The Invincible Ignorance of Some Education Academics

Profit-seeking and preschools go together

Jamie Whyte

NZ Herald

7 January, 2015

[A classic piece by Jamie Whyte illustrating the endemic ignorance that is rife in academia and the government education system in New Zealand about basic economics. Ed.]

On these pages late last year, Linda Mitchell, an education lecturer at Waikato University, lamented the role of profit-making companies, such as Evolve Education, in providing preschool education.  She claimed the quest for profits damages the service provided. Or, as she put it, an interest “in making profits for owners or shareholders positions Evolve Education Group at odds with more community spirited aims to invest fully in the service itself”.

That profits injure consumers is a familiar idea. But this should not blind readers to its absurdity.

Kindergartens, like most enterprises, need capital and labour. The capital pays for the buildings, equipment and so on, and provides cover for “rainy days” when costs exceed revenue. The labour at a kindergarten is mainly teaching but people also work on administration, cleaning and maintenance.

Ms Mitchell is right that if the people who contributed capital were not paid for it then more could be spent on educating the children.  Yet the same is true of those who provide labour. Imagine a kindergarten with four teachers. If they all took a 20 per cent pay cut, they could hire a fifth teacher on the same pay and give more attention to each child. If they worked for nothing, they could hire even more extra teachers and pay for all sorts of other services that might benefit the children.

Why does Ms Mitchell not lament the fact that teachers are paid for supplying labour? Why is paying teachers not also “at odds with more community spirited aims to invest fully in the service itself”?

Perhaps Ms Mitchell realises that if teachers were unpaid, they would be reluctant to do the job and, in the end, children would be worse off. Yet the same goes for those who supply the capital. If they were not paid to do so, they would not supply it and, again, the children would be worse off.

Of course, capital can be supplied by the government. Though she did not say so explicitly, I suspect this is Ms Mitchell’s preferred alternative to private capital and the profits required to attract it. But there are (at least) two problems with government-supplied capital.

First, it is the opposite of “community spirited”. Government-owned enterprises need not make a profit because their capital comes from taxation. The taxpayers who supply it have no choice in the matter.  Evolve Education attracts capital by offering those who voluntarily invest a 4.65 per cent dividend, should things work out. The government raises capital by threatening to imprison you if you do not hand it over. It is perverse to regard this method as the “community spirited” one. You might as well say slavery is more community spirited than attracting voluntary workers by offering wages.

Second, eliminating profit harms the intended beneficiaries: in this case, children receiving preschool education. A kindergarten that gets its capital from profit-seeking investors must provide a good service. If it doesn’t, parents will take their children elsewhere and profits will decline. If the kindergarten performs very poorly, it may even go out of business and lose its shareholders the money they invested. A privately owned kindergarten, like any privately owned enterprise, has a powerful commercial incentive to provide a good product or service.

A kindergarten funded with money confiscated from taxpayers lacks this incentive. The “investors” have lost their money from the start. It makes no financial difference to taxpayers if the kindergarten they have “invested in” thrives or goes out of business. So it makes no financial difference to them whether or not the kindergarten provides a service that parents value.

An enterprise relieved of the need to attract investment from profit-seekers is an enterprise relieved of an important reason to provide good products or services. Unlike privately owned firms, state-owned enterprises can persist indefinitely despite providing a service that people value less than the cost of supplying it. They go out of business only when government ministers give up on them – which they almost never do, if only because it would amount to an admission that they have wasted money confiscated from taxpayers.

Ms Mitchell pointed to the insolvency of ABC, an Australian preschool company, as evidence against private ownership. This is the crowning glory of her confusion. That underperforming private firms are subject to insolvency is a virtue of private ownership, not a vice.

It is no wonder that so many people want to work with capital that has been confiscated from taxpayers. It relieves them of the burden of providing something that people value. But they should not pretend that this indulgence is a virtue. It harms everyone but them.

Responsibility-Deflection

The Axis of Effective Education

Blame-shifting or responsibility-deflection is endemic in the education sector.  The government education system faces a major problem, however, with its deflection programme.  After all, it has run a state-enforced monopoly for nigh on 150 years. 

For over a century it has promulgated the idea that parents are incompetent as educators of children.  Parents can do significant harm. Parents are not experts (as are we government educators).  Parents have no idea of modern sophisticated  pedagogical theory.  The upshot is that the lackeys inside the government education system believe, and want everyone else to agree, that when it comes to education, parents are not just redundant; they are both irrelevant and dangerous.

Consequently, the government education system is bound to fail systemically–and it is. Bali Hacque–life long practical educationalist–made a startling claim in his recent book.  Startling, because to the modern government educator, it flies in the face of all the propaganda they have been feeding themselves for generations.  Hacque, like many trying to fix the unfixable, searches for “the key”, the “one thing” that will make all the difference.  What will make the biggest difference to a child’s educational progress?

Books.  (Not ipads, tablets, the net, or other electronic distractions).  And not just books.  Books in homes.

Bali Haque’s new book, Changing our Secondary Schools, raises important and timely questions about teaching. His acknowledgement that the single most important contribution to student success is the cultural capital they bring into the classroom is supported by all the international evidence. Strikingly, the single most reliable indicator of future academic success is the number of books you have in your home when you grow up. [NZ Herald]

To the average government educator this simply does not compute.  Homes and parents were supposed to be irrelevant.

We would add one more vital necessary ingredient.  Home life must be structured so that children get a decent night’s sleep every night.  They must be abed by a certain time.  The “modern” home consists of children who stay up playing computer games isolated in their own rooms or in other places to all hours of the night.  These days, when teachers inquire, “What time does your child get to bed and go to sleep?” the majority of parents are dumbfounded and confess they do not know.  Similarly, the question, “How many hours sleep does your child get every night?” garners a similar agnostic response.  Teachers complain, legitimately, that pupils are spaced out and tired and listless and inattentive in the classroom.

A good rule of thumb with respect to electronic devices in homes is zero tolerance, apart from one home PC where the children’s access and use can be monitored at all times.

One enlightened parent remarked the other day that their children were all sent to bed at a standard time every night.  They could read in bed as long as they liked, but nothing else.  They reported that many were the times when they would tip-toe into the children’s rooms an hour or so later to find the light still on and the children fast asleep, with a book lying open either on or beside them. 

Education and schooling will always be sub-standard without a strong working coalition between parents and the teachers of their children.  The axis of educational effectiveness consists of a strong working alliance between parents, teachers, and students.  Enlightened educators (whether parents or successful teachers) work hard at developing and maintaining that axis.  No blame-shifting is tolerated. 

Scofflaws, Outlaws, and Unregistered Teachers

Government Monopolies and Guild Socialism

Back in the bad old days New Zealand’s economy was more regulated than East Germany’s.  Almost all human activity was governed by permits.  One had to have a permit to visit a latrine.  Virtually every occupation was a registered trade.  To practise one had to have the requisite qualifications and a “practising certificate”.  It was state sanctioned, and state enforced.  This grand system was ostensibly intended to protect the customer–which it may, or may not have done.  In reality (deliberately so) the permit and certificate system rather protected the jobs of the registrants, creating huge barriers to entry for others.

It was illegal to teach piano to a seven year old, unless one had a permit to do so and was suitably qualified and registered.  To be clear, we believe that registration as a suitably qualified and educated expert to perform a skilled service can be very helpful.  But in New Zealand’s case, the multitude of registers were “official”–that is, state managed or endorsed.  It represented a strangle-hold of antiquated guild socialism.  Imagine living in a society where you could only get a job as a software programmer if you were state-registered as such.  But those were the bad old days. 

Now many occupations and trades have voluntary, open-market certification systems and registrations.  They place the responsibility upon the consumer to perform responsible due diligence upon applicants for jobs or to provide a service.  Someone hangs out a shingle as an accountant.  It is up to us, the potential purchasers of his or her accounting services, to do some basic due diligence on the qualifications and experience of the touting accountant.  An efficient quick check can be performed when we ascertain that the touting accountant is a registered member a professional association of accountants and we can confirm on-line what  professional practising standards apply for membership. 

Some professions remain in the hide-bound guild-socialism model.  School teaching is one.  Ostensibly, one cannot earn a living as a school teacher without being a registered teacher–and teacher registration is controlled by the government–which admittedly is somewhat appropriate since teaching, education, and schools are government monopolies.  But the monopolist grip is a stranglehold.  It is forcibly imposed even on private schools, which are restricted to employing state registered teachers.  The system is a hangover from our failed “Eastern European” economic experiment.

It’s not surprising, then, that the system is failing (as state run commercial systems always tend to do).  There are just on 40,000 state registered teachers.  But it is reported there are over 5,000 non-state registered teachers active and illegally employed in New Zealand schools.  That represents just over one in ten.  Yet we confidently assert that those flying-under-the-official-radar teachers are likely doing a great job–at least as good as your average registered teacher.  The state teacher registration system is a vastly expensive, overrated, and unnecessary bureaucratic boondoggle.  Even within the monopolistic state education system it is failing and without relevance.

But it gets worse.  All guild socialist employment systems were designed to protect those within the guild from outside competition.  Other suppliers of the guild’s service were shut out.  It was an early version of closed shop socialism.  The best teachers in the world are those who know their subject thoroughly and are enthusiastic and passionate about it.  Many of those who are thus qualified will never bother to become registered teachers because they cannot be bothered with the arcane, antediluvian socialism the profession  represents.  They care too much about engineering, the law, literature, language–and so forth–to spend time complying with irrelevant educational qualifications and undergoing state registration.

All power to the 5,000 unregistered teachers who are teaching in our state monopolistic schools.   They are a beacon to a better educational future.  They testify to the irrelevance and inappropriateness of the present government monopoly and its guild socialism.  If teaching were a respected profession, it would be regarded as able to self-regulate.  The fact that teacher registration is just one more facet of a government imposed monopoly evidences most clearly the general disrespect in which teachers are held in New Zealand.

Sadly traces of our Eastern European workers’ paradise still linger.

Shelob’s Cobwebs

Ideological Inanities

“. . . When thou speakest, people say,
Did we hear a donkey bray?”

Of all world-views which compete in today’s ideological marketplace, statism ranks as one of the more gullible, ignorant and one-dimensional.  One can confidently predict what our numerous resident statists will say on any public issue of the moment.  Whatever concerns or ails us, doubtless more government rules, regulations, controls, intrusions, money, and government programmes will fix the problem. 

This becomes even more ludicrous when controversies arise in those few areas where the state already runs a monopoly, such as education.  The failings of our monopolistic government schooling system are well documented.  When you are already operating in a statist monopoly, the only response left when failures emerge is for the statist to adopt an Oliver-Twistian pose, stick out the porridge bowl and demand more (taxpayers’ money). 

The Green Party is a statist party.  All it ever wants for Christmas is more government, less freedom.  True to form, its education spokesman and ardent advocate for monopoly government schools, Catherine Delahunty slammed a poor little one-year-old, nascent charter school, the Vanguard Academy over the weekend.  It was failing, terribly.  Why?  Because it has just experienced a substantial drop in its roll.  Commissar Delahunty unsheathed her Cossack sabre and launched a full frontal attack, slicing through the air with a dreaded press release:

Charter school roll plunge

One of the five Charter schools lauded by the Government as a success has lost a quarter of its school roll this year, with each student now costing four times as much to teach than children in a regular public school, the Green Party said today.

Latest Ministry of Education roll count data shows that Vanguard Military College had 79 students attending in October this year – 25 percent below the 108 students it is funded to teach and the 104 students it started the year with.  “Plans to open four more of these [charter] schools next year must be put off till Government can prove they’re value for money, good for students and aren’t damaging neighbouring schools.

“Vanguard has been trumpeted by National as a success yet official data shows it is struggling to hold on to its students.  Principals in state schools are concerned about the disproportionate amounts of funding Charter schools are getting, saying that they’d be able to achieve amazing things for their own students if they had access to a similar amount of resources. “Charters are able to pay for transport, uniforms, stationary [sic] and even food for their pupils. Even if they were succeeding, it’d be no surprise given the level of resources.

“The problem with Charter schools is that they suck resources and students away from public schools. 

So, a fairly predictable rearguard eructation from one of our card-carrying statists.  But maybe she has some valid concerns?  Blogger, Cameron Slater went to the trouble of  asking the CEO of Vanguard Military College, Nick Hyde for a response. 

Vanguard Military School has continued to defy the critics and is happy to announce that it has produced outstanding results for 2014. Partnership Schools have been created to use innovation and to try different methods in an attempt to assist any child who if they continued in their current school environment would fail.  Vanguard has built its model around a military ethos and has a focus on producing productive citizens for New Zealand.

At the start of the year we enrolled 45 Level 2 students of various abilities and we are happy to announce that 41 of them have successfully gained their NCEA Level 2 qualification for a 91% success rate.  9 of them also finished off their Level 1 Certificates and a further 3 went on to gain NCEA Level 3.  We also hope to announce similar results soon about our Level 1 students.  I would also like to point out that Maths, English and Physical Education are compulsory for all students and our results have been moderated by other local schools in the area.

Today’s attack on the school by Catherine Delahunty and the Green Party has been disappointing.  As a school we are here to serve our students, their parents and the communities that they come from.  We have an open enrolment policy and accept all.  We have invited politicians of all parties to visit us, see what we are about and how we do things, as we can appreciate we are new and different.  Catherine Delahunty nor any member of the Green Party has visited our school or even spoken to us.

The “roll plunge” she talks about are students graduating and leaving on their own terms. An example is of 2 students who gained their NCEA Level 2 qualifications during the year, sat and passed the New Zealand Army entrance test and were offered service in August. As a school we have assisted them to be productive citizens for our country.

If she had, she might understand that our school is different and is not about keeping students for the entire year if they have already gained the qualification that they enrolled for.  The “roll plunge”  she talks about are students graduating and leaving on their own terms.  An example is of 2 students who gained their NCEA Level 2 qualifications during the year, sat and passed the New Zealand Army entrance test and were offered service in August.  As a school we have assisted them to be productive citizens for our country.  By holding them at school for a further 4 months is not in the student’s best interest.

Vanguard Military School’s priority is to get our students the NCEA qualification they enrol in and then assist them into apprenticeships, courses, jobs, the NZDF and next year when we enrol Level 3’s we hope to send some to University.  We appreciate that we receive tax payers money and therefore will continue to strive for top results but we are also entirely comfortable with our students graduating on their own terms and leaving us to become the best they can be in their chosen field.

The school is currently taking enrolments for 2015 and already has 127 students signed up.  We are full at Level 2 and Level 3 and only have a few places left at Level 1 before we reach our maximum roll for 2015 of 144.  So to anyone reading this out of interest, maybe hop on google and check out your local schools results and compare them with a 91% success rate at NCEA Level 2 because in my eyes that’s a lot of happy students, happy parents and hopefully happy taxpayers.

Regards

Nick Hyde
CEO

The roll plunge hysterically decried by Delahunty occurred because of exceptionally high numbers of pupils successfully graduating.  Which leaves Delahunty in the laughable position of objecting to a charter school because it has been so successful.  However, like all ideologues, statist Delahunty will not let the facts get in the way of her just-so ideologically hide-bound world view.  

But there is something more sinister at work here.  Statists like Delahunty don’t really care whether government schools succeed or fail.  Rather, the driving concern is that they all be the same.  It’s social justice, don’t you know.  The statist “people’s education system” will have controls and rules so that one size must fit all.  If that one size just happens to be uniform mediocrity, that would be a preferable outcome to having many schools succeed and some fail.

For Delahunty the worst possible outcome would be for those failing schools to be transformed into charter schools and copy Vanguard’s success.  She would have us believe that Vanguard’s success is a cause of the monopoly schools’ failures. “The problem with Charter schools is that they suck resources and students away from public schools,” she writes.

Private sector, bad.  Government sector, the only and highest good.  Behold Shelob’s cobwebs in the statist mind. 

New Zealand Schools

Amongst the Worst In the OECD

The propaganda machines have been busy for the past twenty-five years assuring New Zealand that our education system amongst the best in the world.  If the criteria for determining “best” included pass rates in our parochial secondary school qualification (NCEA) or conformity with the latest post-modern pedagogical theories the propaganda may have verisimilitude.  But when objective tests about what students actually know are completed, the Potemkin Village collapses. 

The OECD runs a research programme testing the knowledge levels of fifteen year old students across its membership [OECD Programme for International Student Assessment 2012 (PISA)].  The research is conducted every three years.  In our most recent examination New Zealand fell from 13th to 22nd in the OECD maths ratings.  This after decades of being told by the propagandists that our education system was right up there with the best in the world. 

The Ministry of Education is producing some diagnostic reports looking for causes and explanations for our systemic educational failure.  Amongst the causes of failure were:

• 60 per cent of students indicated they had never heard of mathematical concepts such as congruent figures, radicals and divisors.

• Kiwi students were less exposed to formal maths – such as algebra and geometry – than students in the comparable nations of Australia, Canada, Britain and Singapore.

• 40 per cent of students reported that noise and disorder and students not listening to the teacher occurred in most maths classes.  [NZ Herald]

The justifications and explanations for these failings were predictable and included:

Explanation I: A Failure of Capitalist Free Markets

Maths teachers with degree-level qualifications are more likely to be teaching in urban, high socio-economic schools, and students at these schools have higher exposure to complex concepts and formal maths.  Secondary Principals Association president Tom Parsons said the results stemmed from a national shortage of teachers with adequate mathematics training.  “There is such a demand for teachers who come out of university with maths qualifications that they can go wherever they like,” he said. “Usually this is high socio-economic urban areas.”

Explanation II: We Don’t Know (But We Do Know It’s Not Teacher Incompetence)

New Zealand Association of Mathematics Teachers president Gillian Frankcom said the reason for the decline was not clear cut. She said that since 2009, all secondary school teacher graduates had completed a comprehensive maths component and teacher incompetence could not be singled out for student failure.

No justifications were offered to explain disorderly classrooms and bad pupil behaviour.

We cynically expect that nothing will be done to address the erosion of government schooling until New Zealand slips to the bottom quartile in the OECD rankings.  But, hold on.  The OECD membership currently stands at 34 countries.  We are only about three or four places away from being in the fourth quartile.   Meanwhile no-one in the Parliament, and certainly no-one in the Ministry of Education seems remotely alarmed.  The teacher unions are on another planet. 

If we were asked to suggest a manifesto that would revolutionise our failing government schooling system and change it for the better, it would be this:

1. Empower the consumers of education services–that is, the parents–by introducing a national voucher system allowing parents to purchase whatever the education services they believe best from the schools of their choice.

2. Abolish the school zoning system.

3. Re-introduce bulk funding. 

Successive governments have not proven to be effective guardians nor good stewards of government schools.  Teacher unions certainly have not.  Governments have talked a big game, but spent most of the time on the sidelines playing tiddlywinks with the teacher unions. 

The only real guardian of the quality of education left is the parents who (in general) care far more about the welfare of their children (educational and otherwise) than bureaucrats, politicians, and unionists ever have or will be able to do.  Is it not ironic that parents are the one stakeholder–in fact the only real stakeholder–in securing an adequate education for their children that the state implacably distrusts and disenfranchises?

The question which the supererogatory powers absolutely refuse to face, let alone answer is this: if parents can be trusted to shop at supermarkets and put food on the table; if they can be trusted to clothe their children with the appropriate clothing; if they can be trusted to choose the most appropriate doctor for their children, why can’t they be trusted to select the most appropriate school? 

Letter From the UK (About An Assault Upon Christian Doctrine)

Forced Promotion of Homosexual “Marriage”

New Government Regulations ‘Compel’ Schools to Promote Same-Sex Marriage

by Gerald Warner  

10 Oct 2014

Breitbart London

The Coalition for Marriage has denounced new Government regulations for independent schools in England which are clearly aimed at compelling schools to promote same-sex marriage, regardless of the wishes of parents or teachers. This measure provides the latest evidence of the insincerity of the Cameron government in claiming that rights of conscience would be respected when marriage for homosexuals was forced onto the statute book.

These coercive provisions are contained in the new Independent School Standards regulations which change the legal framework for academies, free schools and private education. This means that they target a total of 6,238 schools. The number of pupils enrolled in academies alone amounts to 2,423,535, so millions of schoolchildren, teachers and parents will be affected by this new imposition. Ofsted has been charged with enforcing the same minimum standards on all other schools.

The Coalition for Marriage has published an analysis of the new provisions, accompanied by detailed advice from a senior QC consulted by the Christian Institute. This latest aggression by social engineers in a supposedly Conservative-led government is ominously significant, even historic, in that it crosses a red line never before violated by introducing state interference in the curriculum. Even Labour never went as far as that in its social engineering mania.

Colin Hart, Campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, observes: “As we know from recent history, reasonable opposition to same-sex marriage is routinely described as ‘homophobia’.” He asks if a school must discipline or dismiss a teacher who voices support for traditional marriage and whether parents of prospective pupils will be interrogated about their beliefs before their child is granted a school place. Such totalitarian inquisition is already practised with regard to fostering and adoption.

In supposed respect for that convention the school curriculum was excluded from the provisions of the Equality Act. Now, however, these new regulations will trample down that tradition of political neutrality in the curriculum in English schools. Regulation (b) (vi) introduces a duty to “encourage respect for other people, paying particular regard to the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act 2010 (a)”. Note the weasel language regarding “protected characteristics”. Nobody has any problem with pupils being taught respect for other people – they have long been instructed in that duty in religious knowledge classes, civics lessons and in the home.

But respecting “protected characteristics” defined in the most un-British piece of legislation ever passed is an entirely different matter. It involves ideology rather than people. One of the protected characteristics set out in the Equality Act is sexual orientation. The regulations assert a “new requirement for schools to actively promote principles which encourage respect for persons with protected characteristics” with the intention of allowing the Secretary of State to take regulatory action in various situations, including “failure to address homophobia”.

Colin Hart, Campaign Director of the Coalition for Marriage, observes: “As we know from recent history, reasonable opposition to same-sex marriage is routinely described as ‘homophobia’.” He asks if a school must discipline or dismiss a teacher who voices support for traditional marriage and whether parents of prospective pupils will be interrogated about their beliefs before their child is granted a school place. Such totalitarian inquisition is already practised with regard to fostering and adoption.

The sinister term “actively promote” was defined in the Government’s consultation document: “ ‘Actively promote’ also means challenging pupils, staff or parents expressing opinions contrary to fundamental British values.” Anyone who thinks that is simply aimed at jihadist sympathisers is sadly deluded. “Fundamental British values”, in a Government context, bears no relation to the traditional ethos, beliefs and standards of mainstream Britain; on the contrary, it is coded language for political correctness.

This blueprint for indoctrination further insists that in future private schools must conform to “national norms” rather than the expectations of parents. So much for independent education. If this is the climate of enforcement that will prevail in the independent sector, what kind of Stalinist Thought Police can we expect to rule over state schools?

The QC’s opinion commissioned by the Christian Institute, another body alarmed by this interference with academic and moral freedom, quotes a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights: “The state is forbidden to pursue an aim of indoctrination that might be considered as not respecting parents’ religious and philosophical convictions. That is the limit that the states must not exceed.”

The British Government prefers to “challenge” parents. They should accept that challenge and respond, most notably at the ballot box. Some of them took the opportunity of doing so on Thursday. It beggars belief that this offensive against the ideological impartiality of the school curriculum, traditional marriage, parental authority and freedom of speech results from an initiative by a so-called Conservative Prime Minister.

Now we know just how “free” the Tories’ free schools are intended to be. Independent education is an oxymoron when the intruder State attempts to enforce its progressive prejudices on pupils and teachers. We are being herded along a road well trodden by totalitarian dictators before. How long before we arrive at the Orwellian destination where pupils are indoctrinated with the slogan “Be a good citizen – report your parents”? Debauching the school curriculum is an aggression too far by Dave’s PC social engineers.

Letter from the UK (About Margaret Thatcher Redivivus)

Children held back by ‘vested interests’ in education, says Michael Gove

Education Secretary Michael Gove attacks educational establishment for holding back classroom reforms, just as thousands of teachers prepare to stage a national strike 

By Graeme Paton, Education Editor

The Daily Telegraph

08 Jul 2014 

Education standards risk being undermined “by vested interests determined to hold back reform”, Michael Gove has said on the eve of a major national teachers’ strike. In a swipe at classroom unions, the Education Secretary says attempts to reform schools have “not always been easy” because too many teachers believe “things must stay the same”.

Writing for The Telegraph, Mr Gove says large numbers of pupils across Europe – including England – are facing a bleak future unless extra effort is made to raise standards and create more equal access to good schools. He says teaching standards must improve because too many children are still attending schools that “aren’t good enough”. 

Michael Gove is one of the most courageous politicians of our day.  He is not afraid to front up and confront the unions which have hitherto had a stifling stranglehold over education in the UK–as they do here in New Zealand.  Just as Thatcher stared down the coal miner unions during the UK miners’ strike of 1984-5 and saw them off, opening up the pathway to necessary reform in the UK, so Gove is attempting the same.  Different unions, same reality.
 

The comments are made in a joint article with education ministers from Spain and Portugal as a major international conference is staged in London on Wednesday – just a day before Britain’s biggest teaching union prepares for a national strike over Coalition education reforms.

Education ministers, teachers and school leaders from seven countries are expected to attend the summit co-hosted by the Department for Education.  It is expected to place renewed focus on a series of Government education policies including the creation of a new generation academies and free schools, more freedom for head teachers, an overhaul of the curriculum and a new-style league tables focusing on achievement in core subjects. 

Mr Gove has also introduced a wave of reforms aimed at teachers including raising the bar on entry to the profession and a new system of performance-related pay. The reforms have been met with furious opposition from classroom unions who claim Mr Gove has turned teaching into one of the worst jobs in the world.  On Thursday, the National Union of Teachers will stage a one-day strike across England and Wales in protest over performance-related pay and escalating workload.

It threatens to shut around a quarter of state schools and lead to the partial closure of many more – forcing millions of parents to take the day off work or seek emergency childcare.  But writing in the Telegraph, Mr Gove said the Coalition’s reforms were typical of those being pursued across Europe and the developed world.

He also criticises the education establishment for failing to support change.  “Our struggle has not always been easy,” he says. “All of us have been opposed by vested interests determined to hold back reform, insisting that things must stay the same.  We understand that change can be difficult. But it must happen.”

In an article written jointly with Nuno Crato, minister for education in Portugal, and Lucía Figar, a regional minister for education in Spain, he said: “A child’s education is only ever as good as their teacher. So all of us are focusing on driving up the quality of teaching in our classrooms.”

“In England, we’re raising the bar for entry to the profession, expanding elite recruitment routes and offering new incentives to attract the brightest and best into teaching,” he said. “It’s already working – we now have the best qualified teachers in a generation, and Ofsted’s impartial inspectors report that schools improved faster last year than at any time in Ofsted’s history.” 

This is in sharp contrast to the union mentality which can be summarised in a few false propositions:
All teachers are the same.
All teachers are excellent.
We just need more teachers, which will be uniformly excellent by definition.
All teachers need to be paid more.

The article says that England, Spain and Portugal have “long traditions of educational excellence, but we know that too few of our children are guaranteed an excellent education. Too many children across Europe – especially those from poorer communities – still attend schools which just aren’t good enough,” it is claimed. “And the nature of economic and technological change means those children, and our societies, face bleaker futures unless we can improve their education and make opportunity more equal.”

The Education Reform Summit – jointly hosted by The Education Foundation think-tank – will take place on Wednesday and Thursday. It has been billed as the most “high-profile example yet of global interest in the Government’s school reforms”.  Mr Gove has said that education reform experts are “coming here to share their ideas and see what we are doing in this country”.

But the conference threatens to be overshadowed by the biggest public sector strike since the Coalition came to power. As many as a million workers are set to strike as members of the NUT walk out alongside the Fire Brigades Union, the GMB, the Public and Commercial Services Union, Unison and Unite.

The NUT has been locked in an ongoing dispute over a series of controversial reforms, including the introduction of a system of performance related pay, which will see future salary rises linked to pupils’ results and behaviour.  They have also been angered by mounting workloads and reforms to pensions which will see staff work for longer and retire with a smaller fund.

Christine Blower, NUT general secretary, said ministers were “refusing point blank to accept the damage their reforms are doing to the teaching profession. The consequences of turning teaching into a totally unattractive career choice will most certainly lead to teacher shortages.  Teaching is one of the best jobs in the world but is being made one of the worst under Michael Gove and the Coalition.” 

We suspect the General Secretary of the teachers’ union is probably right.  Under the entrenched education system, teaching was one of the “best jobs” in the world.  One could skulk in the corner of a classroom doing nothing for one’s students, sure that everything would be different if only one was paid more money.  But if not, the gig was OK.  There are not many other places in the world where you can get paid a princely sum and have a sinecure for life for doing very little.

The problem that Christine Blower and her members face is this: all of the faux outrage and rhetoric in the world is insufficient to blanket over the poor educational outcomes now evident.  If her members had been doing a decent job, the results would tell a different story. 

 

Letter From the UK (About Government Education)

Progressively Worse: Britain’s Education Establishment Persists in ‘Dumbing Down’ for Our Kids

 

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by Robert Peal  

7 May 2014, 

Breitbart London

Sometimes the education establishment in Britain appears to be a parody of itself. This morning, it was reported that the OCR exam board, despite clear calls for a return to rigour in our examination system, are developing an English Literature and Language A-Level where students study Caitlin Moran’s Twitter feed, a Newsnight interview with Dizzee Rascal, and Russell Brand’s testimony on drug use to a parliamentary committee.

Aside from the tendentious nature of these choices (would, I wonder, Peter Hitchens’ view on drug use ever make it into an exam?), we have to ask whether studying such texts is a valuable use of pupil time. There is nothing new about such dumbing down. A stroll through the recent years of AQA’s English Language GCSE shows exam papers based on news stories about Tinie Tempah, Johnny Depp, Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver.  

“What was Jamie Oliver’s reaction to the research about his school dinners?” reads one question. “List four thing that you learn about Tinie Tempah from the article” reads another.

As I have detailed in my book Progressively Worse (Civitas), these curriculums are the product of a movement that took off in British schools during the 1960s and was called ‘Progressive Education’. A basic tenet of progressive education is that school curriculums should grow out of the existing interests of the child, and be made relevant to their own life experiences. A 1973 article from the influential journal New Society observed that inner-city children are interested in television, football pools, writing on walls, taking apart motor bikes and ‘dolling up’ each other’s hair. It asked, “why isn’t the education there?”

Today, the answer in many schools would be “it is”. When I became a history teacher three years ago, I had to teach a history GCSE which was designed in the 1970s to be ‘relevant’ to pupils’ interests. One unit was a study of the American West: as any trendy 1970s educator knows, kids love cowboys and Indians. It was an embarrassment of a course: boring, irrelevant and an insult to the intelligence of my pupils.

Teachers today will talk at length about the need to make school work ‘accessible’, but this is merely a euphemism for dumbing down. There is a fundamental problem with work that is ‘accessible’: instead of challenging pupils to reach outside of their existing interests, ‘accessible’ work panders to them, and pupils’ ability to transcend their intellectual horizons disappears.

School should aim to do more than simply duplicate the cultural exposure children receive in their daily life. School should raise pupils above the ordinary, and interest them in subject matter they would not otherwise think to read. The poet laureate Ted Hughes was a great supporter of memorising canonical literature in schools. He wrote: “In English students are at sea, awash in the rubbish and incoherence of the jabber in the sound-waves”, but argued if they know by heart the work of great poets, they are given “a great sheet anchor in the maelstrom of linguistic turbulence.”

You may think Hughes’ view is all good and sensible. But try expressing it in one of today’s state schools. You will risk being called a bigot and an elitist, with no respect for the interests of the child. A twin movement to progressive education is cultural relativism. All cultural products are of equal value, it is claimed. But this is clearly rubbish. Shakespeare, Dickens and the Romantic Poets have endured for centuries in a way that Russell Brands’ Booky Wook will not. Why should we teach contemporary texts of unproven literary significance, when there are works which have endured, and shaped the very way we speak today?

The essential question is one of opportunity cost. Every moment in school spent tarrying through ephemeral, disposable ‘literature’ such as Twitter feeds and news interviews is time that could be spent enriching pupils’ knowledge of the best that has been thought and said. The current education secretary, Michael Gove, understands this, and that is why he has been doing his damdest to give stronger stipulations governing what exam boards are allowed to examine. However, the new English and Maths GCSEs are only set to be taught from September 2015. History, geography and science will be a year later.

Though I am not a party animal, my great fear about Gove not being in place this time next year is that Labour will not have the nerve to stand up to the vested interests of the education establishment. The direction of reform will be reversed, and children will be back to reading trash in the place of great texts.

Robert Peal is an Education Research Fellow at CIVITAS. He tweets at @GoodbyeMrHunter

Trojan Horses

Computers in Class Rooms

Group-think educrats and academic educationalists have got it wrong again.  In govenrment schools computers have become synonymous with progressive, advanced education.  Any school worth its merits has pupils kitted out with laptops or tablets.  More and more courses and lessons are being structured around the electronic idol sitting on the pupils’ desks.  Otherwise they will be missing out.  They will not be prepared for life in the real, new, e-world.

Instead of focusing on a content rich curriculum and instructively teaching it, the curriculum is becoming besotted with “teaching” IT techniques.  Schools and teachers who do not have the necessary kit available are told they are disadvantaging their pupils and belong in the dark ages. Teachers are becoming dispirited and de-motivated. Pupils are graduating with vast experience in how to manipulate and use computers, but remain ignorant of the sciences, the arts, and how to think reasonably and accurately.

Au contraire.  Smart schools are now banning computers.  Why?  Because they inhibit learning.
This, from Pacific Standard Magazine:

Want to Remember Your Notes? Write Them, Don’t Type Them

By Paul Bisceglio • April 25, 2014

In the past decade, a bunch of studies have shown that bringing a laptop to class is not great for learning. Anyone who has sat through a lecture with the Internet in front of them hasn’t really been surprised. After all, you can only take so many notes while simultaneously catching up on Game of Thrones and g-chatting with your friends.

A new study in Psychological Science, though, suggests there’s even more to laptops’ negative effects on learning than distraction. Go old school with a pen and paper next time you want to remember something, according to Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer of Princeton and the University of California-Los Angeles, respectively, because laptops actually make note-taking too easy.

The researchers ran a series of studies that tested college students’ understanding of TED Talks after they took notes on the videos either in longhand or on Internet-less laptops. Even without Facebook, the computer users consistently did worse at answering conceptual questions, and also factual-based ones when there was a considerable delay between the videos and testing.

The problem, it seems, is that the lightening-quick speed of typing encourages listeners to transcribe what they’re hearing without actually paying attention to what’s being said.

The problem, it seems, is that the lightening-quick speed of typing encourages listeners to transcribe what they’re hearing without actually paying attention to what’s being said—a note-taking approach that has been proven ineffective in the past. Typing every last word that’s said might make you think you have a more complete understanding of the material, but when it comes to comprehension, notes’ quality outweighs their quantity, Mueller and Oppenheimer say.

“Although more notes are beneficial, at least to a point,” they write, “if the notes are taken indiscriminately or by mindlessly transcribing content, as is more likely the case on a laptop than when notes are taken longhand, the benefit disappears.”

And here’s the scary news: Whether we’re aware of it or not, this effect may be totally unavoidable—or at least the result of a habit so deeply ingrained in us it will be hard to overcome. In one study, Mueller and Oppenheimer specifically told laptop-using participants not to write their notes verbatim, but most still did. They couldn’t help it.  “Despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good,” Mueller and Oppenheimer write.

Here is the view of a senior academic at Baylor University on laptop (and tablet) use in class:  

From the FAQ page of Alan Jacobs, Distinguished Professor of the Humanities in the Honors Program at Baylor University in Waco, Texas:

Is it okay if I bring my laptop to class to take notes?

No, sorry, not any more. Now that Baylor offers wireless internet access in most classrooms, the university has provided you with too many opportunities for distractions. Think I’m over-reacting? Think you’re a master of multitasking? You are not. No, I really mean it. How many times do I have to tell you? Notes taken by hand are almost always more useful than typed notes, because more thoughtful selectivity goes into them; plus there are multiple cognitive benefits to writing by hand. And people who use laptops in class see their grades decline — and even contribute to lowering the grades of other people. Also, as often as possible you should annotate your books.

The really smart teachers and schools, the ones that not only believe in education but understand what it is and how learning takes place, are making their classrooms computer-free zones.  The government education system is running as fast as it can in the opposite direction.  Anyone care to guess which will prove to be right? 

Breathing Toxic, Foetid Air

The Nauseating Stench of Vapid Idealism

It seems that idealism has inundated the Commentariat, at least in New Zealand.  It’s not just the government and its agencies.  A form of insipid idealism also appears to pervade the atmosphere of the once smoke-filled editorial rooms of our daily newspapers.  How bizarre.  Cynicism was once not only a trade-mark of the media, it was a requirement to get a union card.  Now we are all being asked to breathe the free air of an imaginary, ideal world.

Consider the following editorial discussing government sex education which appeared in the NZ Herald:

In an ideal world, parents would teach their children respectful attitudes to sex. In reality, that is not always happening. . . .

Arguments about individual morality and cultural sensitivity have made this an area in which governments have hesitated to intrude. They know also that there will be a backlash from a minority who believe sex education has no place in schools and is the plaything of dissolute liberals.  But what the select committee has suggested is far removed from that.

Ideally, boys would have improved attitudes and girls would be safer and better understand their rights. At present … the balance may be tilted against this outcome.

(The parliamentary committee evaluating government sex education in schools has clearly also be caught up in this miasma.  It too is asking us to dream up an ideal world–of improved attitudes and better understanding of rights.  Apparently the Herald has gone to a revival meeting and got religion; it has bought into this aura of hope and change. )

The yellow brick road to sexual utopia is going to be paved with students in schools making “respectful and informed choices”.  Ideally.
  Sex education in government schools is going to achieve that outcome.  Ideally.  Count on it.  It never has in the past–but this time it will be different.  Ideally.  (Cue that hoary definition of insanity to do with repeating the same mistake and expecting a different outcome.)  Then comes another use of the “i” word:

Ideally, boys would have improved attitudes and girls would be safer and better understand their rights. At present, especially when parents do not involve themselves, the balance may be tilted against this outcome.

One of the dysfunctional aspects of Unbelief which never seems to go away is that, as Chesterton observed, when people stop believing in God, they will believe in anything.  They become wistfully credulous.  They are unable, for whatever reason, of following the not ignoble example of Friedrich Nietzsche who strove to face the implications–horrible though they be–of a world where God was dead, and who sought to glory in them, to the point of becoming insane. Instead, most people–certainly the New Zealand Commentariat–have retreated to a wistful soporific hope of an “ideal world”, characterised by respect and self-awareness of rights. 

But, at the same time, and out of the other side of the mouth, comes the deeply religious assertion that the individual soul, the self, is the only effective, actual ultimate reality.  We can be anything we want to be.  The only restrictions are those we place upon ourselves.  The role of society and the community is to cheerlead everyone along the  road to self-actualisation and self-respect.  As psychologist Paul E. Vitz declared back in the late seventies:

Selfish psychology emphasizes the human capacity for change to the point of almost totally ignoring the idea that life has limits and that knowledge of them is the basis of wisdom.  For selfists there seem to be no acceptable duties, denials, inhibitions, or restraints.  Instead there are only rights and the opportunities for change. [Paul E. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-Worship (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans, 1977), p.38.]

Now, thirty years on, the diseased fruit of this selfist rebellion against God is ripening.  Let’s reflect on how this call for respectful attitudes and acknowledgement of rights has played out, and will play out, in sex education in our government schools.  Respect must apply not just to attitudes and actions towards members of the opposite sex.  It must also be applied to all human sexualities–to the sexuality of the homosexual, the trans-sexual, the bi-sexual, the multi-sexual, and the serially promiscuous.  Respect will include acknowledging the rights of people to be as they choose, without denials, inhibitions, or restraints.  

Government sex education will start from these foundations and move outwards.  Therefore, it will ultimately promote libertine sexual behaviour.  It is inevitable:  “Man is the master of his fate (that is, God is dead) and nothing human is foreign to me.”  Unbelieving, atheistic sex education cannot “ideally” be anything else.  It has no foundation, no framework, no moral grounding to be anything else. 

The bottom line is that when a kid declares in class, “I am trans-gender” the only response permissible by agents of the state is to say, “Right on.  Let’s all respect that.”  We challenge any government school educator, any sex teacher in government schools, any official in the Ministry of Education, or any politician, or anyone in the Herald editorial conference room, for that matter, to say otherwise.  And that, mums and dads, makes a complete mockery of all this pious talk about “ideally respectful attitudes”.  Respect is only going to go one way.

The government sex curriculum will not only teach implicit sexual promiscuity–since it must respect the choices of all, including the rampantly promiscuous–it also has to accede to the demands by homosexual, trans-sexual, bi-sexual and omni-sexual provocateurs that their respective sexualities must be part of the sex-ed curriculum and be presented in a “respectful” way–that is, promoted as normal, legitimate, holy, just, and good sexual behaviour.

This is the real world of government sex education.  And all the kings horses and all the kings men, sitting in their little committees in the Ministry of Education, or in parliament, or in the education unions, know this to be true.  But ideally, by their lights, they want to keep that particular dirty secret locked away.  And they do a pretty good job–so much so that the Herald and other media outlets whimsically suspend their critical unbelief and go along, to get along.  Rather they all talk wistfully about “an ideal world” where things will be different from the reality they know exists, but refuse to face up to, preferring to keep it as a dirty little secret between those in the know. 

They cannot bring themselves to do anything to criticise or blaspheme the religion of Self.  Why, such a thing would be disrespectful. 

"Sex Education" in Government Schools

Parents Are Smarter Than Government Bears

In New Zealand government schools–which are part of a government mandated and enforced monopoly–sex education is compulsory.  Now the official reason the government insists on educating your children about sex is the high rate of teenage pregnancy in this country.  But when the government runs a programme with the aim of reducing teenage pregnancy, there is only one possible outcome–more teenage pregnancies–which is what has been happening.

. . . a cross-party [parliamentary] inquiry [has] found New Zealand’s high teenage-pregnancy rate was partly the result of inconsistent and sometimes non-existent sexual and reproductive lessons in schools.  [NZ Herald]

According to the propaganda employed to justify compulsory government sex lessons, non-existent sex education in schools causes teenage pregnancies.  Now, however, since government sex education has been compulsory and has been going for some time now and yet more teenage pregnancies have occurred, what’s the excuse?  Well, it’s because monopoly government sex propaganda has been inconsistent, and sometimes non-existent.  This is what we call the “great double down”.  Sex education in the monopolistic government schools is not working because there is not enough of it.  So, we will have more.

But also, a qualitative improvement is being proposed.
 

Sex education is mandatory, but the 18-month inquiry found programmes were “fragmented and uneven”, parents were able to keep children out of them and classes often focused on physical aspects of sex.

The select committee recommended that the Government give all schools two years to create programmes that meet Ministry of Health standards.  The Education Review Office would monitor whether schools were meeting the needs of students of all cultures, ethnicities and sexual orientations.  Cabinet ministers said yesterday that they would “partially accept” the recommendations.

Government sex education has to cater to the sex-education of  homosexuals, trans-sexuals, bi-sexuals, and whatever other sexual “orientation” presents itself.  In government circles, none of these “sexualities” is immoral; rather they are all considered amoral.  They are regarded as a freedom right.  Morality and ethics have nothing to do with them.  They are thus to be presented as entirely legitimate and lawful–and, thus, are part of the government sex curriculum  So, it is no wonder that compulsory government sexual education focuses almost exclusively on sexual mechanics.  Moreover, it is no wonder that the specialist teachers often brought in to teach these subjects are immoral libertines, whose end-game goal is to break down every taboo and moral restriction upon human sexual activity, to the end that human sexual activity may become animalistic. 

A former board of trustees member who resigned over “unacceptable” sex education classes at her school opposes recommendations that sex education programmes be mandatory for all schoolchildren.  Jo-Anne Sim resigned last month as a trustee of the Blaketown Primary School on the West Coast after a teacher taught what Ms Sim said were explicit lessons that were not appropriate for Year 7 and 8 pupils.  The classes included discussion about oral and anal sex, flavoured condoms, and pleasure points – despite parents having been told in writing beforehand that pupils would be taught only the basics.

We are familiar with a non-government school which teaches all subjects through the lens of Scripture.  It operates in a Decile One (low socio-economic) area.  It is a Cambridge school, which means that its education qualifications are world-class and internationally recognised. Its external exams are marked in London. No chance of gilding the lily with inflated internal assessments.  The roll is slowly but steadily growing.  Many of the families are not Christians.  Why, do non-Christian parents choose to send their children to this Christian school?

There are a variety of reasons.  The education is of an excellent standard, with pupil learning well beyond peers in the government monopoly schools.  The curriculum is focused on core subjects: reading, writing, maths, and science.  The teachers, all committed Christians, are dedicated professionals and practise their faith in their interactions with pupils–they are gentle, kind, but firm.  Pupils are taught to be respectful, to be thankful, to be polite, and to work diligently.  Parents love all these aspects.

But they also appreciate that the school curriculum does not move into areas that belong to the family–such as “sex education” in a misplaced attempt to combat social evils and practise social engineering.  Meanwhile the school does teach the divine morality surrounding marriage and families in its Bible curriculum (after all, three of the Ten Commandments address this directly.)  Parents who are not Christians appreciate these things a great deal.

They think that it is far better than some moral libertine discussing condom-use, together with practising how to apply them, as part of a mandatory government sex-education class in the monopoly government schools.  No wonder parents in those schools are finding their children are coming home from these lessons “grossed out” and disturbed.

But that’s paganism for you: when everything is relative and perspectival, anything can happen.  And it does.  No wonder conscientious parents want to send their children to a Christian school even when they themselves are not professing Christians, and at not insignificant cost, we may add. 

Succeeding to Fail

Grade Inflation

The NZ Herald has analysed how well high school students are achieving according to the government schools qualification standard (“NCEA).  It turns out that internal assessment (tests and assignments) delivers a far higher rate of achievement than external examinations.  To put the matter simplistically: if students are asked to sum 2+2, they get the answer right more often when their teacher asks them in class, than when they are sitting an external exam.

Students do much better when they are internally assessed than when they are put under the pressure of an exam, a comprehensive Weekend Herald analysis of NCEA entries reveals.  Internal assessments are becoming increasingly important to secondary school students as the place of old-fashioned exams fades – and they generally result in better achievement.  The difference in achievement rates between the two types of assessment can be nearly 50 per cent, although the gap differs according to subject, level and school decile.

To take one example: students in decile one schools who were studying maths with calculus achieved 83 per cent of internal assessments at Level 3 in 2012. The achievement rate for external assessments was much lower, with only 34 per cent of entries achieved.

This sounds great.  Achievement rates 50 percent higher when students are internally assessed.  Ah, not so fast.

One person to have raised concerns about internal assessments is Professor Dale Carnegie, head of engineering and computer science at Victoria University.  A vocal critic of NCEA who advocates a return to percentage scores, he said there were well-founded concerns over the moderation of internal assessment.  As a result, engineering departments at Victoria University and the University of Auckland had moved to insist students completed specific external assessments.  “In essence, we do not trust the internal assessment anywhere near as much as the external,” Professor Carnegie said.

The universities have felt compelled to introduce their own competency testing for applicants because it has emerged that often (under NCEA) the applicants lack required maths abilities, skills, and competence.  The market place is finding the NCEA qualifications are deceptive and misleading and replacing them with its own.

But the government educational monolith is persisting.

Rowena Phair, the ministry’s deputy secretary, viewed the data and said it reflected NCEA’s flexibility and relative complexity as opposed to the old exam-based system.  There were several factors that contributed to students achieving better results in internal assessment, Ms Phair said:

• Students could be assessed at a time when they were ready for assessment, rather than months later at the end of the year,
• A reassessment opportunity might be available following further study,
• A wider sample of student evidence could be used in making the final judgment on student achievement.

“The difference in achievement rates between internally and externally assessed standards can be seen across other subjects and has not changed substantially over time.”

Ah, yes.  A student studies a particular subject, say the manipulation of quadratic equations.  At the end of the module, he or she is internally assessed.  They pass.  Then they promptly forget what they have studied, as they move on to other things.  But the student facing an external examination at the end of the year knows he or she needs to keep remembering, revising, holding the information as best they can.  End result: the latter student emerges having learned and retained much, much more.  Folks, this is definitely not rocket science.

The government educational monolith is increasingly driven by achieving NCEA credits, not by learning and mastering a subject.  The two are not necessarily the same at all.

Internally assessed standards allow teachers to give students much more explicit guidance, which was one logical explanation for the general pattern that internal results were higher. “Remembering that we are concerned with recognising achievement and not selecting an elite, it should be understood as a better directed assessment process rather than any reduction of rigour.”

And how will these accredited students do when they move out of school into the real world where they no longer have access to “explicit guidance” of their teachers.  Not too good.  But note the rider in the above citation: NCEA is focused upon recognition of achievement, not upon actual achievement.  Assume we are studying German.  The task/achievement is German vocabulary.  We study and learn three hundred German words, complete an assessment helped along by the explicit guidance of the teacher.  We achieve the requisite standard.  Then we move on to something else, and promptly forget eighty percent of the learned vocab.  We have achieved (that is, been recognised) in NCEA-speak, but learned very little. 

But the educational establishment is driven by “recognition” rates. 

The Government has set a target for 85 per cent of 18-year-olds to have NCEA Level 2 or an equivalent qualification in 2017.  Allan Vester, chairman of the NZ Secondary Principals’ Council and head of Edgewater College in Pakuranga, said internal assessments allowed different skills to be assessed than in an exam and generally had lower rates of non-achievement.  That meant it was likely that they would be seen by schools as a way of meeting the 85 per cent target.

Another factor was a desire to perform better in “league table”-style comparisons with other schools. That was not necessarily negative if handled correctly, he said, and safeguards included a rigorous and improved moderation process.  However, Mr Vester said, if the push for achievement went to unrealistic levels there was risk that public perception of NCEA would suffer.

The government monolith announces an achievement target.  As always, the unintended consequences are the fly in the ointment.  Schools are racing to meet the achievement targets.  The actual, unintended result?  The standard undergoes “grade inflation” and becomes progressively worthless.

Is the situation hopeless?  No, but correcting it will be painful.  Because New Zealand’s government education system is now being ranked internationally in league tables, the current slippage in rankings is likely to exacerbate.  Eventually, this will lead to a revolt–firstly, by the universities (as is happening in some disciplines and faculties now), and secondly, by parents themselves.  If the upshot is parents standing up and firing the government educators, and assuming responsibility to select and provide for their children’s education, it will be a very, very good thing. 

There’s Blood on the Streets

Gangs of New York

New York is a happening place–provided  you enjoy watching internecine warfare.  The newly elected Mayor, Bill de Blasio is an automaton of extreme left wing progressivism.  The overwhelmingly progressive city is becoming uncomfortably discombobulated.  It a “progressivism, but not as we know it” kind of reaction.

One of the friction points is a battle between the previously burgeoning charter school movement and the teacher unions.  Big Bill favours shutting charter schools down in favour of bog standard government schools because everyone should get the same.  Egalitarian folly, but its what leftist ideology adoringly celebrates, until it experiences it.

The Wall Street Journal recently provided some colour.

Firstly, charter schools have been going ahead in leaps and bounds in New York, against a backdrop of under performing, failing government schools districts.

Half the kids in Harlem today attend charters, among them KIPP, Democracy Prep and Harlem Children’s Zone. Across New York, 70,000 students go to a charter.  The other night, at a private loft in Tribeca, Ms. Moskowitz was speaking before a roomful of donors and supporters. The mood was somber. Ms. Moskowitz said that Success Academy’s soon-to-be 10,000-strong student network makes it one of the 10 largest school districts in New York state. At the current rate of growth, in seven or eight years, “we’d be the 15th largest school district in America,” she said. “But that’s obviously highly in doubt.”

That is consistent with what is happening across the United States.

The schools are also mushrooming nationwide. Nearly half the public schools in Washington, D.C., and virtually all in New Orleans are charters. One reason the friction in New York is especially bad comes from the city’s practice during the Bloomberg years of having charters share space with regular schools. The charters then often proceeded, embarrassingly, to outperform the other schools.

One would have thought that government schools would celebrate the out performance of charters on their premises, and would use it as a reason to adapt, change, reform, and develop.  But no.  Why?  Well, firstly its not egalitarian.  All schools should be as bad as ours.  That’s what egalitarianism means–or at least what it inevitably produces.  Secondly, teacher unions hate charters with a passion.  They are intimidated by merit pay.  They envy their flexibility and want to see it destroyed, rather than they themselves arguing for more liberating flexibility in their own closed shops.

Meanwhile parents, particularly those living in dysfunctional, underperforming state school districts, would do anything to give their kids a shot at a better education.  But Big Brother says, no.  Actually Big Bill is reported to be a rank hypocrite on the subject.

As long as Mr. de Blasio was making it personal, she [charter school proponent, Moskowitz] noted in a New York Post op-ed that his son attends a selective, high-performing public high school. “Most parents don’t have a public school option that’s as good as de Blasio had access to for his son,” Ms. Moskowitz wrote. She added that his message to parents in neighborhoods with bad schools was simple: “Drop dead.”

Apparently the same sauce does not suit the gander, but the geese are going to get it whether they like it or not.

New Zealand is just entering the fray.  Our government schools have a smothering monopoly on  education.  Consequently, teacher unions have had an inordinate influence and in some cases actually control the sector.  Take the deaths of bulk funding, the re-imposition of  school zoning, and the complete stonewalling of the voucher system, for example. All three measures would have rewarded educational excellence and exposed under performance.  All three were viscerally hated because they threatened our mouldering egalitarianism. All three were cut off at the pass.  

Now we have a pilot charter school programme up and running.  For us, the success of charter schools in other jurisdictions like the United States and the United Kingdom is really important.  The more successful charter schools are elsewhere in revitalising and reforming the education sector the more the heat will come upon New Zealand’s education industry.  Particularly if our global rankings continue to slide, and our illiteracy and innumeracy rates–already bad enough–rise. 

A Medieval Mystery Play . . .

. . . As Performed by the Dread Pirate Roberts, Chicken Little and the Union Players

There are vested interests opposing at every step nascent charter schools in New Zealand.  Almost all of this strident opposition comes from the teacher unions, whose interests are being exposed as more self-orientated, than pupil orientated.  The more they rabbit on, the more public sympathy goes towards the charter schools. 

First there was the “ban”–otherwise known in union parlance as blackballing.  Regional teacher unions, with the encouragement of their union president, Angela Roberts, pronounced that no state teacher, nor school, nor any other entity with up to four degrees of separation from state schools were to have anything to do with such evils.  Strict protocols and instructions were issued, requiring, for example, that if pupils, parents, and teachers of a state school were walking down the footpath and a pupil, parent, or teacher, or a blowfly normally resident at a demonic charter school were found in the vicinity, all pupils and attendants of nanny state education were required to cross the road to the other side, thus avoiding contamination. 

Then there was the directive that no union members would be allowed to teach at the horrendously wicked charter schools, at risk of excommunication from the union.
  This was followed by the usual misinformation and deception.  Charter schools were alleged to be receiving more government funding per pupil than union controlled schools.  But, the comparisons were not apples with apples.  It turns out that start up costs of charter schools, compared to start up costs for union schools are generally equivalent. Deceptive and misleading behaviour is stock-in-trade for the teacher unions.  Why bother with minor issues like the truth when you are fighting for self-righteousness? 

Then there was the scaremongering.  Since charter schools could employ non-state registered teachers, the unions raised the spectre of charter schools being staffed by child molesting Neanderthals who were themselves illiterate and innumerate.  Great harm would be done to pupils, great evils would be perpetrated on young people being taught at the unconscionably wicked charter schools. 

OK, so how have charter schools been getting on attracting staff?  Firstly, they have been employing state registered teachers who, by all accounts, have been keen to get positions in the new schools.  Presumably it is no hardship for these professionals to say goodbye to their union membership cards, the fulminations of Dread Pirate Angela Roberts notwithstanding.

Then has come the latest revelation.  Charter teachers in some schools are going to be paid much more than their salary capped state pay levels.  This from the NZ Herald:

Charter school pays top dollar for teachers

By Nicholas Jones

NZ Herald

New Zealand’s largest secondary school lost five teachers after a charter school was established nearby which could offer better salaries. . . .   Both schools are on Auckland’s North Shore.  Rangitoto principal David Hodge told the Herald five teachers had chosen to move to Vanguard at the end of last year.  They took up top positions including the partnership school’s principal, deputy-principal, head of science, head of mathematics and head of English.  Mr Hodge said some of the salaries at Vanguard, in Albany, were about $16,000 more than his school could offer.

The teacher unions, and their lackey, the NZ Labour Party, have steadfastly (and successfully) opposed bulk funding of schools, whereby principals could attract higher quality teachers by offering them more pay.  In other words, what is normal and very effective in virtually every corner of the country is verboten in state schools.  Why?  Because the teacher unions are dominated by the cardigan brigade, a rump of state teachers who have taught for years, who are tired, de-motivated, place-fillers.  They cannot defend their salaries on merit, so they oppose to the death the idea that merit pay, rather than union awards apply in schools.  Meanwhile, the great majority of successful, ambitious teachers long ago left the profession for greener, more rational pastures.  

Rangitoto College, one of the country’s best state schools, has managed to attract and retain higher quality teachers.  As soon as some of its staff got a whiff of salaries commensurate with their skills, experience and effectiveness, they moved–as all utility maximising, rational employees do.  The principal of Rangitoto College, David Hodge was philosophical–showing he was well aware of the ridiculousness of the current union enforced remuneration regime in state schools.

“It’s good for [the teachers], isn’t it? If that’s what they want, then that’s what they’re getting. It’s a bonus for them.”  Other charter schools have employed experienced teachers working in their area, but none as many as five from the one school.   Vanguard’s principal, Rockley Montgomery, had been granted an early release from Rangitoto, for which Mr Hyde said he was grateful.  “Rangitoto is a very big school, decile 10. I don’t think David Hodge would have found any difficulty in replacing five staff … There would be plenty of people who would want to work at that school.”  Mr Hyde did not know what his staff were paid during their time at Rangitoto, but said he believed the appeal to change was not money. Vanguard has nine staff.

So this is how it is playing out.  Instead of the fear mongering of the unions, highly experienced and qualified teachers are being recruited into charter schools out of the state school system.  They are moving because they want professional challenges, they are being under-utilised in state schools, and they cannot get ahead in their professions because the significant obstacles. 

Dread Pirate Roberts and the teacher unions along with their political arm, the NZ Labour Party, have Chicken Littled the introduction of charter schools.  The sky was going to fall in and a fate worse than the bubonic plague was about to descend.  But, as is so often the case, the prophecies of doom were self-referenced.  Things are going to get much, much harder for the teacher unions.  Their ranks will diminish even further.  Their doomsaying histrionics will increasingly facilitate a more easy emergence of the truth–namely, the teacher unions are not primarily interested in school students or their education.  They are focused on the interests of their shrinking membership.  The two are not the same. 

 

National Education Charades

Ticking Crocodiles In The Real World

The chattering classes of the Commentariat are presently discombobulated over an OECD report showing that New Zealand’s performance is waning in educational matters.  Government schools, it would seem, are a sunset industry.  This from Stuff:

New Zealand’s education ranking has fallen from seventh to 18th in science, from 13th to 23rd in maths, and from seventh to 13th in reading, according to a report released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) last night.  The figures in the report were based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Just over 4000 15-year-old Kiwi students took part in the assessment, which is done every three years.

These results need to be considered against the backdrop of taxpayer funded lavish largesse being poured out upon government schools in a Noahic deluge over the past ten years. [Sound trumpets . . . ]

Budget 2013 delivers $901 million in the current year and over the next four years for operating initiatives to lift educational achievement at every level of the system – from early childhood, to primary, to secondary, and into training for work, Education Minister Hekia Parata says.  “We are increasing spending on education – for the fifth Budget in a row. The Government’s total investment increases to over $9.7 billion for the 2013/14 financial year.  “New Zealand’s total education investment sits at 7.2 per cent of GDP – well above the OECD average of 5.8 per cent,’’ Ms Parata says. [NZ Government Press Release]

The present government, and a litany of  previous governments, have succumbed to the fallacy that more government spending will generate better educational outcomes.
  The brutal truth is that the majority of public money spent on our government schools is wasted.  It funds a vast bureaucratic enterprise organising, managing, monitoring, and compliance checking an increasingly dispirited bunch of teachers at the chalkface who cannot blow their noses without completing an incident report in triplicate.  But, the system apologetes retort, such a monumental edifice is necessary to ensure quality education. 

Our government schooling system has now come to represent a gigantic Monty Python skit.  Thousands upon thousands of people going through the motions of educating in a vast game of national charades, whilst pupils stare dumbfounded and mystified at what is going on.  The sad, but hard truth is that far too many pupils sit in government run classrooms disengaged because they are mystified and confused. 

We suspect that the government schooling system is beyond reform.  The vested interests (unions, educrats, tertiary institutions teaching teachers how to teach, and politicians) are so strongly entrenched they cannot be changed by external influences–and they are far too hidebound ever to change themselves.  The most recent, yet classic, illustration is the launch of a pilot experiment with charter schools.  The compliance and reporting regime pressed down upon these alternative, more “liberated”, alternative educational institutions is heavier and more onerous than regular government schools.  One more dead parrot skit queued in. 

One reason the establishment is incapable of reform is its myopia.  If ordinary folk knew the philosophical and intellectual propositions that shape our national government school system they would be aghast.  And rightly so.  The prevailing educational philosophy is constructivism which is the product of an elite hard-core cadre of secular marxists and post-modernist academics.  Our national curriculum is infused with this philosophy.  Constructivism proposes that the most sophisticated and successful educational approach is to teach nothing prescriptive at all.  Pupils learn best when they construct their own curricula, following their own interests, as and when they are ready (if ever). One would struggle to conceive of an educational philosophy more inveterately opposed to educating. 

So here we have a moronic situation where an entire national educational edifice is philosophically controlled by “experts” and curricula which seriously propose that the best education system is one which teaches nothing prescriptive at all, but only exists to facilitate pupils discovering for themselves.  Imagine a teaching profession which lauds anti-teaching as the acme of its excellence.  Yet that is the dominant and prevailing paradigm in New Zealand government educational system.

The government and teacher unions think they will improve the system by throwing more money at it.  Now the graduates of this educational system are being thrown into a head to head comparison with senior pupils from other nations which have the advantage of not being wedded to such pedagogical lunacy, and guess what, our educational performance and scores are deteriorating. 

Peter has come out of Neverland back into the real world  with a sickening thud.  Ah, well.  It was good while it lasted. 

Battle Lines

The Clash of  Dinosaurs and Innovators

The PPTA–the secondary school teacher union–is revealing itself to be out of touch with its own members, let alone parents and their children.  Our readers will recall that the PPTA has placed a ban upon any co-operation or contact between the new charter schools and any of its members, or even with any government school (which suggests that the union sees itself as actually in de facto control of the government schools, a view presumably based upon reality).  As in the parable of the Good Samaritan, if union members and government schools see a charter school they are to cross to the other side of the street, avert their eyes, and hurry on their way.  So runs the PPTA ban–and they must be obeyed.

Except they are not–at least not by their own members, many of whom, we suspect, are more than  embarrassed by the antediluvian stance of their own union.  One of the soon-to-open charter schools is setting up a middle school, South Auckland Middle School.  According to its manager, in a piece posted on Kiwiblog, they have advertised eight new teaching positions, and had 105 applicants–many of them PPTA members.
 

It would seem that “coalface” teachers are relishing the chance to ply their valuable trade in non-government schools, outside the clutches and controls of their own union.  One wonders why?  Well, the possibility of merit-based pay may be one factor–something the union hates with a passion, and therefore verboten in the government schools which it controls. 

Another reason why teachers may be breaking down the doors to get a job at the new charter school is hinted at by Alwyn Poole, its general manager.  He writes: 

Our teachers will have little admin and will be do what they have been trained to do – prepare, teach, assess and feedback to parents and the children. Our clear focus is on the academic improvement of every child that comes to us.

Most teachers would give up their right arm to have the bureaucratic reporting burden and form-filling regime removed from their backs so they could spend more quality classroom time with their students. 

But it is not only teachers who are voting with their feet.  Parents are lining up as well.  The new middle school is licensed for 120 pupils.  It already has 85 applicant families. 

Market diversity and parental choice– the union’s worst nightmare. 

Mourning The Lost Profession

The Black Widow Endemic in Schools

A new report from NZ Initiative is about to be published.  It will focus upon government schools.  The pre-release promo says:

What kinds of things matter for student achievement? Is it class size, school journals, the school building, or a flash new gym?  These may play a role at the margin, but they pale in significance next to what research conclusively shows is the most important in-school factor for student achievement: the teacher.

On Monday, The New Zealand Initiative releases its first education report on teacher quality, and it comes at quite a precipitous time. As the ageing teacher workforce moves into retirement, New Zealand needs to not only replenish this workforce but attract the best and brightest into the teaching profession. And then, for teachers to develop to their full potential and to retain the best teachers, teaching must be a challenging and rewarding career.

Apparently the report will focus upon the issues of teacher remuneration and career paths which now represent serious impediments to teaching being a life-long career for those who are actually gifted teachers.

Aside from going into school administration, there is little opportunity, challenge, and recognition for a teacher to further develop their skills and capability. Also, the maximum salary point is reached after eight years. It is obvious what kind of signal this sends: teachers have reached their maximum ability after eight years.

Here is another gripe by those in the profession–not mentioned in forthcoming report it would seem–yet a frequently enunciated complaint:  every year teachers need to spend more time and effort on bureaucratic compliance, completing reports, tables, data lists and a never-ending demand for compliance reports.  Consequently, less and less time is spent actually teaching and on lesson preparation.  Job satisfaction is dropping like a stone throughout the profession. 

Government schools are now thoroughly politicised.  They are a battle ground between unions and the government of the day, between political parties vying for electoral traction, between academic theorists and practitioners, and between the Ministry of Education and school administrators.  For any government they are a political minefield of controversy, strife, criticism, and ideological conflict which every government of the day believes it has to manage.  The result: more and more controls and oversight administered remotely from Central HQ.  This translates into ever more bureaucratic compliance, form filling, reporting, and box-ticking.  Everyone hates it.  Job dissatisfaction is endemic. 

This will simply not change.  Government schools are an extension of government and, therefore, cannot help themselves becoming bureaucratic organs of the state.  The recent initiative to permit charter schools in New Zealand is a classic illustration.  A governing idea behind charter schools is the revitalisation that can come from new and different approaches to teaching and schools.  But due to the politicisation of the issue and the controversy generated by unions and those opposed, the bureaucratic reporting burden of charter schools is to be more onerous than regular government schools!  The need to mitigate and minimise political risks has ended up tainting the whole initiative.  We expect that within five years it will have destroyed it.  The black widow will have turned on its own.

Standing Firm

Charter Schools To Be Union Free

Good news for NZ Charter Schools.  The government teachers’ union has voted to ostracise them.  All contact with the soon-to-be launched charter schools is VERBOTEN.  The Post Primary Teachers Association has put out a press release which is an hilarious read.  They apparently have no idea how foolish they sound.

PPTA standing firm against charter schools

Thursday, 3 October 2013, 3:49 pm
Press Release: PPTA PPTA standing firm against charter schools
3 October, 2013
PPTA is standing firm to face down the “ultimate asset sale”.
Members voted to support a paper presented at today’s PPTA annual conference that will give them the strength to see off the charter school threat. (Emphasis, ours)

What is this magical elixir that reputedly stiffens backbones and swells biceps?  What fell blow will be laid upon charter schools.  Just this:

Members [of the union] will also refrain from all professional, sporting and cultural liaison with the sponsors, managers and employees of charter schools.

This is the best news charter schools have had since the announcement of their being launched.  A union free staff will be a wonderful boon.  Imagine the ads for teaching staff: “PPTA members need not apply.”  How cool.  The new schools will also be able to advertise along the lines of: “Experience the Difference: XYZ Charter School is a PPTA free zone.” Think of the enhancement to graduate CV’s: “I graduated with honours from ABC Charter School–a PPTA free zone.”  We figure that will attract interest from all prospective employers, unions excepted.

We are seriously thinking of getting involved in some way with the nearest Charter School just to experience the privilege of being blackballed.  It would be groovy on the business card.  “John Tertullian . . . Blackballed by the PPTA.”  Instant interest and likely respect amongst the general public. 

What a blessing for charter schools that the PPTA is “standing firm” and has been “given strength”.   

Howlers

The Beginning of the End

The New Zealand government’s long foreshadowed trial of charter schools is going to commence early in 2014.  Five schools have been approved.  Obviously this is earth shattering stuff to those who are wedded to the proposition that governments always do things better than anyone or anything else.  They see the opening of charter schools as the early death throes of civilisation as we know it.  The histrionic hysterics have been, well, hysterical, or, as Jane Austen would say, quite diverting.

There were three howlers in particular.  The first was an horrendous accusation levelled against charter schools.  It was suggested that they were going to be engaged in a very sinister practice.  They were going to extract profits out of running schools.  We kid you not.  Terrible.  How anyone could mix filthy lucre with the ethereal, other-worldly task of educating children was beyond comprehension.  It could only mean that operators of charter school had to be depraved miscreants.

Actually, this broadside opens up an interesting idea, well worth exploring.
  Since profit is definitely dirty oil not to be mixed with the pure waters of education, we wonder why teachers (particularly teachers who are card carrying members of the teachers unions) are not putting themselves forward to teach for love, not money.  Since, to our knowledge, all prudent teachers try to make a profit out of teaching, by spending less than they receive from their salaries, it is high time we had some consistency.  If making a profit from education is inherently evil, this must include salaried teachers.  Bloodsuckers indeed. 

Our view is that any charter school which does not make a profit ought to be put against a wall and shot.  Where else will such a school get the resources for expansion, capital investment, and growth?  The last thing we want is charter schools running cap-in-hand to the public teat to slurp for more money.  Put simply, if charter schools do not run at a profit they will be unsustainable in the long run. 

A second howler was the call for all unionised registered teachers to boycott the new charter schools.  Have nothing to do with them.  If a charter school happened to be transporting pupils on a train and a unionised teacher was also travelling, he or she would need to get off immediately.  Unionised teachers would not be allowed by the union to get jobs at charter schools.  Local schools would not be allowed to play charter school sports teams, and so forth. 

We believe such a boycott would turn out to be a great boon for charter schools.  The less they have to do with union members who are also teachers the better.  In fact, smart charter schools will insist on employing only non-unionised teachers.  Any unionised member applying for a job at a charter school ought to be required to resign from the union as a condition of employment.  If not, an offer of employment ought not be forthcoming.  Bring on the boycott, we say.  It will be a great benefit to charter schools.

Finally, there have been protests against charter schools teaching “creationism” and “intelligent design”.  Since these cosmological beliefs are supposed to be excluded from charter schools, we look forward to the alternatives, which can be donated as “evolutionism” proceeding by means of  an “unintelligent chaotic mess”.  Hope you can get good science out of that. 

Creationism (presumably) rests on the proposition that the universe in the beginning came into existence via a Big Bang, created by God.  The alternative view is that the universe in the beginning came into existence via a Big Bang and no-one has any idea what caused it.  But, we are certain, infallibly certain, that it was not God.  Ah, the cant. But there you have it.  No doubt excellent science will be taught and learned in schools which ground all they do on a foundation of professed ignorance and chaos.  No wonder many government schools are in deep trouble.  No surprises there.

Bad Examples

Finnish Contumely

Deborah Hill Cone is a NZ Herald columnist. She wrote a provocative piece on government education the other day.  It seems that the Finns are doing particularly well in education–along with South Korea and Poland.   Her column makes reference to a new book by Amanda Ripley How Do Other Countries Create Smarter Kids?.

Journalist Amanda Ripley went on a worldwide quest to try to understand the mystery of why kids in some countries were doing well academically while more privileged kids in the US were struggling.  Ripley said she was stumped, until one day she saw a chart and “it blew my mind”. The chart showed Finland had rocketed from the bottom of the world education rankings to the top “without pausing for breath”.  Yet children in Norway, right next door, were floundering, despite their nation having virtually no child poverty.

So, after a bit of old-fashioned investigative journalism and research, Ripley presents her conclusions.  As you all no doubt are anticipating, the causal factors were all so humdrum and ordinary.  But–and we say this with reflective deliberation–they are also factors impossible to introduce into the New Zealand’s enlightened education system as it currently exists.

What (Ripley) found seems like a glimpse into the obvious.  “Bright, talented teachers who are well trained and love their jobs.”  Ripley says rather than “trying to reverse engineer a high-performance teaching culture through dazzlingly complex performance evaluations and value-added data analysis”, as Americans do, the Finns put the focus on high-quality teaching.  Only top students are allowed to enrol in teacher training programmes, and the training for teachers is much more demanding than it is in America.

A massive question is begged about now.  What is “high-quality teaching”?  Don’t presume you know, because none of us are clever professionals trained and “educated” in the philosophical mumbo-jumbo that has successfully redefined quality education in New Zealand.  The sad reality is that enlightened, “high-quality” teaching in the New Zealand educational establishment is the kind that does not teach any prescribed thing, but artfully stimulates and guides a pupil to discover their own knowledge and truth when they are good and ready.  The cardinal sin now is teaching anything at all in any prescriptive manner–and worse, never, ever by rote or memorisation.

That is why the Finnish and Polish experience cannot be replicated in New Zealand–at least not until the current batch of carpet baggers are thrown out and replaced with common-sense, humdrum, ordinary folk who are too ignorant to have been sucked in by contemporary pomo, artsy-fartsy educational mumbo-jumbo.  And that, dear friends, is not likely to happen in our lifetime.  We are just too darned clever in New Zealand–way smarter than the average dumb bears that lurk in the forests of Poland and Finland and South Korea.

It was a similar story in Poland, which got to the upper echelons of international test-score rankings in record time by following the Finnish and South Korean formula: well-trained teachers, a rigorous curriculum and a challenging exam required of all graduating seniors.

Naturally, there are other common-sense factors at play.  Focus on core curriculum is one.  Getting rid of distractions such as computers and sports is another.  

But there were other variables too. For American high school students, sports are part of the “core culture” but at the school Ripley studied in Wroclaw, Poland, “sports simply did not figure into the school day; why would they? Plenty of kids played pickup soccer or basketball games on their own after school, but there was no confusion about what school was for.”

So what can New Zealand parents take out of Ripley’s valuable work? I was intrigued that the top-performing Finnish schools were described as “dingy”, with desks in rows and an old-fashioned chalkboard – not an iPad or interactive whiteboard in sight.

Imagine if our class rooms were allowed to be remodelled into dingy rooms with desks in rows and an old-fashioned chalkboard and such learning environments became the new chic.  Imagine if the poor abused New Zealand taxpayer did not have to fork out incessantly for multi-million dollar “performing arts complexes” and gymnasiums, and massive sports fields, and endless upgrades of computer hardware and software.  Imagine if most of the money went into selecting high quality teachers and paying them well on a merit based system.  Imagine if rubrics such as “focus” and “core” came back into fashion.  Imagine if all the “nice to haves” were left to parents and communities to organise outside of school.  What savings we would enjoy.  What better results could be our boast.  

But no.  In the current miasma such radical retrogressions would amount to child-abuse–an imposition of an intellectual and pedagogical prison upon modern free-spirits.  Can’t have that.  The great apostolic college of Derrida, Dewey, Foucault, Rogers, Rorty, Wittgenstein and others would hurl denunciations too great to be borne. 

The Finns spend most of their time in darkness anyway.  Why would we want to imitate them?