The Slow and Certain Ruin of Schools

The Proposals For Tomorrow's Schools

Briar Lipson
Insights Newsletter 15 November, 2019


If someone threatened to burn down your house but instead left an unsavoury on your lawn, you might well find yourself feeling grateful. You might even feel more empathy towards your assailant’s complaint.

Many school boards will be feeling this way following Tuesday’s announcement about Tomorrow’s Schools. Boards are to retain control of most school matters (excluding enrolments and some aspects of property). The proposed new Crown entities – Education Hubs – have also been dropped in favour of a ministry overhaul.

However, while trimmed and tidied since the taskforce’s original report, the government’s proposals are not without thorns. Buried in a section innocuously titled ‘Learners at the Centre’, the government sets out a legislative amendment which, if permitted, will lead to the slow and certain ruin of school.

At present, the primary objective of boards of trustees is “to ensure that every student at the school is able to attain his or her highest possible standard in educational achievement”. Boards have secondary objectives too, like ensuring their school is a safe place that caters to students with differing needs. However, the order and clarity are important. For an undertaking as vital and complex as education, having a clear primary objective matters.

However, the government is proposing to erase the distinction between the primary and secondary objectives.

The NZ Minister of Education Does the Big 180

Back to the Future

It seems to us that the educrats and teacher unions in New Zealand have taken a big hit, resulting in a substantial step backwards to the future.  

The government education system, at least in senior and secondary schools has been under review.  As a result the system looks like it is going to take a big unexpected reverse step.  We figure that represents significant progress!  Some have been putting it down to the political pressure from larger, more successful schools.

The old view used to be that no student should depart or graduate from a New Zealand school without being judged as educated and competent in some subject or other.  In the relentless drive to produce students who had successfully graduated in something, thousands of "unit standards" (that is, subjects) have been created.  Over 9,000.  Subject inflation out of a misplaced drive to affirm all NZ school students in at least something or other will now been trimmed right down.

Government Schools At Risk of Even Greater Self-Harm

Trenchant Criticism

Leighton Smith has begun producing a regular Podcast which is being published by the NZ Herald.

In one of his earliest broadcasts, he interviewed Principal Stephen Hargreaves of McLean College, on the country's largest secondary schools.  We have embedded the Podcast using the link below.  The interview with Principal Hargreaves begins at 15.00 and it continues until 40.30.

https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/podcasts/the-leighton-smith-podcast/leighton-smith-podcast-episode-2-6-february-2019/

Government schools are already under internal attacks from a number of directions and sources.  The proposed "reforms" will only make things considerably worse.

Squeezing The Lifeblood Out of Government Schools

More Bureaucrats Needed

Kiwiblog has published a guest post by Alwyn Poole on the latest government boondoggle--a clever government plan to seize control of the nation's schools and turn them over to educrats--who currently number over 3,000 now, and rising.  

I have had a read of the Bali Haque led report on Tomorrows Schools by the “INDEPENDENT” taskforce (led by someone who is a former head of PPTA and held a high NZQA position). I have also read his defence of it published here:

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/109818999/our-schooling-system-needs-changing–and-heres-why
I have never read a document on the NZ education system to has more potential to cause irreparable harm to NZ children and their families. It doesn’t take long for their massively ideological pre-supposition to be made clear.

Grand Claims; Vacuous Tinkering

Les Grande Jestures

According to one commentator, Labour Governments are habitually prone to "the grand gesture".  Going back into the Pike River Mine is one example.  The passing of a piece of legislation legalising cannabis for medicinal purposes is another.  

John Roughan is not impressed.

Labour governments have one habit that annoys me intensely. They love to trumpet big liberal social advances without doing the hard work. The last Labour Government made an art-form of this and the present one is shaping up to be just the same.

This week its Health Minister, David Clark, moved the final reading of the bill legalising medicinal cannabis and hailed it as "compassionate and progressive" legislation that would make a difference to people living in pain and nearing the end of their lives. You could almost hear the violins playing in Labour minds and see the wistful look in their eyes as they imagined this moment in a movie made for audiences susceptible to simplified social history.

You had to read the news reports carefully to notice that a great deal of work on the bill, now law, has still to be done. "Little" details such as, what cannabis products? How will people know they are effective? Who will be allowed to make them? How are you going to restrict them to people genuinely in pain or terminally ill? [NZ Herald]

We predict that another piece of vacuous legislation will be the "reforming" of government controlled schools.

It's Only Fair to Assume the Worst

New Zealand's Long Slide Down the Global Educational League Tables

The failing government education system never ceases to underwhelm.  In a Level III history exam the word "trivial" was used.  It was embedded in a quotation from Shakespeare.  Some students protested the injustice of being confronted with a word they did not know.

Some authorities agreed with the students' complaint.  "Trivial" is a far from trivial word.  It is polysyllabic for one thing.  How on earth could Level III students be expected to know the meaning of such a word?  But Level III is the highest level of educational achievement in our government education system.   It is hardly a trivial matter that 15, 16, and 17 year old students did not have "trivial" stored away in their vocabulary.

Year 13 students are worried they might fail their history exam because they didn't know what the word "trivial" meant.   The senior students have launched a petition asking for the essay to be marked based on students' own definition of the "unfamiliar" word. It has so far received more than 2000 signatures.

Students sitting the NZQA Level 3 History causes and consequences paper on Wednesday were confronted with the word in a quote from Julius Caesar: "Events of importance are the result of trivial causes."  Students were asked to analyse the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with Caesar, with reference to the causes and consequences of a historical event.  [Stuff]

But the educational establishment rushed to the defence of the apparent functional illiteracy of the 16 year olds.

State Education Like a Rusty Skoda

Crushing Charter Schools Hurts the Poorest

Alwyn Poole
NZ Herald

The New Zealand education system is in major trouble.

The gaps between New Zealand's Asian population (67 per cent of school leavers with UE), European (44 per cent), Pasifika (22 per cent) and Māori (19 per cent) are a national disgrace and we have given up on believing it can be different.

We are sliding rapidly in international measures and our schools are among the worst in the OECD for closing the gaps. Socio-economic advantage has a stronger impact on achievement in New Zealand than many OECD countries.

Our best university is no longer in the top 100 in the world. Teacher's training is a mess — the entry bar far too low for primary training and the opportunity cost of another year without pay means the best university graduates won't even give teaching a second thought.   The latest pay rounds have turned into massive whine-fests and many teachers are simply putting off anyone looking for a positive profession to be involved in.

We have not recognised how the world has changed. If the education system was once a performance car it was built in the 1950s.  Successive governments have crashed and bashed it and worn down the engine, the Ministry of Education sits firmly on the bonnet and the unions have run off with the keys.

Those establishments continue to preserve their power and the children miss out, especially the vulnerable.  Legislation has now crushed the charter school model. In one sense it will mean very little. Those highly irrational sorts in education who were entirely triggered by innovation will be able to go back to their knitting. The established charter schools will continue to run under a different model because the good people who set them up will stay around, at least for a little while.

The two Villa Education Trust Schools will still have 15 pupils per class, provide uniforms, stationery and IT and ask for no donations — and upset many schools who could use their operation funding to do the same but choose not to.

Experts had concluded the model had significant success factors that ideologues like Associate Minister for Education Tracey Martin could not grasp.

Cry The Beloved Country

New Zealand At a Crossroads

We have been a consistent critic of New Zealand's state education system.  It has devolved into doomed ship caught between Scylla and Charybdis.  There are a number of reasons why this has become the case.  It is unlikely that reform will be permitted, for it would require a lot of egg-on-face having to be scraped off.  

Even if reforms were agreed and embarked upon, the vested interests are too powerful, to insinuated into the warp and woof of government education, that the reforms would likely fail. 

What are the issues.  The most significant is the much vaunted NCEA.  This madcap scheme decided that everyone in the education must be a winner.  Every pupil had to graduate with a qualification in something.  The NZ Herald has published a piece by an "insider".  His explanation of the extent of the failure of the government education system makes for grim reading.

Celebration of Truancy

Indulgent Parents Reproducing After Their Own Kind

We blogged recently on the brouhaha at Hamilton's Fraser High School.  Columnist Kate Hawkesby has taken the "rebel students" to task for their walkout.  Well done.  Well said.

I fully support the principal of Fraser High in Hamilton.  To the parents who don't support her - and say she called your kids losers - newsflash: they are losers.  They are losing out on teaching, on some tough talk about their futures, they're losing an opportunity to learn respect and what care looks like.

This principal, on the occasions she leaves the school grounds during class time for meetings, sees groups of students sitting outside the dairy, fish and chip shop, bus stop, just wagging, smoking, and basically avoiding school.

She wants better for them. She was urging them to put in the work now, and create a better future for themselves.  She didn't mince her words, and quite likely realised she had to be blunt to be heard. To make an impact. Telling it like it is, is not infringing someone's human rights.

Desperately Seeking Scapegoats

Indulgent Parents 

Modern psycho-babble demands that we surround our children with "positive" messages.  "You are a wonderful child.  If anything bad happens to you, it's not your fault.  We are telling you this now, in advance, so that you will be surrounded by a self-image of relentless positivity.  It's the least that you deserve."  

Whatever happened, one innocently asks, to the duty to warn the young of the dangers that lie ahead, of good and bad choices?  No, never.  How can children ever grow up into wonderful human beings if doubts are cast upon the inevitable triumph of gooey, sweet goodness.  Such destructive negativity.  Tut.  Tut.  Tut.

Some parents are up in arms over one school principal's "tough love" approach to unacceptable behaviour--particularly truancy.  For our money, Principal Crawford stands out as a much needed, welcome truth teller.  When you see a child at the top of a sheer cliff skipping along, the righteous person shouts at them, warning them of their danger.  But, apparently, there are more than a few who, upon seeing such a child, will clap and cheer, giving lots of "positivity" and "affirmation" and "support" assuring the child they are a wunnerful, wunnerful dancer and that their future is bright and red-rosy.

Let us be clear.  Those kinds of parents are the child's worst enemy.  They represent the serpent's hiss.  Not so in the case of Principal Crawford:

The Imbeciles Are Running the Asylums Up North

Ministry Wallahs and Mad Hatters

The Ministry of Education is a joke.  It's living in Alice's mad, mad world.  That's the assessment of Pat Newman--long time educator, and presently the far north Principals Association president.  The precise technical term Newman used is "Mad Hatters"--and, he concedes, they are now in control of the Ministry's classrooms in the far north.

What happens when a government school system transmogrifies into a social welfare agency?  You get Mad Hatters running the asylum.  The particular issue facing Ministry employees in the far north is managing and controlling completely unacceptable violent behaviour of school pupils.  The Min of Ed's teachers are not allowed to lay a finger upon such children.  The only alternative?  It is to march the rest of the pupils out of the classroom, leaving the Mad Hatters in charge of the asylum. 

A Far North principals' association president was hoping a Ministry of Education meeting in Wellington on Friday to review guidelines on the restraint of children would result in change. He was disappointed.  "The Mad Hatters are now in control of our classrooms," said Te Tai Tokerau Principals' Association president Pat Newman.

He had advised his members to pray that those making the decisions would "apply common sense for once.

The Minister Of Education Climbs Down

Painted Up To Look Like Victory

When we were growing up, one of our favorite rejoinders to the odd lecture from parents was, "Don't care!".  Whereupon, our mother's wry retort was,

Don't Care was made to care.
Don't Care was hung.
Don't Care was put in a pot
And boiled 'till he was done.

The Minister of Education, Chris "Hapless" Hipkins has been "made to care" over the matter of  Charter Schools.  Captive to the all-powerful teacher unions, Hipkins was determined to stamp out the dozen or so charter schools operating in New Zealand.  They, said Hipkins, represented a reckless endangerment to our young people.  Under Labour policy they were to have been done and gone.

Minister Hipkins, however, was faced with unexpected opposition--from the public at large.  In the past nine months or so, there has been nary a negative story about these charter schools.  The repeated account was that they have been remarkably successful at teaching students who were falling through the cracks and failing at the government schools.  It seems that the old Kiwi sense of fair play and non-ideological pragmatism came into play.  The media bought into the narrative and generally painted New Zealand's charter schools in a very positive light.

So, Hipkins has reached a compromise.  The dozen or so  charter schools were "changed" into integrated schools or special character schools which means they could basically carry on doing what they proved to be so good at--educating in their distinctive ways kids who were falling through the cracks.

This implies that when the Labour coalition government is eventually voted out, National can get back to creating charter schools with a vengeance.

An Excellent Piece on the Government School System

Teachers' Pay Reflects the Way They Bargain

John Roughan
NZ Herald

My granddaughter is in Year 2 at her nearest primary school and loving it. For that I thank her teachers. They work hard to make schools happy, lively, friendly, healthy and stimulating for all children. But teachers will never be paid what they deserve until they organise themselves professionally.

I'm not talking about primitive industrial tactics and pathetic placards in the streets, though those are bad enough. I don't know whether my granddaughter knew why we were looking after her on Wednesday. If she did, she didn't mention it, for which I was grateful.

How do you reinforce their respect for teachers who want more pay and have refused to work that day to show how angry they are? Children understand that is what a child would do but not adults in their experience. They are too young to understand that the reason teachers are not well paid is that they adhere to bargaining structures designed to protect the weakest in their ranks rather than sell their best work at its market value.

This is teachers' choice and they are proud of it.

Wanted: Teacher Union Free Schools

The Teachers' Unions Have To Go

"What an opportunity we lost."  These words were penned by Allan Peachey, former celebrated Principal of Rangitoto College.  Back in the eighties some mad cap educationalists did what bureaucrats do best: they penned a marketing slogan.  The government education system was to be given a new name: Tomorrow's Schools.  The bureaucrats and the educrats were grasping after their own deification.  It has always been an attribute of the Living God that He speaks reality into existence-even reality out of nothing.  The educrats thought they would give it a go: they, in magisterial arrogance, thought they could name a reality to come into existence out of very little, if not nothing.  

Tomorrow's Schools were gradually put together by a collection of Uncle Tom Cobblies in the 1980's and 90's.  It's governing religious precept was "the gummint knows best".  Few other fields of human endeavour have survived this statist hangover from the middle twentieth century.  But with Government Education, the "Force" was strong.

Peachey writes:

Perhaps most insulting of all was the patsy, middle-class patronising of the less well-off communities by those who call themselves liberal.  It is not difficult for me to hold the "Chardonnay socialists" in contempt.  I was stunned by the sheer arrogance of those who claimed that some communities were too poor, too unskilled, or too uneducated to know what was best for their children. 

I get sick of hearing schoolteachers, principals, trade unionists, capital-city bureaucrats, and left wing politicians using the socio-economic status of communities as an excuse to expect less of children within those communities than those children expect of themselves.  [Allan Peachey, What's Up With Our Schools? A New Zealand Principal Speaks Out (Auckland: Random House, 2005), p.86.f.]

The Chardonnay socialists had one bottom line: neither trust  nor empower  parents and local communities when it comes to Education.  Hence Tomorrow's Schools failed.

The Good, the Bad and the Very Ugly

Government's Spiteful Behaviour

Maori, particularly Maori educators are continuing to express their disgust and anger at the New Zealand Labour Government shutting down charter schools.  This decision has nothing to do with the quality of education being provided.  It has everything to do with the demands of teacher unions who are incestuously cuddled up to the Labour Government.  There is an old proverb about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.  The Government is in the process of doing precisely that when it comes to education.

A Murupara-based long-time educator has hit out at the Education Minister's decisions to close partnership schools in favour of special character schools.  Pem Bird, who won the 2018 Matariki Award for contribution to education, said, in his opinion, Chris Hipkins' actions were "profoundly disrespectful".

"It's condemning these children to return to a system where Māori and Pasifika underachievement is chronic, intractable and systemic."  Bird said partnership schools were making a positive difference for Māori and Pasifika students.  "They are thriving in these culturally inclusive and wairua uplifting environments," Bird said.  "In mainstream schools where 95 per cent of Māori are concentrated, they are routinely failed. According to figures issued by this Coalition Government, on an average school day around half of all Māori and Pasifika secondary school pupils are truant.
 
The Ministry of Education prefers this status quo of failure to continuing with Charter Schools which have achieved some very positive results in the few short years they have existed.  [NZ Herald.   Emphasis, ours.]

Dr Lance O'Sullivan, another highly respected voice, has also condemned the Government's oppressive tactics in closing charter schools for no good reason.

Our Culture of Identity Politics

Identifying As An Afflicted Dairy Cow

Here is an observation on political correctness in schools, penned by Allan Peachey.  It speaks for itself.

The politics of political correctness are playing too big a role in our schools.  Single-issue activists seem to have an influence well beyond either the merit of their ideas or the level of support for them.  Now we have gay marriage masquerading as civil union, legalised prostitution and willingness to make claims of "sexism" or "racism" without apply reasoned argument to support them.

It is ironic that these activists--who promote sweeping social change--are arguing for tolerance, yet they are not tolerant of people who hold more orthodox or traditional views.  We are seeing political correctness made into law and there is a politically correct, sanctioned intolerance being built into our education system.  [Allan Peachey, What's Up With Our Schools?  A New Zealand Principal Speaks Out (Auckland: Random House, 2005),  p.80.]

Fifteen years later, little has changed, except things have got worse.  One of these days we expect someone will make an Official Information Act request of the Ministry of Education, asking it to divulge how many abortions schools have procured for their students without parental knowledge or consent over the past fifteen years.  We fear that the number would shock us all--although it will take a sledgehammer to crack through the wall of stony silence, the OIA notwithstanding.

Why Most Schools Fail

The Essential Core

The government education system in New Zealand has become a behemoth which will never change.  That, we believe, is the most realistic assessment of the vast edu-bureaucracy and the educrats who run it. 

Debates over the "system" inevitably turn into discussions about quality teachers.  Most people instinctively realise that any and every education system will fall over if teachers are second grade or inadequate to the task. 

Allan Peachey, former principal of Rangitoto College was pretty clear on this.  Finding and securing the best available teachers was a core part of a principal's duties and responsibilities.  He describes what he looked for when recruiting teachers to work at Rangitoto College.

Beyond Reform

Keeping A Righteous Perspective

There are only two things wrong with our schools: Everything that our children don’t learn there and everything they do. These public schools, with their vast political and bureaucratic machinery, are beyond reform. That does not mean that persons of good will should not offer themselves up as missionaries of truth and goodness and beauty, to teach there… But we would be quite mad to send our children there. We send missionaries to cannibals. We do not serve the cannibals our boys and girls. 

---Anthony Esolen

Government Education System Set to Get Worse

NCEA and the Dodo Will Have a Lot In Common

We find ourselves amused at the prospect of the New Zealand government education system imploding because its centre cannot hold.  The pagans have had a free run for nearly fifty years.  The government has built an education system after its own image.  It now appears to be a decomposing mess.  

Hapless Hipkins is the fresh new Minister of Education.  He has announced a review of the NCEA system.  For those who live outside New Zealand, NCEA stands for National Certificate of Educational Achievement.  It has busily been defining standards of knowledge which can then be "taught" and the student can pass an exam or complete some work to get a certificate of achievement, with which he can then whip down to the local employer, show them the earned certificate, and get a job.

An important philosophical precept of the NCEA system was that it be designed so that no student need fail.  The system would produce an achievement in something or other for every student blessed to partake.  National certificates have grown like mushrooms.  There are now, we are told, 9,360 National Standards.  You can get NCEA certificates in beginning, medium and expert tiddlewinks. If anything exists which does not yet have a NCEA certificate wrapped around it--be patient, it is surely coming.  Since everyone is good at something, and since "something" would eventually have an NCEA certificate attached, every student would graduate out of NZ schools with a recognized qualification in something.  No child would be left behind.

This novel approach to education has had at least two unintended consequences.

Between the Promise and The Reality Falls the Shadow

Educational Doggerel

Are Modern Learning Environments Preparing our Children for the Workforce?

Peter Slaney
Principal
Manukau Christian School

In a recent conversation with a colleague I was told that the traditional schools no longer serve the needs of students because they do not prepare students for the 21st century workforce.  The unstated claim was that the student-centred classrooms and modern learning environments that are currently in vogue are doing a much better job of preparing them.  Is this the case? 

A good starting place will be to determine what qualities and skills employers are actually hoping to find in their new graduate employees and then work backwards from there.

Attributes sought by employers according to national Association of Colleges and Employers provides the following breakdown, and this is fairly consistent with what other agencies say.

% OF RESPONDENTS
Leadership	80.1%
Ability to work in a team	78.9%
Communication skills (written)	70.2%
Problem-solving skills	70.2%
Communication skills (verbal)	68.9%
Strong work ethic	68.9%
Initiative	65.8%
Analytical/quantitative skills	62.7%
Flexibility/adaptability	60.9%
Technical skills	59.6%
Interpersonal skills (relates well to others)	58.4%
Computer skills	55.3%
Detail-oriented	52.8%
Organizational ability	48.4%
Friendly/outgoing personality	35.4%
Strategic planning skills	26.7%
Creativity	23.6%
Tactfulness	20.5%
Entrepreneurial skills/risk-taker	18.6%

Source: Job Outlook 2016, National Association of Colleges and Employers

Source: Job Outlook 2016, National Association of Colleges and Employers accessed 17th April, 2018.

Note the high rankings of written communication skills and a strong work ethic.