Lorraine Kerr, National Standards & Schools Money

Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, March 15th, 2010 - 19 comments
Categories: education - Tags: ,

Lorraine Kerr is the President of the NZSTA (New Zealand School Trustees Association). NZSTA is an organisation that supports School Boards of Trustees. Kerr is a woman who supports the National Party. She has used the Association to pen several articles in support of National Standards which are sent to all members of the NZSTA.

On Thursday she attended a ‘consultation meeting’ with board members in Whangarei around the Standards. The meeting had caused a minor furore when initially invites were for board chairpersons only – meaning that principals were excluded from the meeting. This was explained as an administrative error but was widely interpreted to be her way of ensuring that only one view of the standards was put to the meeting.

At the meeting in answer to a question from the floor she advised that NZSTA’s mandate to support the standards was gained from a survey held in December which showed that Boards supported the introduction of National Standards.

The next questioner asked how many replies were received to this survey. At first she was reluctant to say but in the end advised that there were 18 received NATIONWIDE. 14 for and 4 against.

Given the timing of the survey and that around this time most of NZ was unaware of what the standards were about it seems a stretch to think that this provided any level of support from school boards and rather that Kerr was using schools’ subscription money to promote an unpopular and ill conceived policy. If she was in government she would be asked to resign – what about it Lorraine?

19 comments on “Lorraine Kerr, National Standards & Schools Money ”

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  1. ghostwhowalksnz 1
    15 March 2010 at 12:55 pm

    Shes probably in daily contact with Madame Defarge on what to do and say. Along with the ‘rent a mum’ crowd who follow Tolley around to provide equally dubious ‘public’ support.

    Each week National standards looks more and more like a local version of Desperate Housewives

  2. Anne 2
    15 March 2010 at 1:00 pm

    How many school boards are there?

    • Bright Red 2.1
      15 March 2010 at 1:09 pm

      2000 odd

      I’ve heard Kerr saying that only 4 out of 2000 boards were against national standards

      • coolas 2.1.1
        15 March 2010 at 1:14 pm

        Heard the same on National Radio. Kerr said only 4 schools out of 2000 objected … then … said something about the majority and democracy. Such disingenuous spin should see her joining the dole queue.

  3. Zaphod Beeblebrox 3
    15 March 2010 at 1:17 pm

    Sample of 14 out of a population of 2000! Are you kidding me? What sort of statistical predictive value does that have?

  4. Anne 4
    15 March 2010 at 2:46 pm

    That was a such a seriously deliberate attempt to mislead, where has the media been? Has any media report mentioned that out of 2000 boards only 18 bothered to reply? I havn’t seen or heard anything.

  5. Tiger Mountain 5
    15 March 2010 at 2:50 pm

    NZSTA has generally been a somewhat dubious tory leaning organisation led by harridans, ex coppers and strangely a handful of ex union officials and populated with self righteous parents with a bit of time to kill and the odd score to settle. Educationalists are thinly represented.

    Having said that a lot of low decile school BOTs main problem is capacity building to handle legal, property and employment matters. And cross decile, many schools need help with governance issues and keeping track of relevant legislation, never mind applying it. Teachers and their unions are often seen as the enemy by NZSTA.

  6. Nick C 6
    15 March 2010 at 3:15 pm

    Not related to Roger Kerr is she?

    Also why do you think it is that they majority of school boards support standards while the majority of principals oppose them?

    • Draco T Bastard 6.1
      15 March 2010 at 5:17 pm

      There’s no indication that the school boards do support Nationals’ delusional standards.

    • Dan 6.2
      15 March 2010 at 6:43 pm

      Where is your support for the notion that the majority of school boards support national standards?
      STA has been their spokesman and their figures have been shown to be a complete misrepresentation. If I was on a school board, I would be asking serious questions of Kerr’s competence.

  7. tc 7
    15 March 2010 at 3:32 pm

    “Such disingenuous spin should see her joining the dole queue.”

    ‘Or promoted to cabinet ‘

    Sounds like she’s already there with that grasp of Statistics 101 and use of school funding.

  8. Ianmac 8
    15 March 2010 at 3:44 pm

    In the 90’s I seem to remember that the number of schools belonging to the NZSTA fell away sharply as the then executive did not seem to reflect the interests of the schools. Therefore not only is it dishonest to use the “4 opposed out of 2,000” but even more so if the membership of the Association is significantly less than 2,000. How do you find out how many schools still belong?

  9. Jum 9
    15 March 2010 at 4:38 pm

    Every person using these positions of influence to spin NAct propaganda should have an opposite and equally vocal person using the same resources to give the other side to the story. She can hardly protest.

    That’s what democracy is about.

  10. Red Rosa 10
    15 March 2010 at 5:49 pm

    Would be interesting to find out exactly what links Kerr has to the Nats. She always gave the impression of toeing the Party line, and the NZSTA figures just confirm what a lightweight policy this is.

  11. Ian 11
    15 March 2010 at 7:13 pm

    Ianmac:

    There are (at least) 2 independent regional school trustees associations: Canterbury STA (CanSTA) and Wellington / Wairarapa STA (WWSTA). I understand these organisations were set up because of frustration with NZSTA.

    The Board I was on withdrew its membership from NZSTA as we were frequently alarmed at its increasing right-wing stance, and because it provided little value for money.

  12. freedom 12
    15 March 2010 at 7:33 pm

    if they don’t install the standards then the other 7steps in their plan to privatise education cannot be embarked upon. i refer to the IPWG report.

    this is our only opportunity to halt the commercially driven homicide of public education

    p.s. downloading the pdf is only half the job, actually reading it would be helpful to your child’s future. it is a terrrifying idea and the Maori party signed onto this, unbelievable

  13. George.com 13
    15 March 2010 at 10:32 pm

    It would have helped NZSTA’s position, I think, if they had perhaps bothered to consult widely with their BOTs about the National Standards before assuming a position. My understanding is that this did not occur to any great degree.