NZ education system has been approaching and improving upon it’s processes and the divergent learning experiments and group collaboration beginning at year 0 & 1.
Why else would the Teachers, Principals, NZEI, PPTA & Principal assc be so keen to have NZ teachers & principals involved in professional development programs such as the literacy & numeracy projects. Or the sabbaticals to research new teaching methods or class room implementations.
We have to transition to a new paradigm of education those in the educational system (the educationalists, teachers, principals & researchers) understand that we can’t just uproot and crash the system this will only destroy what we have which is the 4 / 5th rated system in the OECD according PISA.
If we allow those with the knowledge of education to implement the improvements and the professional development as the research shows the way to improve the system and support and nurture all kids who enter the system.
Think about that for a sec. Transition involves reform or a series of reforms. Those reforms have a direction; that direction is pre-determined by the already established direction of that thing you are seeking to transition from.
So you inevitably drag the baggage from the old and wind up with a ‘new’ which is just the old in new garb. Endless reform that leaves the core of the old intact.
As Robinson points out (and I just happen to agree) the current direction of education is precisely the opposite direction from which it needs to point. And there are a host of historical and cultural reasons for that.
We have education system that teaches students the lesson of being taught (and imbues in them a host of [necessarily limiting] norms, values, presciptions etc with a concomitant list of expectations, so-called ‘reality checks’ and so on.) We need an education system that responds to students’ desires and drives to learn…that is not bound by, or that does not judge by, the particular ‘useful’ knowledge that lends itself to a market or industrial context. The education system needs to adapt to students. Not the other was around.
And transition cannot achieve that. Ever. (At best. At very best, a parody of the old would be the end result of transition.)
edit. Why be so keen to hang on the fourth or fifth ranking of something that is so intrinsically wrong?
I’m with Bill on this- the first thing we need to be thinking about is a model for schooling that isn’t based on year, and switching over to it straight rather than simply “reforming”. Transforming to this new model would be much more easily done in secondary schools, because they essentially already group classes by subject and ability- it’s just that they confuse “ability” for “year” most of the time. Streaming is a reform-minded approach to this: ideally kids could move from a low stream to a higher one instead of jumping a full grade if necessary though, and ideally you would continue to stream classes whenever you have enough people interested to do so.
Because class structures are already split, we can direct that split relatively easily into a new model and experiment there.
In primary schools and intermediates, one solution is to organise classes to different age children at the same time, (for instance, having bands of “two year classes” where you teach different things each year, so an older year and a younger year of students are always present) and focus on grouping them and making them collaborate between year groups. Because education at this level often happens in a single room every schoolday for a year, it might make sense to give them more activities that let them swap spaces for a while.
Honestly, there are so many ways to implement a better model of education that I’m surprised nobody has tried it in a public school yet.
The private schools in fact perform worse especially as they have children with all the advantages in life.What is different is the clique of elite looking after the elite which gives private schools a much bigger advantage when it comes to job prospects outside education.
There are quite a few schools trying to follow Robinson’s view. Probably scattered here and there, and fighting to retain this in the face of the forces of darkness (national’s standards). I’ve heard him speak and he was as marvellous and as entertaining as you’d expect.
Not just kids.
I was prescribed it, and took it briefly due to a problem concentrating. It helped, but I felt like an accountant (or how I imagine it feels to be an accountant…)
The work comparing convergent and divergent thinking has been around for a long time – IQ tests were often criticised for not having questions like “how many uses can you think of for a brick” (that was the version I heard a few decades ago). It’s the difference between solving problems that can be tightly specified (Turing’s famous proof, for example, that anything that can be specified as a series of logical transformations can be computed by a computing machine) and, instead, coming up with new possibilities.
Industrial society has relied upon solving problems through converging on a solution and once that solution is found, mass producing it by following the recipe; in a similar way, natural selection solves the problems by generating many possible variants and culling them. Of course, it also then madly replicates the successful variant – just as happened in industrial society.
I think that Tim Harford character has just written a book about the importance of failures in modern economies – same idea (saw it in a bookshop, forget what it’s called). Creativity/evolution is like that.
Sadly, though, the ‘successful variants’ in our modern economies (successful companies) then have to get the rest of us just to follow the ‘success recipe’ – i.e., we have to stop being creative and just follow the successful instructions (again).
The problem, though, is more than education. As pointed out in the video, education ‘systems’ are produced by social and economic systems. One reason we have the kind of education system we have is that it remains true that, for most people, the path to material survival is not to be creative but to be an ‘operator’ of instructions.
Sure there are some hi-tech opportunities (that pay well) for a particular expression of ‘creativity’ but, for the most part, the way to make a crust is to ‘learn’ (be trained) to follow a particular set of instructions. Turning out a lot of creative, innovative individuals could be a bit cruel if creativity is not a major path to (successful) material existence. It’s not the education system that needs to be transformed, it’s the socio-economic system.
The education system will follow, as it did with the industrial revolution. That education system very effectively replaced the classic form of intergenerational (mother -> daughter, father -> son) ‘education’ that simultaneously transmitted the practical and cultural knowledge required to survive (and which has existed in most societies previously, and still in many today) with the institutional form with which we are now so familiar. It was actually fought tooth and nail by many parents (and by most colonised cultures) as it involved dismantling social systems within a generation. Very effective at that it was too.
In brief, I don’t think you change society by changing the education system. I think changes in the socio-economic system are far more likely to lead to changes in education processes. Perhaps that is, in fact, starting to happen (there was that other RSAnimation on another thread that DTB linked to which suggests some companies are doing things differently by allowing autonomy, purpose and the like) – I don’t know. But it seems to me that that is the directional flow.
On the ADHD matter, it’s blindingly obvious that the modern world requires vastly increased amounts of what is called ‘voluntary’ (or deliberate) attention by psychologists. ‘Voluntary attention’ contrasts with automatic/involuntary attention. The latter is what you experience when you are ‘naturally’ interested in something – there’s no effort required so your attention ‘involuntarily’ latches onto things.
Ironically, ‘voluntary’ attention is a bit of a misnomer. It refers to the attention you use a lot when you have to learn something (attend to something) that you aren’t naturally interested in but that others might require you to attend to – hence you have to focus your attention ‘voluntarily’.
Today, we have to do that a lot. What that does is deplete the cognitive resources that we use to inhibit/constrain our attention. That is, it takes a lot more effort not to attend to other things (be ‘distracted’) that interest us more than what we have to focus on. Some psychologists argue that the modern world is very good at depleting those inhibitory resources, which leads to the common experience of mental fatigue (that also happens when we have to spend too long attending to something that, initially, might even naturally interest us).
There is some hope, apparently. Google ‘attention restoration hypothesis’: the idea is that natural environments, because they are inherently fascinating, etc., reduce the need for voluntary attention – by providing lots of opportunities for involuntary attention – and therefore allow our inhibitory resources to ‘replenish’/restore.
Kids have no problem being interested in the world, it’s just that – especially as they get older – ‘we’ want them to attend to things that they don’t want to attend to (so they can get jobs/survive). Coercion (compulsory schooling), instilling anxiety (constant testing and reports) and medication are all ways to get that to happen.
“the idea is that natural environments, because they are inherently fascinating, etc., reduce the need for voluntary attention – by providing lots of opportunities for involuntary attention – and therefore allow our inhibitory resources to ‘replenish’/restore.”
Interesting. Two of my children are creative types who had problems with the school environment. When they were young I noticed one could be ‘refreshed’ by bush-walking – even in a small grove in an urban environment (he had an unusual mix of interest in art and science). However this didn’t work for the other one. Finally I noticed that for this child the same restorative effect could be obtained by water – rivers, streams, the sea (she was more into descriptives – art and creative writing). The third was more relaxed in a school environment and so long as he was out and about doing stuff regularly didn’t have the same issues as the other two.
I always reckoned school (as it was) was bad for their health. Primary school now, for their children seems to have far more diverse learning styles. I’m hoping this diversity remains.
Turning out a lot of creative, innovative individuals could be a bit cruel if creativity is not a major path to (successful) material existence. It’s not the education system that needs to be transformed, it’s the socio-economic system.
The education system will follow, as it did with the industrial revolution.
The problem with that is quite simply that those emerging from the education system are conditioned and so will generally lack the attributes or outlooks necessary to transform current socio-economic models. They will (mostly) have an investment in the status quo – a degree of material success, privilage and position predicated on market/industrial norms that they will be loathe to let go of. (Those that are cast aside as irrelevancies will also lack the wherewithall to imagine and formulate solutions to the various predicaments that will confront them.)
I think we see this happening around us today. Succesful people tend to favour reform over revolution (tranformation) and unsuccesful people tend to get swamped by the really bad situations they find themselves in. They might occasionally riot or whatever, but there is arguably a growing propensity to self medicate in an attempt to numb out or cope with really atrocious life situations.
Even where mass uprisings occur (Tunisia, Egypt…and this was also true of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’) after the initial reactionary phase is over, people just don’t seem to know what to do. There is a sort of ‘aimless milling’ before a varient of the former framework of control and possibilities is reasserted.
The only instance that I’ve experienced whereby a radical, sustainable working alternative to the dominant socio-economic model was proposed and implemented, was that which came from people who had been schooled along the lines proposed or favoured by Sir Ken Robinson. (Summerhill) What I find quite fascinating about what they did was that there was no overt political agenda driving them, it came down simply to them expressing their collective common sense.
Some years later (and independently) Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel engaged themselves in a whole lot of political/ economic theorising and produced (a still developing) vision of a radical, workable alternative to our current socio-economic systems. They labelled their proposition parecon (participatory economics) that has since informed and inspired the operational framework of a number of small initiatives.(You’ll have seen reference to their work occasionally on ‘the standard’ in my comments.)
But what drew me to their extensively thought through vision and its applicability in the real world, was that it resonated completely with the system set up by the ex-pupils of Summerhill in the early ’70’s. I lived in that environment in the late 80’s. And like I say, there was no political agenda driving it. It was percieved common sense.
Which is a long round-a-bout way of me saying that the educational environment is crucial if we, in general, are to have any chance of formulating and applying strategies to avoid, what anyone with their eyes open perceives, as a fairly imminent set of catastrophies stemming from our time worn (personal and collective) habits and activities.
I was fascinated and inspired by Summerhill when I was younger.
In the last couple of years I watched a doco on it and I was appalled. It seemed to have replaced overt authority in the teachers and other staff with a kind of unhealthy manipulation. Bullying was rife, and leaving the situation up to the kids to deal with seemed to have resulted in a kind of ‘managed’ lord of the flies environment. Maybe not that much worse than other schools, but I was disappointed. It wasn’t a remotely sensationalist doco and there were long interviews with staff and kids.
I suppose I’m more of an old-fashioned structuralist and tend to think that, while individuals and small groups of individuals can change their own lives to some degree and, perhaps, even change ‘the system’ the latter only ever happens when ‘the system’ has started to change for reasons that have nothing to do with the desires, aspirations, hopes, etc. of individuals (or small groups of individuals). Part of the change in a system is, of course, changes in people’s ideas, attitudes, etc. but, once again, I see them as following (perhaps ‘fast following’) rather than leading the change.
My analysis of why ‘alternative’ approaches so often fail is the evolutionary point I made above. All sorts of variations can be generated but they only become successful once conditions have changed. You see, I don’t think these approaches fail through a ‘lack of imagination’ or ‘milling around’ with no idea how to implement something different (because of individuals being conditioned). I’m always surprised, actually, at how quickly people will adapt to a new ‘reality on the ground’.
I think the reason for these failures is probably a combination of the fact that no idea – or even small scale experiment – can anticipate the difficulty of establishing itself more extensively to a viable level in hostile conditions, and that prevailing conditions also structure the ideas that are opposed to the effects of those very conditions.
Yes, we need individuals who think differently, propose alternatives and even push ahead with attempts to enact them. My point is just that those attempts, that different thinking, etc. won’t end up changing anything until the conditions are right.
I’m no incremental liberal reformer. Transformations/revolutions are what change the conditions in which we live. It’s just that they don’t happen through acts of will (alone). If that was the case, the world would be a very different place from the one we have. Even ‘Rogernomics’ was not just the result of individual efforts/ideas.
Having said all of that, I think the more that these ideas are disseminated the better prepared we will be for transformation. 🙂
BTW, I’m very familiar with parecon (I’ve been a Znet sustainer for some years now so am kept well informed.)
Bill – I’ve watched this video a number of times already. the NZ is system is not busted, its widely recognised internationally as highly successful. what’s your agenda?
Bill has no idea what is going on in NZ schools our educators are leading the way have done for many years now. What goes on in our little factories is as akin to Ken Robinsons approach.
Most private High Schools run with an out dated systems like Cambridge the parents pay good money for a shit education of their children but think because of all the mercedes at the front gate the education must be good
National are full of this type of educated person and thats why they have no solutions to todays issues.
They think they are smart they think they know best and when given the opportunity look for ways to take control ( current Party central situation).
Thank goodness Labour are doing away with National Standards we might stand a chance of developing a Nation full of creative people who can meet the challenges of the future.
“Most private High Schools run with an out dated systems like Cambridge the parents pay good money for a shit education of their children”
Are you for real?
It is a fact, look up the stats, that Cambridge curriculum schools account for the top end of student performance in this country… because the system encourages high standards. Unlike NCEA, which promotes mediocrity.
No Jem infact Cambridge is a very old tired form of Education please have a look at the video above and get educated about education.
Cambridge does not require higher standards, its teaching to tests sadly, monkey learn monkey do. NCEA requires the student to work hard for the whole year to achieve excellence and this is why Schools like Auckland Grammar want to use it because their lazy boys can do better with less effort.
If you actually spend sometime you will see that the old way is not the best way. Would you buy a car brand new of the lot that had 1970s technology? Not if you were sane but thats what people do with their child’s education.
“Are you for real?
It is a fact, look up the stats, that Cambridge curriculum schools account for the top end of student performance in this country”
And yes I am for real, do want to quote your source for “its a fact”?
High standards are fine, but it’s a lot more important how you implement those standards, and whether you use them to engage kids, or try to “standardise” the kids with them.
Leading the way? As opposed to what Craig Glen Eden? Leading the way in mediocrity? Fantastic.
Since the 1960’s there hasn’t been a paricularly successful strategy put in place. And not all the strategies that were put in place, were driven from government level. Educationalist in NZ had their fingers up to their armpits in it and havent got it right.
And on old systems, even if they were all bad, at least they produced kids who could read, write and count to an acceptable level. The failure of today’s schools to emulate this is the reason the National Standards (rightly or wrongly) have been introduced.
I think you’ll find that a lot of principals and teachers are running scared because they might just be held accountable for non-performance.
NZs education system is in essence the same as every other educational system across the ‘western world’.
It’s predicated on producing contributors to our current socio-economic models. Its needs are very narrow. Human talents or abilities that don’t conform to its needs are discounted or stymied….the conditioning effect of education. (“Yes, yes. You’re very good at that but you need this if you expect to get ahead in life. So put that aside for now and focus over here.”) Then, 20 or 30 years later…and we’ve all heard this…people reflect on abilities or talents that were never developed because they weren’t considered practical.
Meanwhile, our econmic system is consigning more and more people to the scrap heap (regardless) before they even begin. Witness the increasing levels of relative poverty in our society; the growing instances of people with no prospects; the increasing incidence of suicide in the younger age brackets (under 30s); self medication, ie chronic drug use; the growing awareness that to tread water in relation to your parents’ position in society is basically success these days; the growing awareness that your kids will be lucky to achieve likewise, etc
Oh. And did I forget to mention that the particular socio-economic set-up we have is destroying the natural conditions we need for survival? Why ,oh why, oh why would we want our kids to slot seamlessly into that socio-economic framework and be successful by its definition of success…engaging in and encouraging all the necessary activities that entails…when that means destroying our collective future?
What happened to parents fronting up to their school’s open nights or arranging an appointment with the teacher and asking about their child’s progress?
Are those parents who want national standards and corporate mind control over their children too lazy to do the asking?
I think you miss the point.
There are still Parents Evening… But you are relying on the teacher infront of you to tell you the truth.
Without National Standards you don’t know how the Teacher & Schools performance stacks up against the rest of the country, and as a Parent that is important to me..as it should be to all good parents.
With National Standards you don’t know how Teacher or School or your kids performance stacks up against the rest of the country. They’re assessed at each school, by different people, who will inevitably give different results.
And I’d much rather the money was spent on raising my child’s achievement than on measuring it.
National Standards will encourage teaching to the test, so that the teacher & school can look good. It will kill the innovation and creativity the NZ system is famous for and why it’s one of the best in the world. Why copy the US/UK/Australia/Norway when their system is failing? If you want to copy anyone, copy Finland as one of the few better than ours.
But Labour will allow those few schools with Boards who want National Standards to keep them.
You can tell by the levels system for schools how advanced your child is. You ask the teacher for his or her advice on that level. If it is below you ask why. You continue to ask why.
Whenever I attended school evenings the hall was always more seats unfilled than those filled.
Parents can’t tell from a national standards board, which incidentally takes away yet more teacher time that should be spent on their children, whether their child is actually improving. It doesn’t tell you that. The child may have worked hard, improved in 6 months and still not show that on the national standards board.
Every teacher knows the ‘five’ kids failing in their classroom. Throw the national standards money at them not at some bureaucracy that National and Act are so dismissive of normally. The weekly one hour session for twenty weeks idea was not good either. These children can be caught early on simply by checking the class and school levels, the Principal then seeking financial support from government to help those ‘five’ children. For as long as it takes.
I’ve checked the American feedback from parents taking their children out of schools that have been forcing students into following some sort of rote learning in order to answer government tests; nasty results from an animal farm system.
Jem I think you miss the point.
who do you think is evaluating your child against the NS?
You are also assuming that the NS are properly moderated nationally to ensure that Teacher & Schools performance DO stack up against the rest of the country.
@jem – I am sorry to read that you are so fearful and that there is such a lack of trust in your environment. That has led you to question whether your children’s teachers are telling you the truth. A good parent, which you claim to be, should be establishing a friendly relationship with the teachers and in that process you discuss your hopes for your children, and what the child’s aptitudes and strengths are. And what is essential to achieve, and if the child has difficulty with it how you as a parent can help and work in with the teacher. With the teacher, as an equal and a professional at their job, but ensuring that your child is getting taught thoroughly, fairly and positively.
So called good parents have been shown on USA television spying with cameras on their children, requiring frequent reports etc. I hope that paranoid lack of trust is not arising in NZ.
There needs to be a balance between trust and monitoring.
Good news Labour says that it will drop National Standards compulsion and use the $36 million funding to help the under-achieving minority. Not such a big task Ann Tolley as most are doing well at present and there is no need to push the table over and scatter all the scrabble pieces.. You have taken on a task that no sensible man in your party would have chosen. Pity that you are determined to prove yourself as a big shot politician by putting up barriers to the real thing and going for the generic imitation.
Jem – I think you miss the point. National Standards have been forced onto schools in such a way that they don’t accurately reflect student achievement (they don’t align with reliable assessment methods, so teachers are required to make a bit of a guess; they don’t reflect real achievement – they reflect kids being able to jump through certain hoops twice a year (which takes an awful lot of teacher time to get students doing that at the same, in the same way – because it is unnatural, and not how children learn) – and there’s plenty of research to show a very poor alignment between doing well on standardised testing and achievement in later life.)
You need to remember that letting your child be tested all the time, and taught to narrow standardised measures, in order to assuage parental anxiety will get in the way of your child actually learning (to be a self-managing and self-motivated, resilient learner who challenges themselves – as our wonderful curriculum describes). It’s the great paradox of education – testing doesn’t mean learning – and one that unfortunately certain politicians are exploiting for their own ends
A bit late (in the next) day to submit this to an essentially ‘dead’ thread. (The ‘churn’ being one of my dissatifactions with ‘the standard’)
But seeing as how NZ education was initially modelled on Scottish, not English education and Scottish education is being overhauled, I thought this might be of some interest to some here. (Bear in mind that tertiary ed is still free in Scotland when reading)
Okay. Cut and paste because The Herald is a ‘register’ site.
It’s some of the cautions and qualifiers in the comment piece that caught my eye. Particularily in relation to this thread.
Education secretary Mike Russell claims his proposed reforms to post-16 education are radical and ambitious.
It’s a reasonable claim. Although not all of the measures he revealed yesterday were new, we have been given much more detail. There is certainly ambition in the timescale and the impact of the changes suggested could be significant.
On the surface, it is a learner-friendly plan, with eye-catching guarantees of a place in education or training for every 16-19 year old, and a minimum income for learners of £7000 [ approx $13 500].
But some of the other suggestions could also have far-reaching consequences.
After years of encouraging universities to widen access, the Government has now resigned itself to legislating to enable ministers to demand this happens. While individual iniatives have had successes with discrete groups, this agenda is so important that more is demanded.
Universities will now be required to take into account more than just higher results [traditional exam results leading to uni] in selecting students. They will be expected to make it easier for students with non-traditional qualifications not just to enter university, but to begin in second year in some cases. This offers considerable encouragement to those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Most welcome is the intention to make universities and colleges more transparent and democratically accountable. We know some colleges are badly run, or underperforming and proper scrutiny of how they are managed is overdue. Universities too need to account for their performance, particularly on access.
However one area of concern is the minister’s intention to deliver a closer match between skills and employer needs, to ensure qualifications are “aligned to Scotland’s economic needs”. There is even a suggestion that employers may be asked to help design new qualifications.
Employers are not a homogenous group, and it’s a mistake to imagine their priorities are necessarily identical with the country’s. In the context of a society and workplaces which are changing rapidly, there is no reason to believe they know better than anyone else what our educational needs are.
The delivery of the skills needed to drive Scotland’s economy forward is important. But learning at all levels has always been about more than just employment.
The most dramatic impact in the college sector could come from Mr Russell’s plans to legislate so the Government can demand that colleges merge where there is overprovision. Colleges will have to comply.
This is part of a significant rationalisation which will see college provision taking place on a much more recognisably regional basis.
Here again the timescale is tight, with the Scottish Funding Council required to move to a regional funding model by 2012-13.
In principal, a rationalisation is sensible, but whether in business or public services there remain significant doubts about whether mergers will always deliver savings or better services.
While we may not need as many individual institutions as we have, any reduction will have to be managed carefully.
If there are to be in future fewer colleges, but with the same number of students, then it will be important to focus on how quality can be maintained, especially against the background of what is likely to be a tough financial settlement. These proposals are certainly challenging. It remains to be seen whether they are as visionary as Mr Russell claims.
The churn is always a bit of an issue. I was just looking at yesterday’s figures and seeing that there were almost 1300 posts accessed. Maybe time to drop the one month comment restriction. It was only stuck in to reduce the hassle with trolls and bots.
Is there no easy way to sub-divide the site into main sections? (Even just in terms of archive?) In some way that ‘throw away posts’ (eg caption contests) are displayed separate from what might be considered ‘short, med and long shelf life’ posts (all separate) , as well as those posts that might be seen as being of permanent relevence (eg posts on climate)?
It’s a real disincentive to put work into more substantial posts if they drop out of view after a day, know what I mean?
Maybe it’s possible for a ‘tab’ or some such to be introduced that would allow posters to assign their post to the relevant category?
Dead easy to throw these ideas around when you have absolutely no technical knowledge, innit?
edit. Bollox! I really should explore the buttons on sites a bit more…
“Mallard’s big attack has been on moderation. How do you know that school A is judging a child against say the Year 1 Nat Std in the same way as school B is judging a child against the Year 1 Nat Std.
If you accept that is a valid criticism (and Moroney has continued to run it) then Labour does nothing about it.
Labour has said they will “Determine the New Zealand Curriculum level a child is achieving.” But how do they know that two schools will make the same call without moderation. You’ll have to train and trust teachers – as National has suggested we do.”
“Labour’s policy appears to be keep National Standards, but rename them and don’t give the Government the data.”
Jem – education really is quite complicated, which is why corporate education reformers can get away with so much – because people don’t understand the complexities, but basically Labour’s policy is much better than National’s because theirs allows teachers to use norm-referenced and moderated assessment tools. Most primary teachers already use these in classes – but National Standards doesn’t align with them. Min of Ed expects to get them all to be aligning with Nat Stds sometime in the next couple of years (it’s a huge job – something like setting NCEA for the 8 years of primary school).
Labour’s policy sees moderated assessment tools aligning with curriculum levels, which are fairly broad – and which is what you want in primary school because children develop at very different rates in early and primary years – you don’t actually want them all learning at the same rate, the same things, to be checked off a spreadsheet twice a year – nothing could be designed better to put children off learning. Good education is about children being motivated to learn at their own pace (self-directed, self-managing, lifelong learners). Of course they need good literacy and numeracy, but that’s simply not an issue for 90% of NZ children.
Teachers already know who the children are who are falling behind – age 6 net data is all there – plus as one told me “you can tell in the first week whether or not a child is going to be ok”. The problem is that teachers can’t get enough extra help for those children who are falling behind (and they’re poor – not enough regular food, don’t go to the dr, move schools 4x a year) as there aren’t enough resources -which could have something to do with National spending education funding this way – $500m on new school property (mostly through private contractors), $60m on Nat Stds, $50m to private schools ….
Jem – it’s pretty frustrating for people working in education to read this kind of stuff – many many NZ primary schools already run classes with combined years in them – 2 years in one class in which children are grouped for different subjects (maths, reading, etc) according to their ability (according to moderated, norm-referenced assessment measures). My son is in his 4th such class (ie he’s had 7 years at primary, all of them in joint classes.) When do you guys work out that the NZ system is already one of the best in the world (we 1st-5th in the world, on a number of different measures) – and a load of well-intentioned knee-jerk changes imposed by amateurs ain’t going to improve that … not that it shouldn’t be in a pattern of continuous improvement; just that current reforms are a step back to the 19th century – but most educators are working damn hard to maintain a very good system, despite the reforms
IN VINO VERITAS – listen up – this is not the site to be repeating National Party propaganda. NZ’s education system ranks 4th in the world (OECD PISA ratings) – people come from all around the world to see how we do it. We are invited to attend conferences all around the world to tell other countries how to do it.
The students who fail to do well in this system are (a) well known already to teachers, and (b) poor – sick, irregularly fed, with undiagnosed learning difficulties, and transient (we have v high child transience rates because of unaffordable housing, unemployed parents)
Take your tired old corporate clap trap and go preach over at Kiwiblog – they’re certainly not open to the facts, so they’ll love you
My bad Ed. This is a site for left wing propaganda with no dissenting views, sort of Stalinist if you had your way.
I would point out that a good deal is spent sending people overseas to see how THEY do it as well, so it cuts both ways Ed.
Standards are just that, a standard. Achievin a standard is not going to prevent you from using the education system already in place. Measuring whether students can read, write and count, and comparing against other students of a similar age is surely nothing to get frightened about Ed? Or are you concerned you’ll be found to be a dud teacher since it might just happen, that each time you take a year, that year fails to achieve, but does so the following year and did so the preceding year? At the my school (I’m on the BOT), we have several special needs kids with whom our teachers do their absolute best, however, they are never going to make standard. That’s life. There are always excuses to be made Ed. And you are full of them. Oh, theyre transient, oh, they arent fed enough, housing is unaffordable (bollocks), parents are unemployed (for how long? all their school life? if so, only because they want to be). Just teach Ed. Get on with it. Stop whining.
And 4th. 4th is good for people like you Ed. 4th is dumbing down. 4th is 4th loser.
Try winning. Or try another job.
[lprent: …site for left wing propaganda with no dissenting views…
If you want to be a stupid fuckwit and to attract my attention by crapping on your hosts with allegations that are patently untrue, then I really can’t see any reason that the operators of the site should have to read it. We spend a lot of effort making this an area that people can argue and we tolerate massive amounts of dissension amongst the commentators. What we are intolerant about is moronic wankers like yourself denigrating our work.
Read the bloody policy and learn to respect our efforts. If you don’t then there is a rapid escalation to not being able to comment here.
Banned for two weeks as an educational experience. ]
RNZ has been shining their torch into corners where lobbyists lurk and asking such questions as: Do we like the look of this?and Is this as democratic as it could be?These are most certainly questions worth asking, and every bit as valid as, say:Are weshortchanged democratically by the way ...
RNZ has continued its look at the role of lobbyists by taking a closer look at the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff Andrew Kirton. He used to work for liquor companies, opposing (among other things) a container refund scheme which would have required them to take responsibility for their own ...
Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta has left for Beijing for the first ministerial visit to China since 2019. Mahuta is to meet China’s new foreign minister Qin Gang where she might have to call on all the diplomatic skills at her command. Almost certainly she will face questions on what role ...
TL;DR:The Opportunities Party’s Leader Raf Manji is hopeful the party’s new Teal Card, a type of Gold card for under 30s, will be popular with students, and not just in his Ilam electorate where students make up more than a quarter of the voters and where Manji is confident ...
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Looking back through the names of our Police Ministers down the years, the job has either been done by once or future party Bigfoots – Syd Holland, Richard Prebble, Juduth Collins, Chris Hipkins – or by far lesser lights like Keith Allen, Frank Gill, Ben Couch, Allen McCready, Clem Simich, ...
Chris Trotter writes – The Crown is a fickle friend. Any political movement deemed to be colourful but inconsequential is generally permitted to go about its business unmolested. The Crown’s media, RNZ and TVNZ, may even “celebrate” its existence (presumably as proof of Democracy’s broad-minded acceptance of diversity). ...
Four out of the five people who have held the top role of Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff since 2017 have been lobbyists. That’s a fact that should worry anyone who believes vested interests shouldn’t have a place at the centre of decision making. Chris Hipkins’ newly appointed Chief of ...
Feedback on Auckland Council’s draft 2023/24 budget closes on March 28th. You can read the consultation document here, and provide feedback here. Auckland Council is currently consulting on what is one of its most important ever Annual Plans – the ‘budget’ of what it will spend money on between July ...
by Molten Moira from Motueka If you want to be a woman let me tell you what to do Get a piece of paper and a biro tooWrite down your new identification And boom! You’re now a woman of this nationSpelled W O M A Na real trans woman that isAs opposed ...
Buzz from the Beehive New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti is hosting the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers for three days from today, welcoming Education Ministers and senior officials from 18 Pacific Island countries and territories, and from Australia. Here’s hoping they have brought translators with them – or ...
Let’s say you’ve come all the way from His Majesty’s United Kingdom to share with the folk of Australia and New Zealand your antipathy towards certain other human beings. And let’s say you call yourself a women’s rights activist.And let’s say 99 out of 100 people who listen to you ...
James Shaw gave the Green party's annual "state of the planet" address over the weekend, in which he expressed frustration with Labour for not doing enough on climate change. His solution is to elect more Green MPs, so they have more power within any government arrangement, and can hold Labour ...
RNZ this morning has the first story another investigative series by Guyon Espiner, this time into political lobbying. The first story focuses on lobbying by government agencies, specifically transpower, Pharmac, and assorted universities, and how they use lobbyists to manipulate public opinion and gather intelligence on the Ministers who oversee ...
Nick Matzke writes – Dear NZ Herald, I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland. I teach evolutionary biology, but I also have long experience in science education and (especially) political attempts to insert pseudoscience into science curricula in ...
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This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sarah Wesseler Poor air quality is a long-standing problem in Los Angeles, where the first major outbreak of smog during World War II was so intense that some residents thought the city had been attacked by chemical weapons. Cars were eventually discovered ...
Yesterday I was reading an excellent newsletter from David Slack, and I started writing a comment “Sounds like some excellent genetic heritage…” and then I stopped.There was something about the phrase genetic heritage that stopped me in tracks. Is that a phrase I want to be saying? It’s kind of ...
Brian Easton writes – Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go ...
This week marks the twentieth anniversary of the Iraq War. While it strongly opposed the US-led invasion, New Zealand’s then Labour-led government led by Prime Minister Helen Clark did deploy military engineers to try to help rebuild Iraq in mid-2003. With violence soaring, their 12-month deployment ended without being renewed ...
After seventy years, Auckland’s motorway network is finally finished. In July 1953 the first section of motorway in Auckland was opened between Ellerslie-Panmure Highway and Mt Wellington Highway. The final stage opens to traffic this week with the completion of the motorway part of the Northern Corridor Improvements project. Aucklanders ...
National’s appointment of Todd McClay as Agriculture spokesperson clearly signals that the party is in trouble with the farming vote. McClay was not an obvious choice, but he does have a record as a political scrapper. The party needs that because sources say it has been shedding farming votes ...
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The columnists in Private Eye take pen names, so I have not the least idea who any of them are. But I greatly appreciate their expert insight, especially MD, who writes the medical column, offering informed and often damning critique of the UK health system and the politicians who keep ...
A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week: Sun, Mar 12, 2023 thru Sat, Mar 18, 2023. Story of the Week Guest post: What 13,500 citations reveal about the IPCC’s climate science report IPCC WG1 AR6 SPM Report Cover - Changing ...
Buzz from the Beehive The building of financial capability was brought into our considerations when Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced she had dipped into the government’s coffers for $3 million for “providers” to help people and families access community-based Building Financial Capability services. That wording suggests some ...
Do you ever come across something that makes you go Hmmmm?You mean like the song?No, I wasn’t thinking of the song, but I am now - thanks for that. I was thinking of things you read or hear that make you stop and go Hmmmm.Yeah, I know what you mean, ...
By the end of the week, the dramas over Stuart Nash overshadowed Hipkins’ policy bonfire. File photo: Lynn GrieveasonTLDR: This week’s news in geopolitics and the political economy covered on The Kākā included:PM Chris Hipkins’ announcement of the rest of a policy bonfire to save a combined $1.7 billion, but ...
When word went out that Prime Minister Chris Hipkins would be making an announcement about Stuart Nash on the tiles at parliament at 2:45pm yesterday, the assumption was that it was over. That we had reached tipping point for Nash’s time as minister. But by 3pm - when, coincidentally, the ...
Two senior economists challenge some of the foundations of current economics. It is easy to criticise economic science by misrepresenting it, by selective quotations, and by ignoring that it progresses, like all sciences, by improving and abandoning old theories. The critics may go on to attack physics by citing Newton.So ...
Photo by Walker Fenton on UnsplashIt’s that time of the week again when and I co-host our ‘hoon’ webinar with paying subscribers to The Kaka for an hour at 5 pm. Jump on this link on Riverside (we’ve moved from Zoom) for our chat about the week’s news with ...
In a nice bit of news, my 2550-word deindustrial science-fiction piece, The Dream of Florian Neame, has been accepted for publication at New Maps Magazine (https://www.new-maps.com/). I have published there before, of course, with Of Tin and Tintagel coming out last year. While I still await the ...
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There was a time when a political party’s publicity people would counsel against promoting a candidate as queer. No matter which of two dictionary meanings the voting public might choose to apply – the old meaning of odd, strange, weird, or aberrant, or the more recent meaning of gay, homosexual ...
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Thomas Cranmer writesLike it or not, the culture wars have entered New Zealand politics and look set to broaden and intensify. The culture wars are often viewed as an exclusively American phenomenon, but the reality is that they are becoming increasingly prominent in countries around the world, ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Here’s an analogy for the Stuart Nash saga. If people are to be forgiven for their sins,Catholic dogma requires two factors to be present. There has to be a sincere act of confession about what has been done, but also a sincere act of contrition, which signals a painful ...
Human Destabilisers: Russia now has a new strategic weapon – migratory waves of unwelcome human-beings. Desperate people with different coloured skins and different religious beliefs arriving at, or actually breaching, the national borders of Russia’s enemies can wreak as much havoc, culturally and politically, as a hypersonic missile exploding in the ...
Hi,After Webworm contributor Hayden Donnell wrote his latest piece, ‘RIP to Millennials Killing Everything’, he delivered this exciting and important bonus content.It will make more sense if you’ve read his piece.David. Read more ...
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* Dr Bryce Edwards writes – I teach a first-year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we ...
I teach a first year course at Victoria University of Wellington about government and the political process in New Zealand. In “Introduction to Government and Law”, students learn there are rules preventing senior public servants from getting involved in big political debates – as we have recently witnessed with Rob ...
An issue of integrity has claimed the first ministerial scalp in Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ premiership. Police Minister Stuart Nash lasted mere weeks in the role after admitting in a radio interview this morning that he had called Police Commissioner Andrew Coster to ask him if police were going to ...
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Today is a Member's Day, the first of the year. Unfortunately it also looks to be a boring one. First, there's a two hour debate on the budget policy statement (somehow inexplicably "member's business", despite it being fundamentally a government thing). Then there's a couple of "private bills" - people ...
Most days, Chris Hipkins and James Shaw seem a bit like the Seals and Crofts of the centre-left: Earnest, inoffensive, and capable of quite nice harmonies at times. They blow gently through the jasmine in your mind, but you know they’re never going to rock your world. Back in 2020, ...
The reflection gazed back at him. Pale and a little paunchy, he wasn’t a well man.He had a toga made from a fitted sheet and it kept bunching up under his armpits.His Laurel wreath was made from some Christmas tree branches he’d found in the shed, not a real pine ...
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Unbridled Consumption: This civilisation we have built (we being the whole human species) is the most astonishingly wonderful thing homo sapiens has ever seen. We love it. We cannot imagine how awful life would be without it. And, we most certainly are not going to co-operate with anyone who advises ...
On February 14, 2023 we announced our Rebuttal Update Project. This included an ask for feedback about the added "At a glance" section in the updated basic rebuttal versions. This weekly blog post series highlights this new section of one of the updated basic rebuttal versions and serves as a ...
Let’s start with the absolute truisms.Politics is the art of the possibleHalf of something is better than all of nothingLet us now consider these with reference to the Under New Management government.What is a supporter of progressive politics to make of the abandonment of various policies, as announced in recent post-cabinet ...
Chris Hipkins has surprised even some of his closest friends and backers with the bounce he has secured for Labour in public polls since he became Prime Minister. He has been put to the test since he took over from Jacinda Ardern in the top job, and has shown a ...
Buzz from the Beehive It was a big day for the stopping or slowing of a second tranche of government programmes, an exercise which Beehive publicists are pitching as measures to allow the Government to focus more time, energy and resources on “the bread and butter issues” facing New Zealanders. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised in their State of the Planet speech today. ...
Political parties that want to negotiate with the Green Party after the election must come to the table with much faster, bolder climate action, co-leaders James Shaw and Marama Davidson emphasised today. ...
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The error Labour Ministers made by stopping work on a beverage container return scheme will be reversed by the Greens at the earliest opportunity as part of the next Government. ...
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Biggest increase in food prices for over three decades shows the need for an excess profit tax on corporations to help people put food on the table. ...
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E nga mana, e nga iwi, e nga reo, e nga hau e wha, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou kātoa. Warm Pacific greetings to all. It is an honour to host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers here in Tāmaki Makaurau. Aotearoa is delighted to be hosting you ...
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Defence Minister Andrew Little has marked the arrival of the country’s second P-8A Poseidon aircraft alongside personnel at the Royal New Zealand Air Force’s Base at Ohakea today. “With two of the four P-8A Poseidons now on home soil this marks another significant milestone in the Government’s historic investment in ...
Aotearoa New Zealand will provide further humanitarian support to those seriously affected by last month’s deadly earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria, says Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta. “The 6 February earthquakes have had devastating consequences, with almost 18 million people affected. More than 53,000 people have died and tens of thousands more ...
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Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has today appointed Ginny Andersen as Minister of Police. “Ginny Andersen has a strong and relevant background in this important portfolio,” Chris Hipkins said. “Ginny Andersen worked for the Police as a non-sworn staff member for around 10 years and has more recently been chair of ...
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Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta departs for China tomorrow, where she will meet with her counterpart, State Councillor and Foreign Minister Qin Gang, in Beijing. This will be the first visit by a New Zealand Minister to China since 2019, and follows the easing of COVID-19 travel restrictions between New Zealand and China. ...
Education Ministers from across the Pacific will gather in Tāmaki Makaurau this week to share their collective knowledge and strategic vision, for the benefit of ākonga across the region. New Zealand Education Minister Jan Tinetti will host the inaugural Conference of Pacific Education Ministers (CPEM) for three days from today, ...
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Internal Affairs Minister Barbara Edmonds has thanked generous New Zealanders who took part in the special Lotto draw for communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle. Held on Saturday night, the draw raised $11.7 million with half of all ticket sales going towards recovery efforts. “In a time of need, New Zealanders ...
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Minister of Education, Hon Jan Tinetti, has announced appointments to the Board of Education New Zealand | Manapou ki te Ao. Tracey Bridges is joining the Board as the new Chair and Dr Therese Arseneau will be a new member. Current members Dr Linda Sissons CNZM and Daniel Wilson have ...
Fifteen ākonga Māori from across Aotearoa have been awarded the prestigious Ngarimu VC and 28th (Māori) Battalion Memorial Scholarships and Awards for 2023, Associate Education Minister and Ngarimu Board Chair, Kelvin Davis announced today. The recipients include doctoral, masters’ and undergraduate students. Three vocational training students and five wharekura students, ...
High Court Judge Jillian Maree Mallon has been appointed a Judge of the Court of Appeal, and District Court Judge Andrew John Becroft QSO has been appointed a Judge of the High Court, Attorney‑General David Parker announced today. Justice Mallon graduated from Otago University in 1988 with an LLB (Hons), and with ...
The economy has continued to show its resilience despite today’s GDP figures showing a modest decline in the December quarter, leaving the Government well positioned to help New Zealanders face cost of living pressures in a challenging global environment. “The economy had grown strongly in the two quarters before this ...
Aucklanders now have more ways to get around as Transport Minister Michael Wood opened the direct State Highway 1 (SH1) to State Highway 18 (SH18) underpass today, marking the completion of the 48-kilometre Western Ring Route (WRR). “The Government is upgrading New Zealand’s transport system to make it safer, more ...
This section contains briefings received by incoming ministers following changes to Cabinet in January. Some information may have been withheld in accordance with the Official Information Act 1982. Where information has been withheld that is indicated within the document. ...
Aotearoa New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta reaffirmed her commitment to working together with the new Government of Fiji on issues of shared importance, including on the prioritisation of climate change and sustainability, at a meeting today, in Nadi. Fiji and Aotearoa New Zealand’s close relationship is underpinned by the Duavata ...
The Government is delivering a coastal shipping lifeline for businesses, residents and the primary sector in the cyclone-stricken regions of Hawkes Bay and Tairāwhiti, Regional Development Minister Kiri Allan announced today. The Rangitata vessel has been chartered for an emergency coastal shipping route between Gisborne and Napier, with potential for ...
The Government will progress to the next stage of the NZ Battery Project, looking at the viability of pumped hydro as well as an alternative, multi-technology approach as part of the Government’s long term-plan to build a resilient, affordable, secure and decarbonised energy system in New Zealand, Energy and Resources ...
This morning I was made aware of a media interview in which Minister Stuart Nash criticised a decision of the Court and said he had contacted the Police Commissioner to suggest the Police appeal the decision. The phone call took place in 2021 when he was not the Police Minister. ...
The Government’s sharp focus on trade continues with Aotearoa New Zealand set to host Trade Ministers and delegations from 10 Asia Pacific economies at a meeting of Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Commission members in July, Minister for Trade and Export Growth Damien O’Connor announced today. “New Zealand ...
$25 million boost to support more businesses with clean-up in cyclone affected regions, taking total business support to more than $50 million Demand for grants has been strong, with estimates showing applications will exceed the initial $25 million business support package Grants of up to a maximum of $40,000 per ...
80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visas applications have been processed – three months ahead of schedule Residence granted to 160,000 people 84,000 of 85,000 applications have been approved Over 160,000 people have become New Zealand residents now that 80 per cent of 2021 Resident Visa (2021RV) applications have been ...
The Government continues to invest in New Zealand’s burgeoning space industry, today announcing five scholarships for Kiwi Students to undertake internships at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California. Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash congratulated Michaela Dobson (University of Auckland), Leah Albrow (University of Canterbury) and Jack Naish, Celine Jane ...
The Lead Coordination Minister for the Government’s Response to the Royal Commission’s Report into the Terrorist Attack on the Christchurch Mosques travels to Melbourne, Australia today to represent New Zealand at the fourth Sub-Regional Meeting on Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Security. “The Government is committed to reducing the threat of terrorism ...
The health and safety practices at our nation’s ports will be improved as part of a new industry-wide action plan, Workplace Relations and Safety, and Transport Minister Michael Wood has announced. “Following the tragic death of two port workers in Auckland and Lyttelton last year, I asked the Port Health ...
Bikes, electric bikes and scooters will be added to the types of transport exempted from fringe benefit tax under changes proposed today. Revenue Minister David Parker said the change would allow bicycles, electric bicycles, scooters, electric scooters, and micro-mobility share services to be exempt from fringe benefit tax where they ...
Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta will hold bilateral meetings with Fiji this week. The visit will be her first to the country since the election of the new coalition Government led by Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sitiveni Rabuka. The visit will be an opportunity to meet kanohi ki ...
The Government is introducing the Severe Weather Emergency Legislation Bill to ensure the recovery and rebuild from Cyclone Gabrielle is streamlined and efficient with unnecessary red tape removed. The legislation is similar to legislation passed following the Christchurch and Kaikōura earthquakes that modifies existing legislation in order to remove constraints ...
Approximately 1.4 million people will benefit from increases to rates and thresholds for social assistance to help with the cost of living Superannuation to increase by over $100 a pay for a couple Main benefits to increase by the rate of inflation, meaning a family on a benefit with children ...
$1 billion in savings which will be reallocated to support New Zealanders with the cost of living A range of transport programmes deferred so Waka Kotahi can focus on post Cyclone road recovery Speed limit reduction programme significantly narrowed to focus on the most dangerous one per cent of state ...
The remaining state of national emergency over the Tairāwhiti and Hawke’s Bay regions will end on Tuesday 14 March, Minister for Emergency Management Kieran McAnulty announced today. Minister McAnulty gave notice of a national transition period over these regions, which will come into effect immediately following the end of the ...
The Government is today delivering on one of its commitments as part of the New Zealand Government’s Dawn Raids apology, welcoming a cohort of emerging Pacific leaders to Aotearoa New Zealand participating in the He Manawa Tītī Scholarship Programme. This cohort will participate in a bespoke leadership training programme that ...
Industry Transformation Plan to transform advanced manufacturing through increased productivity and higher-skilled, higher-wage jobs into a globally-competitive low-emissions sector. Co-created and co-owned by business, unions and workers, government, Māori, Pacific peoples and wider stakeholders. A plan to accelerate the growth and transformation of New Zealand’s advanced manufacturing sector was launched ...
New Zealand will provide support for Pacific countries to prevent the spread of harmful animal diseases, Associate Minister of Agriculture Meka Whaitiri said. The Associate Minister is attending a meeting of Pacific Ministers during the Pacific Week of Agriculture and Forestry in Nadi, Fiji. “Highly contagious diseases such as African ...
The Public Transport Futures project will deliver approximately: 100 more buses providing a greater number of seats to a greater number of locations at a higher frequency Over 470 more bus shelters to support a more enjoyable travel experience Almost 200 real time display units providing accurate information on bus ...
All but six schools and kura have reopened for onsite learning All students in the six closed schools or kura are being educated in other schools, online, or in alternative locations Over 4,300 education hardpacks distributed to support students Almost 38,000 community meals provided by suppliers of the Ka Ora ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Martin, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Australia’s decision to buy three nuclear-powered submarines and build another eight is so expensive that, for the A$268 billion to $368 billion price tag, we could give a million dollars ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Richard Denniss, Adjunct Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University Australia has 116 new coal, oil and gas projects in the pipeline. If they all proceed as planned, an extra 1.4 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases would be released into ...
Figures unearthed by the New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union reveal that the growth in public sector managers is almost twice that of frontline social, health and education workers. Since 2017, the frontline workforce for social services, health and education ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University A referendum will be held later this year to enshrine a First Nations’ Voice to Parliament into the Australian constitution. ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Haoyang Zhai, PhD Candidate, The University of Melbourne Alexander Schimmeck/Unsplash Since its inception in 1921, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has officially promoted an atheist and materialist ideology. But belief systems in China are making a comeback – and ...
Scott Robertson has been announced successor to Ian Foster as head coach of the All Blacks, completing a controversial and highly idiosyncratic appointment process. He will assume the role in 2024, following the world cup at the end of this year. The contract for the breakdancing current coach of the ...
Multicultural New Zealand (MNZ) has expressed concern about events scheduled to take place in Auckland and Wellington on March 25th and 26th, respectively. The events will feature British anti-transgender activist, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull. MNZ is ...
Race Relations Day is celebrated annually in New Zealand on March 21st to promote and celebrate diversity, inclusivity, and harmony among different cultural, ethnic, and religious groups. As part of Race Relations Day 2023, Multicultural New Zealand ...
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s suggestion to make council budget cuts by reducing staffing hours and replacing librarians and library assistants with volunteers is concerning says New Zealand’s library association. “Limiting access to the valued ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Mohiuddin Ahmed, Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security, Edith Cowan University Shutterstock Google and Microsoft are on a mission to remove the drudgery from computing, by bringing next-generation AI tools as add-ons to existing services. On March 16, Microsoft announced an ...
The Auckland mayor’s decision to keep the media at arm’s length makes every interview he does grant a rare and exciting event, like a new Avatar movie. Stewart Sowman-Lund ranks them all from least to most exciting.Wayne Brown has a well-reported lack of affection for the media. In his ...
Tabloid Jubi in Jayapura The United Liberation Movement for West Papua (ULMWP) has called on the international community to “pay serious attention” to the escalated violence happening in West Papua. Head of ULMWP’s legal and human rights bureau, Daniel Randongkir, said that since the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) ...
ANALYSIS:By Bronwyn Hayward, University of Canterbury This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, according to the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The synthesis report ...
Across five of the latest polls for which results are published, Labour now has an edge over National. A new Talbot Mills poll, as reported by the Herald, has Labour up four points to 37%, with National down two points to 34%. The results, which draw on fieldwork across the first ...
Statement from Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, WWF-New Zealand CEO Today's IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Synthesis Report (AR6) highlights that an accelerated phase-out of fossil fuels is the best way to avoid the planet overshooting 1.5°C and risking total climate ...
The first in a two-part series revealing insights into the working life of a librarian. For privacy reasons, all names – including place names – have been changed. Te Whare Pukapuka o Poutama is a composite library.It’s 9.30AM on a mid-January Monday, high summer, school holidays. Kaitiaki Pukapuka ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Elen Shute, Researcher, Flinders University One bird bucks the stereotype of Australia’s raucous parrots – the mysterious and critically endangered night parrot (Pezoporus occidentalis). Rather than flying around in noisy flocks or eating fruit in trees, the night parrot roosts all day ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Sally Gainsbury, Deputy Director, Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Sydney shutterstock The Perottett government’s promise to introduce mandatory “cashless gambling” in New South Wales by 2028 – something for which anti-gambling activists and public-health ...
Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) is warning that the state of our roads could be the next infrastructure crisis if the Government does not adequately fund maintenance costs. LGNZ commissioned a report by one of the country’s leading economists, Brad ...
Today Canstar is proud to release its second Consumer Pulse report, which delves into the financial worries, hopes and dreams of more than 20,000 New Zealanders over the past two years. The report, released annually, tracks Kiwis’ finances and reveals ...
SAFE is again urging the Government to ban greyhound racing sooner rather than later, following a raft of severe injures in Christchurch yesterday. Sugar rose suffered a severe tail injury yesterday at Addington raceway. Her tail was partially amputated ...
In the wake of revelations that Chris Hipkins' chief of staff, Andrew Kirton, lobbied against the Container Return Scheme on behalf of the liquor industry shortly before the scheme was scrapped by the Prime Minister, Greenpeace is calling for the scheme ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Paul Komesaroff, Professor of Medicine, Monash University Libkos/AP/AAP A year after Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is in ruins. At least 8,000 civilians have died, with millions displaced. Generations of infrastructure have been destroyed. Large tracts of the environment and agricultural land ...
The Opportunities Party have proposed a new Teal Deal between taxpayers and young Kiwis - which includes fully-funded healthcare and public transport, and a Kiwisaver kickstarter in exchange for national civic service. Raf Manji, Leader of The Opportunities ...
There are plenty of practical ways the city could make multi-modal transport more accessible – but have they all been consigned to the too-hard basket?How can Auckland start mitigating its impact on the climate crisis? Our biggest city’s sustainable solution must start with transport, its number one source of ...
Long overdue legislation to unlock the economic and export potential of natural health products must not accidentally add more red tape that harms the growing sector and consumers, industry body Natural Health Products New Zealand told Members of ...
Analysis by Dr Bryce Edwards. Political Roundup: Shining a bright light on lobbyists in politicsPolitical scientist, Dr Bryce Edwards. Four out of the five people who have held the top role of Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff since 2017 have been lobbyists. That’s a fact that should worry anyone who ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Fougerouse, Research Fellow, School of Earth and Planetary Sciences and The Institute for Geoscience Research (TIGeR), Curtin University Shutterstock Thirty-seven years ago, on April 26 1986, the reactor of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant suffered a catastrophic meltdown. In ...
The New Zealand Chiropractors’ Association (NZCA) will today (21st March 2023) tell Parliament’s Health Select Committee that the profession opposes the proposed Therapeutic Products Bill in its entirety in its present form and in particular its ...
The final Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on the climate crisis came out this morning. The report contains no new science but is a summary of eight years of research by hundreds of scientists and the last three IPCC reports published in August 2021, February and April 2022 ...
Bay of Plenty District Commander Superintendent Tim Anderson: Police accept the findings by the Independent Police Conduct Authority into an incident involving an officer who tasered a man in the cells at Tauranga District Court in February 2019. ...
Few festivals have escaped the summer of 2023 unscathed. Before the sun blessed Womad with a rare guest appearance, the Taranaki festival got a drenching too. According to my pink and blue wristband, we were partying like it was “2022”. That was the first sign that things haven’t been going ...
Patient Voice Aotearoa’s Dr Malcolm Mulholland will today at 3.30 appear before the Health Select Committee to voice opposition to parts of the Therapeutic Products Bill on behalf of Kiwi patients. “The Bill threatens to obstruct access to unfunded ...
FIRST Union, the union for bank workers across New Zealand, is supporting calls for an immediate inquiry into bank profits and proposing a levy on excess profits to fund the establishment of a Ministry of Green Works . The March 2023 KPMG Financial ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Bronwyn Hayward, Professor of Politics, University of Canterbury Earth Negotiations Bulletin, CC BY-ND This decade is the critical moment for making deep, rapid cuts to emissions, and acting to protect people from dangerous climate impacts we can no longer avoid, ...
There is a growing campaign to remove the costs associated with cervical screening in Aotearoa. Alex Casey explains.What’s all this then? In July, Aotearoa is getting a big shiny new cervical screening programme after years and years and years of delays. The dreaded three-yearly smear test will be exchanged ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jessica Heim, PhD researcher, University of Southern Queensland ESA Since time immemorial, humans around the world have gazed up in wonder at the night sky. The starry night sky has not only inspired countless works of music, art and poetry, ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andy Marks, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Strategy, Government and Alliances, Western Sydney University Bianca de Marchi/AAP A gambler would probably feel the odds favour a Labor win at the upcoming New South Wales election. But, as Scott Morrison proved in 2019, underdog ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Nicole Lee, Professor at the National Drug Research Institute (Melbourne), Curtin University nery zarate/unsplash, CC BY-SA Vaping regularly makes headlines, with some campaigning to make e-cigarettes more available to help smokers quit, while others are keen to see vaping products ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dominic O’Sullivan, Adjunct Professor, Faculty of Health and Environmental Sciences, Auckland University of Technology, and Professor of Political Science, Charles Sturt University Shutterstock As part of its aspiration to be “Tiriti-led”, the University of Otago has embarked on a consultation ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Technology Sydney 1MilliDollars/Unsplash In 2017, Julia Hobbs of British Vogue declared Crocs “have an unrivalled ability to repel onlookers and induce sneers”. But over the two decades since the notoriously ugly shoes were ...
A new investigation on the role of lobbyists raises fresh questions about whether we need better disclosure of who they are and who they work for, writes Anna Rawhiti-Connell in this excerpt from The Bulletin, The Spinoff’s morning news round-up. To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday, sign up here. ...
Flip Grater decided to give up her career in music to pursue her other passion of vegan delicatessens. Now, her meat-free versions of chorizo, pastrami, and turkey have launched her business and landed her products in foodstuffs supermarkets. She talks to Simon Pound about Grater Goods’ rapid success, and expanding ...
“This is it; 2023 will be the last opportunity New Zealand has to get a government that will confront the climate emergency with the urgency it demands,” says the Green Party’s co-leader and climate change spokesperson, James Shaw. Speaking after ...
Today the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released its ‘synthesis report’, summarising six previous reports. Greenpeace says that the latest report confirms the industrial drivers of climate change, its dire planetary impacts, and ...
Phase One Ventures chief executive Mahesh Muralidhar has been selected by local party members as National’s candidate in Auckland Central for the 2023 General Election. “I want to thank our local party members for backing me to campaign for ...
On the holy terror and absolute love of parenting Picked up by Octavia outside the book shop, the kid and I clambered into the back, to the soundtrack of classic hits from what seemed to be a tape she was playing. We were thankful to get in. The sun ...
A new investigative series from RNZ reveals just how broken the government communications machine is, writes Duncan Greive.Investigative journalist Guyon Espiner is peeling back the lid on the world of external lobbyists and corporate affairs strategists employed by the public sector. His new series, being published on RNZ this ...
Fresh from a Melbourne rally that attracted neo-Nazi supporters, British anti-transgender rights speaker Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull is scheduled to appear at two events in Aotearoa. So what’s the lowdown? Another controversial international speaker wants to visit New Zealand, and, as expected, reaction has covered the full spectrum from outrage to support. ...
The Emissions Trading Scheme was always a neoliberal, market-based, get-out-of-jail-free plan. Time to lead the way with Tradable Energy Quotas insteadOpinion: The old saying about news – that it’s always bad or it wouldn’t be news – is distressingly true for the climate, both in terms of this summer’s weather ...
The Detail finds out why a law change in 2017 has led to a proliferation of independent taxi drivers – and why they're leaving some passengers feeling ripped off Not all taxis are created equal. RNZ newsreader Evie Ashton found this out the hard way, after Dave Chapelle's recent show at Auckland's ...
Companies have tended to be louder in lobbying politicians against climate change mitigation rather than in favour of it. This election, that needs to change ...
H5N1 only sporadically infects humans - but it kills half of those who catch it. As the largest ever outbreak of the virus continues to rage, is New Zealand prepared?Special report: Kiwi scientist Robert Webster knew two things about the avian flu virus he dripped into his nose one day ...
The hat-trick hero of the Black Ferns’ 2017 World Cup win, Toka Natua is back in rugby – discovering the pros and cons of playing as a mum. And the double international is ready for her next chapter in France. There are the odd moments at training where Toka Natua’s mind goes blank ...
With a number of events planned down the length of the country, the scene at this weekend’s ‘Stop Co-Governance’ rally in Orewa could be just the first of many Social media erupted with pictures of distorted faces, pulled into expressions of anger or yelling gleefully into the camera. The mugshots ...
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frank Jotzo, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy and Head of Energy, Institute for Climate Energy and Disaster Solutions, Australian National University IISD/ENB The world is in deep trouble on climate change, but if we really put our shoulder to ...
RNZ Pacific New Caledonia’s only daily newspaper, Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes, has folded after the commercial court accepted the publishing company’s request for its liquidation. The court had deferred its decision by a day after an injunction by the public prosecutor who wanted to see if there was still a possibility ...
By Arieta Vakasukawaqa in Suva The installation of the Turaga Bale na Vunivalu Na Tui Kaba, Ratu Epenisa Cakobau, clearly indicates that Fiji’s traditional chiefly system still has a strong footing and chiefs still command respect among the country’s citizens. This is the view of Dr Paul Geraghty, the University ...
ANALYSIS:By Shailendra Bahadur Singh in Suva The long-running row between the former Fiji government and the Suva-based regional University of the South Pacific (USP) has come back to haunt former Fiji Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama, who spent a night in a police cell on March 9 before appearing in ...
By Antoine Samoyeau in Pape’ete About 3000 activists of French Polynesia’s pro-independence Tavini Huiraatira party met for six hours at the weekend with the executives insisting that they were “united’ after a recent upheaval over leadership. The party also presented a “renewed” slate of 73 candidates for next month’s territorial ...
Damn. Really loved his TED talk, so I’d like to see this, but my broadband is so slow nowadays (I’ve spent hours on the phone to the techies to no avail), that I can’t watch things like this without tearing my hair out atm. Is there a written text? I’ve had a look around on the link, but can’t find one.
For those struggling with dial-up, TED talks amost always include a written text. You probably won’t find this particular talk, unfortunately . http://www.ted.com/
Download it and then watch rather than trying to stream the video. Several tools available, I use the NetVideoHunter addon in Firefox.
Many thanks Draco. My life is transformed (at least until I change my telco and get some speed back into the interweb). Sorry to derail Bill.
And if you use or D/Load Fire fox then use an addon called Adblock and there is a thing out there called Firetune So if you don’t know what you are doing it will open up some of the taps even wider. Or if you are happy playing I can give you some settings in the Network Http area that should get it going
I don’t understand what you mean, – not very techno-literate.
I would like more info, but this is off-topic, so would you mind responding in open mike?
Thanks
This is great. I think his attitude is fantastic, and I really wish there was a school in NZ that subscribed to this kind of philosophy, so that when I have kids, they can go there.
I happen to be naturally academic, so the NZ school system was not terrible for me. I did get good marks, and was never led to believe I was “stupid” – something it results in for many people with different talents.
But at the same time, I believe the education system has done me a huge disservice. Easy success at school led me to expect it in all areas of my life (something I’m still working on), and certainly didn’t encourage hard work. And, even worse, it didn’t foster my creativity at all (in fact rather the opposite), something I have found as an adult that I actually have a fair amount of…
If there was one famous person I could meet, it would be Ken Robinson… Fascinating.
There probably is such a school in NZ. But it would just as probably cost an arm and a leg to send kids to it.
Meanwhile, the entire public education system is a disaster and needs (in the words of KB) to be transformed; not reformed. That’s not a new insight. People have been saying similar things for decades.
But. It appears the spiral is about to take a decidedly steep downward turn. I mean, drugging kids so their exhibited behaviours will conform to instituitional expectations!?
Somebody tell me that’s not an absolute criminal abuse of children.
The point isn’t to have little islands of private schooling established where the innate abilities of children are fostered and the institutions adopt more organic organisational structures. That would leave the bulk of kids on a conveyor belt to a wasteland of conformity that is mostly comprised of thwarted and destroyed human potential… and since they are most of the sum total of tomorrow’s humanity that is going to have to tackle immense environmental and resource problems, well…not hard to join the dots and take a punt at where it all ends up.
Bill – your comments are bizarre. NZ’s education system ranks around 4th in the world (OECD PISA rankings). We’re actually much further along the road toward the Ken Robinson ideal than most developed countries – NZ”s self-managing schools, especially when well resourced, do pretty much what he advocates – learning tailored to individual student needs, with an emphasis on creativity. I too was naturally academic in the 1970s and 80s and found school a bit boring, but these days kids go to public schools in NZ – and they have fun, and they learn really well – my son is thriving and loves school. NZ ranks near the top on educational achievement on a number of international measures, and educationalists come from around the world to see how we do it.
If they’re poor then kids can’t learn (sick, hungry, transient) and of course, there’re are improvements that can be made in the system – but don’t believe the National Party bullshit about the system being in crisis and one-in-five kids failing (simply not true). This manufactured crisis is just so National can get away with policies like National Standards and giving $50m to private schools.
National Standards are a system of factory-farm education, which is why teachers are only making token gestures at implementation.
And BTW – other OECD research shows that once you discount for family background, there is no difference between how well a child will do academically at a public or a private school. Though private schools have been shown to have higher incidences of binge drinking because the kids are under so much pressure.
“…there’re are improvements that can be made in the system…”
No, see. You are entirely missing the point. There is no point in making improvements within the current system; attempting reform. The system is anachronistic and busted.
Why didn’t you view the vid before commenting?
As I understand it NZ schools were transformed some time ago. Interestingly enough, it seems National actually started it in the 1990s but as they didn’t get immediate results that they understood they decided to change it again. Make improvements the same way they were going and see how they go but another transformation isn’t really due for another 20 years or more. Nationals lack of long term thinking and patience has them now trying to force the schools back into the wrote learning system of the 19th century.
Actually Bill, Ed’s pretty accurate in what he states.
The NZ education system has been approaching and improving upon it’s processes and the divergent learning experiments and group collaboration beginning at year 0 & 1.
Why else would the Teachers, Principals, NZEI, PPTA & Principal assc be so keen to have NZ teachers & principals involved in professional development programs such as the literacy & numeracy projects. Or the sabbaticals to research new teaching methods or class room implementations.
We have to transition to a new paradigm of education those in the educational system (the educationalists, teachers, principals & researchers) understand that we can’t just uproot and crash the system this will only destroy what we have which is the 4 / 5th rated system in the OECD according PISA.
If we allow those with the knowledge of education to implement the improvements and the professional development as the research shows the way to improve the system and support and nurture all kids who enter the system.
“We have to transition to a new paradigm…”
Think about that for a sec. Transition involves reform or a series of reforms. Those reforms have a direction; that direction is pre-determined by the already established direction of that thing you are seeking to transition from.
So you inevitably drag the baggage from the old and wind up with a ‘new’ which is just the old in new garb. Endless reform that leaves the core of the old intact.
As Robinson points out (and I just happen to agree) the current direction of education is precisely the opposite direction from which it needs to point. And there are a host of historical and cultural reasons for that.
We have education system that teaches students the lesson of being taught (and imbues in them a host of [necessarily limiting] norms, values, presciptions etc with a concomitant list of expectations, so-called ‘reality checks’ and so on.) We need an education system that responds to students’ desires and drives to learn…that is not bound by, or that does not judge by, the particular ‘useful’ knowledge that lends itself to a market or industrial context. The education system needs to adapt to students. Not the other was around.
And transition cannot achieve that. Ever. (At best. At very best, a parody of the old would be the end result of transition.)
edit. Why be so keen to hang on the fourth or fifth ranking of something that is so intrinsically wrong?
I’m with Bill on this- the first thing we need to be thinking about is a model for schooling that isn’t based on year, and switching over to it straight rather than simply “reforming”. Transforming to this new model would be much more easily done in secondary schools, because they essentially already group classes by subject and ability- it’s just that they confuse “ability” for “year” most of the time. Streaming is a reform-minded approach to this: ideally kids could move from a low stream to a higher one instead of jumping a full grade if necessary though, and ideally you would continue to stream classes whenever you have enough people interested to do so.
Because class structures are already split, we can direct that split relatively easily into a new model and experiment there.
In primary schools and intermediates, one solution is to organise classes to different age children at the same time, (for instance, having bands of “two year classes” where you teach different things each year, so an older year and a younger year of students are always present) and focus on grouping them and making them collaborate between year groups. Because education at this level often happens in a single room every schoolday for a year, it might make sense to give them more activities that let them swap spaces for a while.
Honestly, there are so many ways to implement a better model of education that I’m surprised nobody has tried it in a public school yet.
The private schools in fact perform worse especially as they have children with all the advantages in life.What is different is the clique of elite looking after the elite which gives private schools a much bigger advantage when it comes to job prospects outside education.
There are quite a few schools trying to follow Robinson’s view. Probably scattered here and there, and fighting to retain this in the face of the forces of darkness (national’s standards). I’ve heard him speak and he was as marvellous and as entertaining as you’d expect.
Not just kids.
I was prescribed it, and took it briefly due to a problem concentrating. It helped, but I felt like an accountant (or how I imagine it feels to be an accountant…)
Interesting video. Sorry, a long comment coming …
The work comparing convergent and divergent thinking has been around for a long time – IQ tests were often criticised for not having questions like “how many uses can you think of for a brick” (that was the version I heard a few decades ago). It’s the difference between solving problems that can be tightly specified (Turing’s famous proof, for example, that anything that can be specified as a series of logical transformations can be computed by a computing machine) and, instead, coming up with new possibilities.
Industrial society has relied upon solving problems through converging on a solution and once that solution is found, mass producing it by following the recipe; in a similar way, natural selection solves the problems by generating many possible variants and culling them. Of course, it also then madly replicates the successful variant – just as happened in industrial society.
I think that Tim Harford character has just written a book about the importance of failures in modern economies – same idea (saw it in a bookshop, forget what it’s called). Creativity/evolution is like that.
Sadly, though, the ‘successful variants’ in our modern economies (successful companies) then have to get the rest of us just to follow the ‘success recipe’ – i.e., we have to stop being creative and just follow the successful instructions (again).
The problem, though, is more than education. As pointed out in the video, education ‘systems’ are produced by social and economic systems. One reason we have the kind of education system we have is that it remains true that, for most people, the path to material survival is not to be creative but to be an ‘operator’ of instructions.
Sure there are some hi-tech opportunities (that pay well) for a particular expression of ‘creativity’ but, for the most part, the way to make a crust is to ‘learn’ (be trained) to follow a particular set of instructions. Turning out a lot of creative, innovative individuals could be a bit cruel if creativity is not a major path to (successful) material existence. It’s not the education system that needs to be transformed, it’s the socio-economic system.
The education system will follow, as it did with the industrial revolution. That education system very effectively replaced the classic form of intergenerational (mother -> daughter, father -> son) ‘education’ that simultaneously transmitted the practical and cultural knowledge required to survive (and which has existed in most societies previously, and still in many today) with the institutional form with which we are now so familiar. It was actually fought tooth and nail by many parents (and by most colonised cultures) as it involved dismantling social systems within a generation. Very effective at that it was too.
In brief, I don’t think you change society by changing the education system. I think changes in the socio-economic system are far more likely to lead to changes in education processes. Perhaps that is, in fact, starting to happen (there was that other RSAnimation on another thread that DTB linked to which suggests some companies are doing things differently by allowing autonomy, purpose and the like) – I don’t know. But it seems to me that that is the directional flow.
On the ADHD matter, it’s blindingly obvious that the modern world requires vastly increased amounts of what is called ‘voluntary’ (or deliberate) attention by psychologists. ‘Voluntary attention’ contrasts with automatic/involuntary attention. The latter is what you experience when you are ‘naturally’ interested in something – there’s no effort required so your attention ‘involuntarily’ latches onto things.
Ironically, ‘voluntary’ attention is a bit of a misnomer. It refers to the attention you use a lot when you have to learn something (attend to something) that you aren’t naturally interested in but that others might require you to attend to – hence you have to focus your attention ‘voluntarily’.
Today, we have to do that a lot. What that does is deplete the cognitive resources that we use to inhibit/constrain our attention. That is, it takes a lot more effort not to attend to other things (be ‘distracted’) that interest us more than what we have to focus on. Some psychologists argue that the modern world is very good at depleting those inhibitory resources, which leads to the common experience of mental fatigue (that also happens when we have to spend too long attending to something that, initially, might even naturally interest us).
There is some hope, apparently. Google ‘attention restoration hypothesis’: the idea is that natural environments, because they are inherently fascinating, etc., reduce the need for voluntary attention – by providing lots of opportunities for involuntary attention – and therefore allow our inhibitory resources to ‘replenish’/restore.
Kids have no problem being interested in the world, it’s just that – especially as they get older – ‘we’ want them to attend to things that they don’t want to attend to (so they can get jobs/survive). Coercion (compulsory schooling), instilling anxiety (constant testing and reports) and medication are all ways to get that to happen.
“the idea is that natural environments, because they are inherently fascinating, etc., reduce the need for voluntary attention – by providing lots of opportunities for involuntary attention – and therefore allow our inhibitory resources to ‘replenish’/restore.”
Interesting. Two of my children are creative types who had problems with the school environment. When they were young I noticed one could be ‘refreshed’ by bush-walking – even in a small grove in an urban environment (he had an unusual mix of interest in art and science). However this didn’t work for the other one. Finally I noticed that for this child the same restorative effect could be obtained by water – rivers, streams, the sea (she was more into descriptives – art and creative writing). The third was more relaxed in a school environment and so long as he was out and about doing stuff regularly didn’t have the same issues as the other two.
I always reckoned school (as it was) was bad for their health. Primary school now, for their children seems to have far more diverse learning styles. I’m hoping this diversity remains.
Long comment right back at you 🙂
The problem with that is quite simply that those emerging from the education system are conditioned and so will generally lack the attributes or outlooks necessary to transform current socio-economic models. They will (mostly) have an investment in the status quo – a degree of material success, privilage and position predicated on market/industrial norms that they will be loathe to let go of. (Those that are cast aside as irrelevancies will also lack the wherewithall to imagine and formulate solutions to the various predicaments that will confront them.)
I think we see this happening around us today. Succesful people tend to favour reform over revolution (tranformation) and unsuccesful people tend to get swamped by the really bad situations they find themselves in. They might occasionally riot or whatever, but there is arguably a growing propensity to self medicate in an attempt to numb out or cope with really atrocious life situations.
Even where mass uprisings occur (Tunisia, Egypt…and this was also true of the former ‘Eastern Bloc’) after the initial reactionary phase is over, people just don’t seem to know what to do. There is a sort of ‘aimless milling’ before a varient of the former framework of control and possibilities is reasserted.
The only instance that I’ve experienced whereby a radical, sustainable working alternative to the dominant socio-economic model was proposed and implemented, was that which came from people who had been schooled along the lines proposed or favoured by Sir Ken Robinson. (Summerhill) What I find quite fascinating about what they did was that there was no overt political agenda driving them, it came down simply to them expressing their collective common sense.
Some years later (and independently) Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel engaged themselves in a whole lot of political/ economic theorising and produced (a still developing) vision of a radical, workable alternative to our current socio-economic systems. They labelled their proposition parecon (participatory economics) that has since informed and inspired the operational framework of a number of small initiatives.(You’ll have seen reference to their work occasionally on ‘the standard’ in my comments.)
But what drew me to their extensively thought through vision and its applicability in the real world, was that it resonated completely with the system set up by the ex-pupils of Summerhill in the early ’70’s. I lived in that environment in the late 80’s. And like I say, there was no political agenda driving it. It was percieved common sense.
Which is a long round-a-bout way of me saying that the educational environment is crucial if we, in general, are to have any chance of formulating and applying strategies to avoid, what anyone with their eyes open perceives, as a fairly imminent set of catastrophies stemming from our time worn (personal and collective) habits and activities.
I was fascinated and inspired by Summerhill when I was younger.
In the last couple of years I watched a doco on it and I was appalled. It seemed to have replaced overt authority in the teachers and other staff with a kind of unhealthy manipulation. Bullying was rife, and leaving the situation up to the kids to deal with seemed to have resulted in a kind of ‘managed’ lord of the flies environment. Maybe not that much worse than other schools, but I was disappointed. It wasn’t a remotely sensationalist doco and there were long interviews with staff and kids.
Thanks Bill for a thoughtful response.
I suppose I’m more of an old-fashioned structuralist and tend to think that, while individuals and small groups of individuals can change their own lives to some degree and, perhaps, even change ‘the system’ the latter only ever happens when ‘the system’ has started to change for reasons that have nothing to do with the desires, aspirations, hopes, etc. of individuals (or small groups of individuals). Part of the change in a system is, of course, changes in people’s ideas, attitudes, etc. but, once again, I see them as following (perhaps ‘fast following’) rather than leading the change.
My analysis of why ‘alternative’ approaches so often fail is the evolutionary point I made above. All sorts of variations can be generated but they only become successful once conditions have changed. You see, I don’t think these approaches fail through a ‘lack of imagination’ or ‘milling around’ with no idea how to implement something different (because of individuals being conditioned). I’m always surprised, actually, at how quickly people will adapt to a new ‘reality on the ground’.
I think the reason for these failures is probably a combination of the fact that no idea – or even small scale experiment – can anticipate the difficulty of establishing itself more extensively to a viable level in hostile conditions, and that prevailing conditions also structure the ideas that are opposed to the effects of those very conditions.
Yes, we need individuals who think differently, propose alternatives and even push ahead with attempts to enact them. My point is just that those attempts, that different thinking, etc. won’t end up changing anything until the conditions are right.
I’m no incremental liberal reformer. Transformations/revolutions are what change the conditions in which we live. It’s just that they don’t happen through acts of will (alone). If that was the case, the world would be a very different place from the one we have. Even ‘Rogernomics’ was not just the result of individual efforts/ideas.
Having said all of that, I think the more that these ideas are disseminated the better prepared we will be for transformation. 🙂
BTW, I’m very familiar with parecon (I’ve been a Znet sustainer for some years now so am kept well informed.)
Bill – I’ve watched this video a number of times already. the NZ is system is not busted, its widely recognised internationally as highly successful. what’s your agenda?
Bill has no idea what is going on in NZ schools our educators are leading the way have done for many years now. What goes on in our little factories is as akin to Ken Robinsons approach.
Most private High Schools run with an out dated systems like Cambridge the parents pay good money for a shit education of their children but think because of all the mercedes at the front gate the education must be good
National are full of this type of educated person and thats why they have no solutions to todays issues.
They think they are smart they think they know best and when given the opportunity look for ways to take control ( current Party central situation).
Thank goodness Labour are doing away with National Standards we might stand a chance of developing a Nation full of creative people who can meet the challenges of the future.
Yeah, okay. Maybe. But leading the way to where?
“Most private High Schools run with an out dated systems like Cambridge the parents pay good money for a shit education of their children”
Are you for real?
It is a fact, look up the stats, that Cambridge curriculum schools account for the top end of student performance in this country… because the system encourages high standards. Unlike NCEA, which promotes mediocrity.
No Jem infact Cambridge is a very old tired form of Education please have a look at the video above and get educated about education.
Cambridge does not require higher standards, its teaching to tests sadly, monkey learn monkey do. NCEA requires the student to work hard for the whole year to achieve excellence and this is why Schools like Auckland Grammar want to use it because their lazy boys can do better with less effort.
If you actually spend sometime you will see that the old way is not the best way. Would you buy a car brand new of the lot that had 1970s technology? Not if you were sane but thats what people do with their child’s education.
“Are you for real?
It is a fact, look up the stats, that Cambridge curriculum schools account for the top end of student performance in this country”
And yes I am for real, do want to quote your source for “its a fact”?
High standards are fine, but it’s a lot more important how you implement those standards, and whether you use them to engage kids, or try to “standardise” the kids with them.
Leading the way? As opposed to what Craig Glen Eden? Leading the way in mediocrity? Fantastic.
Since the 1960’s there hasn’t been a paricularly successful strategy put in place. And not all the strategies that were put in place, were driven from government level. Educationalist in NZ had their fingers up to their armpits in it and havent got it right.
And on old systems, even if they were all bad, at least they produced kids who could read, write and count to an acceptable level. The failure of today’s schools to emulate this is the reason the National Standards (rightly or wrongly) have been introduced.
I think you’ll find that a lot of principals and teachers are running scared because they might just be held accountable for non-performance.
NZs education system is in essence the same as every other educational system across the ‘western world’.
It’s predicated on producing contributors to our current socio-economic models. Its needs are very narrow. Human talents or abilities that don’t conform to its needs are discounted or stymied….the conditioning effect of education. (“Yes, yes. You’re very good at that but you need this if you expect to get ahead in life. So put that aside for now and focus over here.”) Then, 20 or 30 years later…and we’ve all heard this…people reflect on abilities or talents that were never developed because they weren’t considered practical.
Meanwhile, our econmic system is consigning more and more people to the scrap heap (regardless) before they even begin. Witness the increasing levels of relative poverty in our society; the growing instances of people with no prospects; the increasing incidence of suicide in the younger age brackets (under 30s); self medication, ie chronic drug use; the growing awareness that to tread water in relation to your parents’ position in society is basically success these days; the growing awareness that your kids will be lucky to achieve likewise, etc
Oh. And did I forget to mention that the particular socio-economic set-up we have is destroying the natural conditions we need for survival? Why ,oh why, oh why would we want our kids to slot seamlessly into that socio-economic framework and be successful by its definition of success…engaging in and encouraging all the necessary activities that entails…when that means destroying our collective future?
Good arguments, Bill.
Here’s a link to an old Monbiot post which kind of makes the same point.
excellent link puddle
A veritable gold mine of one liners and acute (though they should be common, obvious and everyday) insights!
Thanks Bill – really interesting 🙂
National and Act are morphing into Animal Farm.
What happened to individual responsibility?
What happened to parents fronting up to their school’s open nights or arranging an appointment with the teacher and asking about their child’s progress?
Are those parents who want national standards and corporate mind control over their children too lazy to do the asking?
national standards is mind control of our young.
I think you miss the point.
There are still Parents Evening… But you are relying on the teacher infront of you to tell you the truth.
Without National Standards you don’t know how the Teacher & Schools performance stacks up against the rest of the country, and as a Parent that is important to me..as it should be to all good parents.
jem
Do you have evidence that most teachers are pathological liars and tell you falsehoods about your children?
And does two pretty looking graphs really tell you all that you want to know about your kids’ education?
With National Standards you don’t know how Teacher or School or your kids performance stacks up against the rest of the country. They’re assessed at each school, by different people, who will inevitably give different results.
And I’d much rather the money was spent on raising my child’s achievement than on measuring it.
National Standards will encourage teaching to the test, so that the teacher & school can look good. It will kill the innovation and creativity the NZ system is famous for and why it’s one of the best in the world. Why copy the US/UK/Australia/Norway when their system is failing? If you want to copy anyone, copy Finland as one of the few better than ours.
But Labour will allow those few schools with Boards who want National Standards to keep them.
Have a good look at our policy.
Jem.
You can tell by the levels system for schools how advanced your child is. You ask the teacher for his or her advice on that level. If it is below you ask why. You continue to ask why.
Whenever I attended school evenings the hall was always more seats unfilled than those filled.
Parents can’t tell from a national standards board, which incidentally takes away yet more teacher time that should be spent on their children, whether their child is actually improving. It doesn’t tell you that. The child may have worked hard, improved in 6 months and still not show that on the national standards board.
Every teacher knows the ‘five’ kids failing in their classroom. Throw the national standards money at them not at some bureaucracy that National and Act are so dismissive of normally. The weekly one hour session for twenty weeks idea was not good either. These children can be caught early on simply by checking the class and school levels, the Principal then seeking financial support from government to help those ‘five’ children. For as long as it takes.
I’ve checked the American feedback from parents taking their children out of schools that have been forcing students into following some sort of rote learning in order to answer government tests; nasty results from an animal farm system.
Jem I think you miss the point.
who do you think is evaluating your child against the NS?
You are also assuming that the NS are properly moderated nationally to ensure that Teacher & Schools performance DO stack up against the rest of the country.
@jem – I am sorry to read that you are so fearful and that there is such a lack of trust in your environment. That has led you to question whether your children’s teachers are telling you the truth. A good parent, which you claim to be, should be establishing a friendly relationship with the teachers and in that process you discuss your hopes for your children, and what the child’s aptitudes and strengths are. And what is essential to achieve, and if the child has difficulty with it how you as a parent can help and work in with the teacher. With the teacher, as an equal and a professional at their job, but ensuring that your child is getting taught thoroughly, fairly and positively.
So called good parents have been shown on USA television spying with cameras on their children, requiring frequent reports etc. I hope that paranoid lack of trust is not arising in NZ.
There needs to be a balance between trust and monitoring.
Good news Labour says that it will drop National Standards compulsion and use the $36 million funding to help the under-achieving minority. Not such a big task Ann Tolley as most are doing well at present and there is no need to push the table over and scatter all the scrabble pieces.. You have taken on a task that no sensible man in your party would have chosen. Pity that you are determined to prove yourself as a big shot politician by putting up barriers to the real thing and going for the generic imitation.
Jem – I think you miss the point. National Standards have been forced onto schools in such a way that they don’t accurately reflect student achievement (they don’t align with reliable assessment methods, so teachers are required to make a bit of a guess; they don’t reflect real achievement – they reflect kids being able to jump through certain hoops twice a year (which takes an awful lot of teacher time to get students doing that at the same, in the same way – because it is unnatural, and not how children learn) – and there’s plenty of research to show a very poor alignment between doing well on standardised testing and achievement in later life.)
You need to remember that letting your child be tested all the time, and taught to narrow standardised measures, in order to assuage parental anxiety will get in the way of your child actually learning (to be a self-managing and self-motivated, resilient learner who challenges themselves – as our wonderful curriculum describes). It’s the great paradox of education – testing doesn’t mean learning – and one that unfortunately certain politicians are exploiting for their own ends
A bit late (in the next) day to submit this to an essentially ‘dead’ thread. (The ‘churn’ being one of my dissatifactions with ‘the standard’)
But seeing as how NZ education was initially modelled on Scottish, not English education and Scottish education is being overhauled, I thought this might be of some interest to some here. (Bear in mind that tertiary ed is still free in Scotland when reading)
http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-view/care-needed-with-education-reforms-1.1123682
Okay. Cut and paste because The Herald is a ‘register’ site.
It’s some of the cautions and qualifiers in the comment piece that caught my eye. Particularily in relation to this thread.
The churn is always a bit of an issue. I was just looking at yesterday’s figures and seeing that there were almost 1300 posts accessed. Maybe time to drop the one month comment restriction. It was only stuck in to reduce the hassle with trolls and bots.
Is there no easy way to sub-divide the site into main sections? (Even just in terms of archive?) In some way that ‘throw away posts’ (eg caption contests) are displayed separate from what might be considered ‘short, med and long shelf life’ posts (all separate) , as well as those posts that might be seen as being of permanent relevence (eg posts on climate)?
It’s a real disincentive to put work into more substantial posts if they drop out of view after a day, know what I mean?
Maybe it’s possible for a ‘tab’ or some such to be introduced that would allow posters to assign their post to the relevant category?
Dead easy to throw these ideas around when you have absolutely no technical knowledge, innit?
edit. Bollox! I really should explore the buttons on sites a bit more…
As quoted by a commenter elsewhere this morning…
“Mallard’s big attack has been on moderation. How do you know that school A is judging a child against say the Year 1 Nat Std in the same way as school B is judging a child against the Year 1 Nat Std.
If you accept that is a valid criticism (and Moroney has continued to run it) then Labour does nothing about it.
Labour has said they will “Determine the New Zealand Curriculum level a child is achieving.” But how do they know that two schools will make the same call without moderation. You’ll have to train and trust teachers – as National has suggested we do.”
“Labour’s policy appears to be keep National Standards, but rename them and don’t give the Government the data.”
So how exactly is Labours policy better ??
Jem – education really is quite complicated, which is why corporate education reformers can get away with so much – because people don’t understand the complexities, but basically Labour’s policy is much better than National’s because theirs allows teachers to use norm-referenced and moderated assessment tools. Most primary teachers already use these in classes – but National Standards doesn’t align with them. Min of Ed expects to get them all to be aligning with Nat Stds sometime in the next couple of years (it’s a huge job – something like setting NCEA for the 8 years of primary school).
Labour’s policy sees moderated assessment tools aligning with curriculum levels, which are fairly broad – and which is what you want in primary school because children develop at very different rates in early and primary years – you don’t actually want them all learning at the same rate, the same things, to be checked off a spreadsheet twice a year – nothing could be designed better to put children off learning. Good education is about children being motivated to learn at their own pace (self-directed, self-managing, lifelong learners). Of course they need good literacy and numeracy, but that’s simply not an issue for 90% of NZ children.
Teachers already know who the children are who are falling behind – age 6 net data is all there – plus as one told me “you can tell in the first week whether or not a child is going to be ok”. The problem is that teachers can’t get enough extra help for those children who are falling behind (and they’re poor – not enough regular food, don’t go to the dr, move schools 4x a year) as there aren’t enough resources -which could have something to do with National spending education funding this way – $500m on new school property (mostly through private contractors), $60m on Nat Stds, $50m to private schools ….
Jem – it’s pretty frustrating for people working in education to read this kind of stuff – many many NZ primary schools already run classes with combined years in them – 2 years in one class in which children are grouped for different subjects (maths, reading, etc) according to their ability (according to moderated, norm-referenced assessment measures). My son is in his 4th such class (ie he’s had 7 years at primary, all of them in joint classes.) When do you guys work out that the NZ system is already one of the best in the world (we 1st-5th in the world, on a number of different measures) – and a load of well-intentioned knee-jerk changes imposed by amateurs ain’t going to improve that … not that it shouldn’t be in a pattern of continuous improvement; just that current reforms are a step back to the 19th century – but most educators are working damn hard to maintain a very good system, despite the reforms
IN VINO VERITAS – listen up – this is not the site to be repeating National Party propaganda. NZ’s education system ranks 4th in the world (OECD PISA ratings) – people come from all around the world to see how we do it. We are invited to attend conferences all around the world to tell other countries how to do it.
The students who fail to do well in this system are (a) well known already to teachers, and (b) poor – sick, irregularly fed, with undiagnosed learning difficulties, and transient (we have v high child transience rates because of unaffordable housing, unemployed parents)
Take your tired old corporate clap trap and go preach over at Kiwiblog – they’re certainly not open to the facts, so they’ll love you
My bad Ed. This is a site for left wing propaganda with no dissenting views, sort of Stalinist if you had your way.
I would point out that a good deal is spent sending people overseas to see how THEY do it as well, so it cuts both ways Ed.
Standards are just that, a standard. Achievin a standard is not going to prevent you from using the education system already in place. Measuring whether students can read, write and count, and comparing against other students of a similar age is surely nothing to get frightened about Ed? Or are you concerned you’ll be found to be a dud teacher since it might just happen, that each time you take a year, that year fails to achieve, but does so the following year and did so the preceding year? At the my school (I’m on the BOT), we have several special needs kids with whom our teachers do their absolute best, however, they are never going to make standard. That’s life. There are always excuses to be made Ed. And you are full of them. Oh, theyre transient, oh, they arent fed enough, housing is unaffordable (bollocks), parents are unemployed (for how long? all their school life? if so, only because they want to be). Just teach Ed. Get on with it. Stop whining.
And 4th. 4th is good for people like you Ed. 4th is dumbing down. 4th is 4th loser.
Try winning. Or try another job.
[lprent: …site for left wing propaganda with no dissenting views…
Obviously not. I can see pages of your comments without only one behavioral correction by the mods..
If you want to be a stupid fuckwit and to attract my attention by crapping on your hosts with allegations that are patently untrue, then I really can’t see any reason that the operators of the site should have to read it. We spend a lot of effort making this an area that people can argue and we tolerate massive amounts of dissension amongst the commentators. What we are intolerant about is moronic wankers like yourself denigrating our work.
Read the bloody policy and learn to respect our efforts. If you don’t then there is a rapid escalation to not being able to comment here.
Banned for two weeks as an educational experience. ]
I wonder if they will be back; anyway, back to National Standards. Cracking srticle http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10756735