Posts Tagged ‘anne tolley’

Legitimate spending vs rorts

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, March 5th, 2010 - 32 comments

It’s pretty rare that I agree with John Key but he got it right when he voiced concern that journalists are attacking MPs for legitimately using their budgets to do their jobs. Do we really want to force parties to rely on private funding for communicating their positions? That makes politics a rich man’s game. There are plenty of actual rip-offs and rorts for the media to root out.

Listening to the evidence on national standards

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

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

Tolley’s road tour

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

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

Trev nails Tolley, other Lab MPs fail

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 27 comments

Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.

Dimming down night classes

Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, February 23rd, 2010 - 4 comments

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association have just launched a YouTube video protesting National’s hugely unpopular cuts to night classes.

Click through to check it out.

Signs of a more confident Labour

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 22nd, 2010 - 61 comments

Labour is a pretty risk-adverse organisation. Making those two unorthodox attacks on those two ministers, and pulling it off both times, shows that Labour has got the measure of Key’s drop-kick ministers and is feeling more confident in itself.

Pansy Wong bids for worst minister award

Written By: - Date published: 11:22 am, February 19th, 2010 - 11 comments

When you’ve got a Finance Minister who can’t get stats right, a Social Welfare Minister who can’t define her flagship policy, and an Education Minister who can’t explain her flagship policy, it’s easy for an incompetent Women’s Affairs Minister to slip through.

Financial literacy – Educate adults.

Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, February 19th, 2010 - 21 comments

While measures to fix problems in investments are good, the best approach is increase financial literacy. However Anne Tolly has already shown she does not understand education. Her idiotic decisions to destroy adult community education has removed the best channel for promoting knowledge amongst current investors. This suggests that the government isn’t serious and we are seeing more PR than substantive measures.

Armstrong on Clueless Tolley

Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, February 18th, 2010 - 19 comments

John Armstrong: “Anne Tolley’s reluctance to explain [national standards] left the distinct impression she was less than 100 per cent sure.” It was a bit more than an impression, and it was a bit less than 100%. Tolley clearly had no clue what she was talking about.

Labour pins clueless Nat ministers

Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 13 comments

It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.

National-style standards and Key’s teacher trap

Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 38 comments

When the Government came under fire over National Standards John Key was quick to raise the anti-union bogey. The old stereotypes are certainly still strong in National, but they have led Key into a trap. What might have worked for Muldoon or Maggie in the past won’t work now for a number of reasons.

Tolley keeps empty schools open

Written By: - Date published: 10:33 am, February 4th, 2010 - 17 comments

Well, there can’t be any doubt now, Anne Tolley is this government’s worst minister. A failure that stands out among failures. She had an Auckland university pay to take her on a chopper ride because she didn’t understand what was meant by getting a “helicopter view of the sector”. She complained to her advisors about […]

Tilly the Cat’s Christmas Lesson

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, December 19th, 2009 - 3 comments

Not related to anything in particular, Peter Giddens has written a sweet little Christmas story that I thought it would be fun to share: Tilly the Cat’s Christmas Lesson . . . Tilly was a very bossy cat. She was in charge of the whole house, or so she thought. The people in the house […]

Trial needed for national standards

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, December 18th, 2009 - 105 comments

Anne Tolley should have the sense to listen to the teachers, the principals and the eduction experts. She should trial her national standards in primary schools to get information on the outcomes before introducing them nationally. The teachers want national standards tested in a trial, like other education innovations are before they are introduced nationally. […]

Wee gripes: Another Tolley lie

Written By: - Date published: 11:29 pm, November 28th, 2009 - 10 comments

Minister of Education Anne Tolley is obviously feeling the heat of the reaction to her inexplicably daft decision to read a moralising children’s story book* to the PPTA Executive. Minister defends reading kid’s book to PPTA …The council says it was left somewhat bemused and feeling patronised that the minister chose to read to them […]

Thickest. Minister. Ever.

Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, November 25th, 2009 - 70 comments

So, imagine you’re the Minister for Education. You’re meeting with the PPTA executive, and sometime soon you’re expecting to announce big teacher layoffs. How do you handle the situation? How about reading the executive a children’s story book! This one should be good: “The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley”. It’s a sweet little […]

Tolley: national standards could be disaster

Written By: - Date published: 11:20 am, November 9th, 2009 - 23 comments

The man National credits with coming up with the idea of national standards has warned the incompetence of Education Minister Anne Tolley could make it a disaster and Tolley agrees. John Hattie told the Sunday Star Times national standards: Could be the most disastrous education policy ever formulated. Will only barely raise student achievement, if […]

Herald scathing of Tolley

Written By: - Date published: 5:22 am, November 6th, 2009 - 5 comments

The Herald was just about as damning as they get of National on Tuesday, with Claire Trevett’s piece on Anne Tolley. Of course, the Herald is never going to out and out criticise a National minister but between the fluff and odd anti-left remarks (“lippy unions”, “excessive regulation”) there’s some pretty tough comments. That Tolley […]

Nats flying high, on your dime

Written By: - Date published: 3:30 pm, October 29th, 2009 - 16 comments

Why is our agriculture minister spending as much as the Prime Minister on international travel? David Carter has spent $72,000 on international travel in nine months Peter Dunne, Minister of Revenue, has spent $76,000 Judith Collins, $70K. Anne Tolley $79,000. 70-80K each – we’re talking about enough money to buy half a dozen last minute […]

Chopper chops science education

Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, October 22nd, 2009 - 24 comments

National’s Anne Tolley, our education minister who thought that taking a ‘helicopter view’ of something meant taking a ride in a chopper, is cutting education resources so we can have an additional measure of how well kids are learning. $10 million is being taken out of extra support for Science, PE, and art teaching in […]

Politically illiterate authoritarian git

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, September 3rd, 2009 - 71 comments

There are an interesting couple of posts over at Red Alert about an editorial in the Dominion Post yesterday. Grant Robertson describes it as a bitter diatribe. Trevor Mallard thinks it is a bit over the top. I think that the editor who wrote it is an authoritarian git who really needs to consider why […]

The Tolleycopter

Written By: - Date published: 9:36 am, April 8th, 2009 - 32 comments

Most people have focused on the utter hypocrisy of National’s Anne Tolley flying around Auckland in a helicopter looking at education buildings from the air at the same time as the government says it can’t afford to help people falling victim to the recession. I’m more worried about how the helicopter ride came about. It […]

Govt to sell your kids junk food

Written By: - Date published: 1:17 pm, February 5th, 2009 - 102 comments

Education Minister Anne Tolley has just put out a press release announcing the following: ‘As part of the National Government’s commitment to reducing compliance for schools, I have decided to remove the clause in National Administration Guideline (5) which states ‘where food and beverages are sold on schools’ premises, to make only healthy options available’. […]

Kids need fun, politicians need to think

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

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

Minister of Education lies to teachers

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

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

Training wheels

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, December 11th, 2008 - 18 comments

On the first day of Parliament, Gerry Brownlee made a complete hash of his role as Leader of the House. Despite having repeatedly needed Michael Cullen’s assistance to organise the order of business in the Business Committee, Brownlee mucked up procedures in the House, which Labour gleefully exploited. John Key tried to make light of […]

Family-friendly facade

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 pm, August 29th, 2007 - 3 comments

Yet another policy inoculation today from the Nats, this time on paid parental leave. Judith Collins is now “generally not against it” and in typically decisive fasion John Key “thinks” he’s for it. What’s really astounding about this u-turn is how many of their MPs are on record as having vehemently opposed it since day […]

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