New Zealand’s national standards in education are not national or standard.

By Allan Alach

Reposted from The Daily Blog

At the end of this month the New Zealand government will release the national standards data that will a) ‘prove’ that their education policies are ‘raising achievement’ and b) ‘prove’ that there is a wide variation of school effectiveness and that teachers’ performance is therefore deficient.

All this, of course, is derived from the school ‘reform’ handbook that has been imported from overseas.

Waikato University Professor of Education Martin Thrupp, a long time campaigner against the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), for example in his book ‘Schools Making A Difference’, has written an article in The New Zealand Herald that critiques this data release.  Martin’s analysis makes very similar points to those that I’ve expressed previously, albeit in much more authoritative and better expressed way!

“The published data appears straight-forward enough – percentages of children “above”, “at” “below” or “well below” the standard for their year group in each school. But there is nothing standard about what underlies the tidy rows of figures. Schools’ approaches to making judgments against the National Standards are so idiosyncratic and wide-ranging that it is impossible to accurately compare achievement between any two schools, let alone “apples with apples” comparisons across more than 2000 New Zealand primary and intermediate schools.”

Thrupp’s findings are based on a sample of six schools and one can only imagine what the nationwide figure would be like. He has found that the variations in each school’s methods of making their Overall Teacher Judgements (OTJs), such as the differing mixes of judgements and use of the standardised tests such as e-assTTle and STAR, throws doubt on the validity and reliability of any conclusions.

“The numerous sources of variation that underlie schools’ judgments also mean that any claim of overall improvement or decline in the achievement of New Zealand children against the National Standards will be quite spurious.”

Interestingly the government has chosen to produce their own nationwide analysis of results, having accepted the inevitability of the media doing likewise. One wonders if this is a precursor to the release of school based results in a month or so – will the government produce their own league tables to preempt media versions?

Thrupp’s long and well expressed opposition to GERM has naturally seen him denigrated by the government ( e.g previous Minister of Education Anne Tolley), using their well trodden personal attack path. This however, in no way diminishes his authority and so his findings add to the increasing weight of evidence against national standards.

His article also discusses issues with the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) which I have also described in an earlier article. The government, having conceded (off the record) that national standards rankings based on teacher judgements is a very flawed beast indeed, is developing PaCT in an attempt to obtain more objective outcomes from subjective teacher judgements. Thrupp also raises concerns about this, including the possibility (probability?) that we could be looking at yet another government IT failure, to go with Novopay (a very problematic teacher payroll system)  and many others (remember INCIS?).

“But if the PaCT is intended mainly as a form of national moderation (ie informing other assessment processes rather than itself becoming the assessment tool for making judgments), then it can be expected to be an expensive failure.”

Further, the design concept behind PaCT still suffers from the problems of using sampling assessments to determine overall achievement. Sampling like this only measures the very areas that are deemed to be significant, as if learning can be digitised into discreet segments. Different sampling can and does result in different results, and thus the outcomes are likely to be as variable as the teacher judgements. This is especially so when the very conditions leading to variability are ignored – the biggest of these being family poverty, which, as we know, is the ‘ elephant’ that the government doesn’t want to acknowledge.

“By failing to recognise the underlying causes of variation, it is likely to allow the Government to ignore the impact of contextual inequalities between schools, for instance, the effects of diverse and unequal intakes and communities, school locations, staffing and other resources.”

The whole process is a crock. It can’t work, and won’t work. There is a basic similarity with Novopay, where the basic concept and design is so flawed that achieving any kind of reliability is going to be very expensive, if at all possible. The government’s ‘raising achievement through national standards’ policies have similar concept and design errors.

“National Standards may be a government aspiration but they are not national and they never will be while there is so much potential for local variation. It is almost comical – if it weren’t so serious – that data representing such variation is being put into the public domain for comparative purposes when there are so many differences between schools in what it actually represents.”

The whole national standards and raising achievement rhetoric is a farce, a con job being perpetrated on the parents of New Zealand children in order to gain votes and has nothing to do with education.

Cross Party Resistance to Charter Schools

Reposted from Save Our Schools NZ

Introduction.

Yesterday (May 14th) the New Zealand Parliament debated the Education Amendment Bill that will allow for the establishment of charter schools. In this post, Dianne Khan provides an excellent overview of the debate and includes video links of the key speeches from opposition members of Parliament.

———–

 

“Is this change good for education?”  

That’s the question Chris Hipkins tells us to ask ourselves of the proposed charter schools.  And after trawling through mountains of evidence over the past year, I have to say the answer is no.

Like Chris, I believe we should be focused on making sure every student in New Zealand can achieve their potential, in all schools.  We should be raising the bar, focusing on those not achieving their potential, and supporting all of our schools to innovate within and share good practice so that the whole system s brought up and improved further.

Charter schools are not the answer.  They are not about education.  They are not about improving our system.  They do not aim to make things better for all students – not even for all  Maori or Pasifika students.  They are not about collaboration and the sharing of best practice.

They are about privatising schools, pure and simple.

Chris points out that all evidence is clear that teacher quality is a huge factor in the success of a student, and yet this Bill lowers the bar rather than raising it.  Last year the government were saying all teachers needed a Masters Degree – now, apparently, a teacher can be anyone, with no training whatsoever.  Why the change?  It’s simple – the government will say anything to attack teachers, but suddenly change tack when it comes to “private, profit-making institutions”.

Chris’s speech in full is here and raises many issues with charter schools that people (including many teachers)  may not be aware of.  It’s really worth watching.

Catherine Delahunty put it bluntly but correctly, yesterday, when she said “this Bill is ridiculous and it is also quite sick”, going on to point out that it allows for children to be used in an experiment that evidence shows to work very poorly for minority groups.

Catherine pointed out the obvious that when parents in poor families are working very long hours to bring in a pitiful wage, there isn’t a whole lot of time left to help with a child’s education.  Little time to give a hand with homework.  Not much spare to buy computers so kids can work at home.  Nothing left for school donations.

Poverty is a key factor in poor education achievement, as recognised by the OECD, and yet nothing has been done to address that important issue.  While families are facing inequality on the level New Zealand sees, there will always be inequality in education, too.

Why does government not tackle poverty? … Maybe because it doesn’t make businesses any money?

What this Bill is really about is privatisation for the benefit of businesses and corporates, some of whom are not even Maori, Pasifika or Kiwi.  If it were about helping all kids succeed, then ALL schools would be given the same freedoms.

Metiria Turei challenged National and ACT politicians to send their children to a charter school.

They probably would, to be honest.  Not yet, but in the long run.  Because once the pretence of charters being for the poor kids, the brown kids, the lower achieving kids,  is over, the truth is we will see charters appearing for wealthy kids, essentially providing publicly-funded private schools with no accountability.

Be very clear: This is not about the ‘long tail of underachievement’- it is a sneaky and underhand way of bringing in private schools that public money pays for, and in the end those schools will be for wealthy kids.

Tracey Martin gave an outstanding speech, too, outlining why this Bill makes a mockery of the submissions process and democracy  Many on the panel choose to ignore expert and popular opinion, instead listening with deaf ears and closed minds, following an ideology that they were predetermined to accept no matter what.

This is New Zealand under this government – they forge ahead in favour of only themselves and businesses.

Tracey pointed out that Maoridom is not in favour of charter schools.  Submissions from Maori were overwhelmingly against.

She pleads and I plead with Maori and Pasifika people to contact their MPs and tell them how you feel.

Even if you do want charters, make sure you tell them what boundaries you expect, what support, what oversight.

If you do not want them, speak up now, because time is running out, and the Maori Party is about to sell you down the river.

Sue Moroney hit the nail on the head when she said “Our kids are being used as guinea pigs,” saying that it wouldn’t be so bad if we didn’t already know from the evidence that charter schools do not work.  She asked why the select committee ignored the concerns of Nga Tahu, who do not want charter schools.  She asked why the children of Christchurch are being used in this experiment when they are already in the middle of upheaval and stress.

Why indeed.

Nanaia Mahuta acknowledged the thousands of parents, teachers and others who took the time to make submissions to the select committee.

With over 2000 submissions, just over 70 were for charters, about 30 had no opinion, and the rest were against.  Just read that again:  The Rest Were Against.  And those against came from all quarters, from professors and parents, from teachers and students, and from iwi.

Hone Harawira, Leader of MANA, said charters ”represent a direct attack on kura kaupapa Māori, and on public education generally,” pointing out that  ”successive governments have starved kura kaupapa of funding from the get-go, [yet] they remain one of the most successful educational initiatives for Maori by Māori, in the last 100 years.”   Like many observers, he is aghast at the Maori Party for supporting charter school proposals, saying “The Maori Party should be ashamed for turning their backs on everything that kura kaupapa Maori stands for.”  Source.

So let me close by asking you this.

Who does support charter schools?  And why?

Ask yourself that, and really think about it.  Not on political party lines, but as a Kiwi.

Ask yourself what the motivation for charter schools really is.

Ask “Is this change good for education?”  

~Dianne Khan

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Leading the way in education – instead of following the failing neo liberal agenda

by Bruce Hammonds

Reposted from Leading-Learning.

‘Education in America  is at a crossroads’, writes American educator Yong-Zhao

Ironically while China is busy trying to transform its test orientated education into a talent orientated system, writes Chinese born but now a respected American educator Yong- Zhao, America ( and now New Zealand) is moving towards a standardized test driven culture.

Why right wing politicians in New Zealand would want to follow the failing neo-liberal agenda of the USA is more to do with politics than education.

In America they have the No Child Left Behind testing programmes based around literacy and numeracy and in New Zealand we have National Standards.

Why we follow the failing approaches of the USA, the UK and Australia when we could be leading the world into developing a system that focuses on developing the talents and gifts of all students shows a lack of direction by those who profess to lead our schools. Schools cannot just be simply against such standards, which increasingly sound like whinging, they need to be leading by articulating a creative alternative.

To thrive inrapidly changing world countries like New Zealand needs to cultivate adiversity of talents of all citizens if we really want to be seen as an innovative country. Cultivating this student creativity and imagination is one thing our New Zealand schools have never done with the exception of a few creative teachers.

Yong- Zhao, in his book  ‘Catching up by Leading’, points out the damage being created by the American NCLB, and even more strongly, writes that schools that comply ‘are actually undermining their strengths by overemphasizing high-stakes testing and standardisation’.

There are lessons we can learn from America (and the UK and Australia) – of what not to do! Particularly as we rate higher in international testing than such countries. We need to lead rather than follow.

In America the NCLB has resulted in school teaching to the test and the reduction of time for subjects not tested. As well teachers, to score well, have changed their instructional focus and teaching styles. Some American schools have even resorted to cheating.

Schools in America (and other Western countries who follow the same neo- liberal agenda) spend valuable teaching time on test preparation (another form of cheating?). Already schools in New Zealand are, disturbingly, ensuring their teaching focuses on their ensuring test results are impressive – and this self- interest can only get worse. And if you read KelvinSmythe the Ministry is ensuring the ‘shonky’ National Standards results show improvements to ‘prove’ their value.

If schools do not make a collective stand and present an alternative beyond objecting to National Standards it will be too late.

The reasoning behind the NCLB in America resonates to what is happening in New Zealand under this government.

According to Zong Zhao it goes like this:

• American education is in a crisis.
• This crisis is proved by the ‘achievement gap’ (ignoring, of course, poverty issues).
• The ‘achievement gap’ results from poor teaching; teachers who hold low expectations of their students. (John Key said as much as this prior to the elections). This is not helped by self-interested teacher unions.
• Teachers are to be seen as complacent or lazy.

The solution is hold educators accountable for producing measurable outcomes including publishing of school performance data thus providing information for parent school choice and the possibility using performance-based teacher pay.

Standardisation and centralisation of curriculum and assessment are essential ingredients for obvious reasons.

All students have to be held to the same standards and need to be assessed by the same tests otherwise it is impossible to compare how much students have learnt or to distinguish good teachers and schools from poor ones. Until tests are standardised as in the UK and Australia results will remain ‘shonky’.

The consequence of such standardised teaching leads to the homogenisation of student outcomes and a diminishing of student talents in areas not being tested.

National Standards practically define what ‘good ‘education is; they become the default curriculum. A ‘good’ education is defined as a school being able to show good scores in a literacy and numeracy. Such a ‘good education’ deprives students the opportunity to develop talents in other areas. In addition children who do not perform well will be shamed and seen ‘at risk’ doomed to get more of what they cannot do while their unique gifts are ignored.

Theoretically schools can teach more than defined by the Standards but in reality schools will ensure they do well in areas that affect their reputation by focusing on areas that ‘count’.

As a result of such a narrow agenda schools will produce students with a narrow range of measurable outcomes. Yong- Zhao writes that this approach in America will limit the production of creative and imaginative individual with a wide range of talents the very people China is determined to produce!

New Zealand educators need to confront such a narrow interpretation of education and present an alternative based on an education that develops the talents and gifts of all students.

It is morally wrong, Yong-Zhao writes, ‘to place all responsibilities on schools and teachers. While schools can definitely do a lot to help children overcome certain difficulties, their influence has limits.’

Worse still, Zhao writes, the NCLB is ‘putting America in danger’….into a deeper crisis ‘because it is likely to lead increasing distrust of educators, disregard of students’ individual interests, destruction of local autonomy and capacity for innovation, and disrespect for human values’.

We are well on the way  in New Zealand to follow America into such a depressing scenario.

Now is the time for schools to see the big picture and to collectively present an alternative vision; a vision implicit in the all but side-lined 2007 New Zealand Curriculum which sees students as ‘seeking using and creating their own knowledge.’ All it needs is a greater emphasis on developing the gifts and talents of all students.

Yong-Zhao believes ‘American education is at a crossroads’ and ‘we need to change course’. ‘We need to move away from focusing on the past and move towards focusing on the future’  We need to leave the test driven road and move towards the road to innovation and creativity.

New Zealand should be a leader in developing this new discourse not a follower..

Why are so many Head Teachers Resigning Worldwide?

Reposted from Save Our Schools NZ

How many good educators are we losing all over the world each week due to the GERM (Global Education Reform Movement)?  This one in NZ?  This one in the USA?  Or this bunch in the UK? Or these twelve in Iberia?

• How many are over the excessive testing that is about data collection not about student learning?
• Or are fed up with the wonky teacher assessment methods that negate trust in senior staff and instead bow before the altar of data points?
• How many are just plain fed up of being bullied?
• How many are fearful for the future of education?

Because judging students just on their scores, or weighting the scores so heavily that the students feel they are judged as people by them, is not a way to educate and grow good people.  Students should be and are tested throughout schooling, but it should be done to personalise their learning, with fast turnout and feedback, and about growth not about a line in the sand that is called The Standard.

And what about all of the factors that impinge on student learning?  How come they get so little air time from the people demanding reforms left, right and centre and insisting they only care about the kids?  Forgive my cynicism, but could it just be that there is no money to be made in solving those problems but heaps to be made in selling educational materials to panicked parents?

It is a sick world we live in where we blame teachers for the ills in our societies and don’t look at the root causes of poverty, ill health, poor homes and hopelessness that factor large  for those not achieving all they otherwise might.

Poverty does not automatically mean poorer achievement, but usually it does.  The OECD reported that “education experiences remain strongly associated with social disadvantage. In many countries there are large numbers of people with very low education levels whose family origins were impoverished and characterised by disadvantage. Whilst education can break such intergenerational cycles of disadvantage, it can also act to reinforce them: for example, if education policy is not designed with egalitarian notions in mind.”  Source (page 7).

That is the disgrace and shame of all so-called first world countries, and that is the reality many countries are facing right now, including in New Zealand.

Is that truly the country you want?  If it is, then GERM is your friend- let it run rampant and do its business all over our education system.

But if you want better for our country as a whole, then you need to say “No more”.

No to rampant global reforms in education that are far more about $$$ than they ever were about learning or improving.

Let’s get back to research-based, well-thought-out improvements for all schools that truly are about raising achievement for all.

~Dianne

Testing, Testing… But Not Teaching

Reposted from Werewolf.co.nz

How standardised classroom tests are producing some frightening outcomes in the US 

by Gordon Campbell

Testing kids in the classroom sounds like a good idea. Surely that keeps tabs on how they’re doing, and identifies which kids might be falling through the cracks…and that’s all good, right? Well…except that most teachers have alwaysdone testing, have always sought to detect kids at risk, and have always managed to strike a healthy balance between teaching and testing. The issue is whether the demands to follow standardised testing procedures (and the practices and attitudes that go with them ) may now be poisoning the whole environment for learning.

As with many other social trends, the United States provides a cautionary vision of how good intentions can come unstuck. A few months ago, the impact of testing, testing, testing in the classroom came under the spotlight when a resignation letter by a veteran US teacher called Jerry Conti went viral. You can read the entire resignation letter here:

Its salient points are here:

With regard to my profession, I have truly attempted to live John Dewey’s famous quotation… that “Education is not preparation for life, education is life itself.” This type of total immersion is what I have always referred to as teaching “heavy,” working hard, spending time, researching, attending to details and never feeling satisfied that I knew enough on any topic. I now find that this approach to my profession is not only devalued, but denigrated and perhaps, in some quarters despised. STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics] rules the day and “data driven” education seeks only conformity, standardization, testing and a zombie-like adherence to the shallow and generic Common Core [Standards] along with a lockstep of oversimplified so-called Essential Learnings. Creativity, academic freedom, teacher autonomy, experimentation and innovation are being stifled in a misguided effort to fix what is not broken in our system of public education….

Conti continues :

…..My profession is being demeaned by a pervasive atmosphere of distrust, dictating that teachers cannot be permitted to develop and administer their own quizzes and tests (now titled as generic “assessments”) or grade their own students’ examinations. The development of plans, choice of lessons and the materials to be employed are increasingly expected to be common to all teachers in a given subject. This approach not only strangles creativity, it smothers the development of critical thinking in our students and assumes a one-size-fits-all mentality more appropriate to the assembly line than to the classroom. Teacher planning time has also now been so greatly eroded by a constant need to “prove up” our worth to the tyranny of APPR [Approved Teacher Practice Rubrics]through the submission of plans, materials and “artifacts” from our teaching, that there is little time for us to carefully critique student work, engage in informal intellectual discussions with our students and colleagues, or conduct research and seek personal improvement through independent study. We have become increasingly evaluation and not knowledge driven. Process has become our most important product, to twist a phrase from corporate America, which seems doubly appropriate to this case.

In the process, Conti says, school administrations have been both uncommunicative and unresponsive to the concerns and needs of staff and students “by establishing testing and evaluation systems that are Byzantine at best and at worst, draconian…” In the light of these developments, Conti could see only one possible conclusion : “After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists…”

Lest that be taken as the jaundiced opinion of one disgruntled teacher, Salon magazine recently reported some chilling examples of where the drive for standardised testing has taken some US classrooms : to the dreaded, so-called “ prep rally.” Columnist Mary Elizabeth Williams describes what that entails:

Last week, the principal of my third grader’s progressive, learn-by-doing school sent home a letter about the “overemphasis on assessments and the unintended consequences of using state tests to promote students and evaluate school,” a letter in which she promised the education our students receive there “cannot be measured by a single test score.”[Yet] the next day, the faculty shepherded the entire student body into the gym to cheer for the students to “Do your best” and sing, to the tune of “Ghostbusters,” that they were “test crushers.”

The rally may have been a well-intentioned attempt to defuse students’ pre-test jitters. A school administrator later told me, “It wasn’t to further promote testing. It was just about increasing confidence.” Our principal echoed the sentiment, saying, “We did a very intense test prep this year. We recognize that our kids were saturated and starting to feel overload…. And, she noted, “The idea of bringing a group together to garner enthusiasm is something we do all the time.”

The logic of the test pep rally is described by its enthusiasts in this article from Education World which carries the headline “Big Test Pep Rallies: 2, 4, 6, 8 — Taking Tests And Feeling Great!” Maybe for some. Many others will relate far more readily to Williams’ reaction in Salon:

But the ultimate effect had a strangely “Hunger Games” tang to it – a mood of forced, rah-rah re-assurance to the terrified children going into the arena, cheered on by those too young to yet participate. Unnervingly, it was a scene being played out in other schools all around the country, as they too have prepared their students for a series of tests many have been practicing for since September. The night of the rally, I spoke to my schoolteacher friend Blair in Pennsylvania, who told me they’d done similar events at her school and both of her sons’ schools, complete with near-identical catchy songs and even merchandise giveaways. “They sang ‘I will do my best best best’ to the tune of ‘Dynamite.’ It would have been cute if it wasn’t evil,” she said. “They hang up banners in the schools that say ‘I will do my best on the test.’ We get robocalled from all three schools before the test days. It’s all almost exactly the same wording from each principal. It’s a disgrace.”

As an integral part of this process, up to half of that Pennsylvania teacher’s salary will be tied to how her students performed on their tests. As Williams notes, such a system places those teachers who work with the children of migrants who may have English language difficulties and/or those who teach children with special needs — “who might be great students but not great English language test takers” — at risk of punitive measures.

As the heart of the Salon article is the contention that the emphasis on testing is skewing the learning experience for chidren. According to one teacher quoted : “My honors English curriculum now contains only two books, instead of the 12 I used to teach. And very few short stories. It’s mostly nonfiction, because that’s what will be on the tests. Any books I teach outside of the curriculum will harm my students’ scores on the tests that evaluate them and my performance. Goodbye, ‘Lord of the Flies.’ Goodbye, ‘Macbeth.’ Goodbye, ‘A Separate Peace.’ Most good teachers are demoralized by the test, and horrified by what it is doing to education.”

Another teacher : “This afternoon I was told that I must remove all the student art work hanging in the room, as it ‘will be a distraction to the students taking the tests.’” In the process, such emphases are changing the way that students view the purpose of their education :

“Children are getting the message at a very young age that if you pick the right choice between several options you can be successful. That’s not the way to learn, especially creatively. That’s not experimenting or exploring or creating. We’re telling kids that that life is a series of hoops and that they need to start jumping through them very early.”

At a higher level of impact, schools that score poorly on the tests run the downstream risk of being marked out for closure, or downsizing. The Core Standards system, the Salon article suggests, is perhaps being built to fail. “All the passing ratings are going to go down about 30 percent this year; that’s what they’re predicting,” author, advocate and education historian Diane Ravitch told Salon, “The dark view is that they want everybody to fail and they want people to say the public schools stink, so they can push for more vouchers and more charter [schools]. I can’t describe what’s going on without thinking that we’re in the process of destroying American public education.”

Most New Zealanders may be surprised to discover that the current US testing regime – and the New Zealand system of national standards that mimics it – originated with that paragon of excellence, George W.Bush. On the campaign trail in 2000 it was Bush who cited his so-called “Texas Miracle” whereby standardized testing had allegedly transformed the education system in his home state while he was governor, and this led durectly to the No Child Left Behind programme once he was elected President. It has since inspired similar ( and allegedly even more stringent) classroom testing practices under Barack Obama.

Reportedly, critics such as Ravitch do not oppose all forms of testing, only the way the process has become unduly standardised, and the status it has been given. In her opinion, such tests should be designed by the teachers, and kids should be tested based on what they’ve been taught. “Instead, the testmakers are telling educators what to teach — and that’s backwards. All of this is a terrible distortion of education.”

Absolutely, Mary Elizabeth Williams concludes, there are broken schools and faulty teachers, who are failing the needs of children every day:

But building a better system of public education – an education to which every child in this country is entitled — takes creative and innovative approaches, tailored to individual communities. Learning is not a one size fits all proposition. And our kids and our schools shouldn’t have their whole futures riding on how well children can fill in little circles, to be scored by machines. As Blair says, “We are exchanging authentic, age-appropriate learning – real thinking learning – for test taking. It makes me want to scream.”

Scream as they might, teachers and concerned parents in New Zealand are not being heard – either by the previous Education Minister Anne Tolley, or by her accident-prone successor. This is despite the evidence that far beyond the US, some countries have achieved better outcomes from their state systems by deliberately shunning standardised testing. In this informative Atlantic article, the Finnish journalist Aru Partanen cites the attributes of a Finnish school system that regularly outscores the US ( and New Zealand) in international rankings of student achievement. Among other things, Finland has no standardised testing, and no private schools at all. The key elements in its approach have been summarised as follows:

1. Finland does not give their kids standardized tests.

2. Individual schools have curriculum autonomy; individual teachers have classroom autonomy.

3. It is not mandatory to give students grades until they are in the 8th grade.

4. All teachers are required to have a master’s degree.

5. Finland does not have a culture of negative accountability for their teachers. According to Partanen, “bad” teachers receive more professional development; they are not threatened with being fired.

6. Finland has a culture of collaboration between schools, not competition. Most schools…perform at the same level, so there is no status in attending a particular facility.

7. Finland has no private schools.

8. Education emphasis is “equal opportunity to all.” They value equality over excellence.

9. A much higher percentage of Finland’s educational budget goes directly into the classroom than it does in the US, as administrators make approximately the same salary as teachers. This also makes Finland’s education more affordable than it is in the US.

10. Finnish culture values childhood independence; one example: children mostly get themselves to school on their own, by walking or bicycling, etc. Helicopter parenting isn’t really in their vocabulary.

11. Finnish schools don’t assign homework, because it is assumed that mastery is attained in the classroom.

12. Finnish schools have sports, but no sports teams. Competition is not valued.

13. The focus is on the individual child. If a child is falling behind, the highly trained teaching staff recognizes this need and immediately creates a plan to address the child’s individual needs. Likewise, if a child is soaring ahead and bored, the staff is trained and prepared to appropriately address this as well.

14. Compulsory school in Finland doesn’t begin until children are 7 years old.

Migration to Finland however, is not an option for New Zealand teachers. Although many of them would probably share Jerry Conti’s fears about where the undue emphasis on standardised classroom testing is leading us, and the damage it is doing to children’s creativity.

Charter schools are not about charter schools

By Kelvin Smythe

Reposted from Networkonnet.

The education situation is dire, western economies are struggling, with one of its manifestations being the rich and powerful acting to undermine public schools. Charter schools not being about charter schools is emblematic of that dire situation.

Let us look at how this is playing out in New Zealand. Throughout our history our overriding economic plan has been to hang on to the coat tails of first England, then America, now China. We were only truly comparatively wealthy in the Korean War period when the price of wool sky rocketed. The present government is now taking the coat-tail policy to extreme: selling farm land, allowing foreign manufacturing of farm produce, emphasising tourism (with its low pay characteristics), mining exploitation, asset sales, and signing sycophantic free trade policies. Apparently we can raise capital for property speculation but not for industry.

No matter the slightly more benign period at the moment, our prospects are that we are going to face severe unemployment, reaching deep into the middle class – so where will that leave applicants from less privileged environments? And the jobs there are will be largely low paid. Genuine social, economic, and political change is required but the response by the rich and powerful to avoid this has been to scapegoat.

This  (New Zealand) government, headed as it is by a financial player, is a do-nothing government in the sense of industry and making things (and stuff). Making things is disappearing; making things is not valued. Because of ideology, how to put ourselves in position to make things is beyond this government. The only way New Zealand can put itself in position to make things is by substantial government involvement, but this government resiles from government involvement in capital raising for industry. It is in making things, in developing our research, in using the education skills of New Zealanders, in using the acknowledged imagination of its people to make things of high value, that widespread and worthwhile employment can be established.

The rich and powerful in western countries have resorted to scapegoating and distraction to protect their position. One of the ways education is being set up as a scapegoat is promoting education as the key to prosperity. This is a false argument: when a country has reached a certain level of education achievement, there can be found no substantial connection between education achievement and economic success, indeed, the argument for education as a private good gains some credence here (though education leading to good life decisions surely contributes to the public good). By linking economic success to education achievement when there is little or no link, makes education the perfect scapegoat for successive economic failures as they occur. This has three considerable consequences: first, the true path to economic success is not recognised and followed and, second, a platform from which to devastate public education is formed and, third, the vacuum left by the destruction of public education, provides an opening for the institutions of the rich and wealthy to place themselves in a position of social control over the young.

Economic success in Western countries depends on the economic decisions not on education.

(Education, though, as a human right so that individuals can compete more fairly with others for employment and for a satisfying life in other respects is, of course, undeniable.)

Connected to the promotion of education as the key to prosperity is the idea that poverty has little effect on education achievement. This is, of course, preposterous, akin to believing in the literal Adam and Eve. The rich and powerful, in the face of an obscene widening of inequality, have promoted education, virtually on its own, as the way to reduce inequality. Those from economically deprived environments have little chance of competing with middle-class children in genuine education achievement. If the link between poverty and reduced education achievement was accepted by a society it would lead to attention being given to housing, health, and income, as well as education. In education we know how to lift the achievement of children from poverty environments. We understand the need for providing compensatory environments, for instance, a stable, loving context, intensive individual attention, sensitivity to cultural aspects, school meals, allowing time for basic concepts to develop so learning can proceed on the basis of understanding, reducing harsh testing procedures to ensure a safe environment, and not seeing flexible thinking as mutually exclusive from the 3Rs.

A central way the rich and powerful have promoted the idea that poverty has little effect on education is to change and redefine it. Education has been reduced to a narrow version of reading, writing, and mathematics by focusing on the measurable and the immediately observable. This measurable and immediately observable is atomised to allow commodification and factory-style industrial ways to transmit and test it. Such learning results in a second-rate education because true education, true that is to success in higher education, high value jobs, and making successful life decisions, is about flexible thinking. The middle-class bring a cultural capital to education that children from straitened circumstances can rarely approach unless special compensatory education is put in place. But special compensatory education is not put in place because that would cost money. The rich and powerful are only interested in ‘helping’ poor children if it doesn’t cost any money, indeed, reduces costs overall by dismantling public education systems, and avoids any social, economic, and political change detrimental to their position.

So what we find is that children from poor families are being organised into schools that produce ersatz education results in an attempt to embarrass public schools. In charter schools, children will be drilled in the 3Rs at the expense of flexible thinking, meaning, and sustainable learning, and with long-term detrimental learning consequences. To introduce just two classroom learning points: true reading is about reading for meaning, so for children’s reading to develop truly, a rich variety of concepts needs to be part of children’s thinking; and drilling a narrow version of mathematics leaves children unprepared for more abstract mathematics later. Drilled education is a second-rate education, recalling Maori children doing 1900s gardening duties. But all this by-the by, it is the consequences of bringing public schools into disrepute that is the point of the charter schools.

So what we are finding, and will find, is a range of mainly small charter schools or small schools of other sorts, that produce in secret a series of impressive ‘results’, an outcome of drilling, a form of ‘coaching’ close to cheating, and test inflation. (This behaviour will extend to, indeed will be a feature of, small secondary schools.) These schools, because they are small and structured in certain ways, will not be representative of the school population, and will never have significant numbers of decile 1 children.

But there is a further ominous way the rich and powerful are protecting their wealth and power, they are entrenching international corporations at the heart of education systems. The commodification, reductionism, and standardisation of education allows national corporations to produce curriculum content, tests, products and consultancies across borders heedless of cultural differences. This has the effect of promoting the ideas and values of the rich and powerful through school systems. Decisions alien to our way of life are being made by covert groups far removed from schools and communities. Education organisation, as a result, is being turned into a form of corporate authoritarianism with sinister implications for classrooms and democracy.

It might be fitting to go over some of the points I made in an interview on charter schools for Campbell Live (a current affairs programme) to be broadcast later this week.

I was asked for my definition of charter schools. I said it was an idea – an idea promoted by the rich and powerful to avoid genuine social, economic, and political change.

I said charter schools were an idea developed in relative secrecy and introduced in a way deeply damaging to the fabric of democracy.

Charter schools are organised so that what happens in them is hidden: it looks as though the education review office has review responsibilities, but it doesn’t; parents are kept well away; the ministry has no real oversight; and corporate-type ‘public relations’ people will deny, hide, and lie.

John Key’s  (Prime Minister) charge in the 23 November  2011 debate with Phil Goff  (then Labour Party leader) that public schools were letting New Zealand down was a signal that it was going to be a free-for-all on public teachers and schools.

I said, charter schools will never be a system, they are not designed to be a system, they are designed to be a platform to discredit public schools so that more people will buy into private schools; charter schools are about privatising education; charter schools are about frightening children into private schools, transferring the cost of education to parents. Charter schools are about more privileged children going into private schools and less privileged children being congregated into public schools – schools that will be poorly funded and derided. Most of these children will be Maori and Pasifika children which should give pause to some Maori and Pasifika leaders but probably won’t.

Not mentioned in the interview, but relevant to this argument is the way John Key is promoting private schools by making huge increases to their funding: for example, the prime minister’s school of choice for his son,

Kings College, received government subsidies increased by 40% from 2009 to 20011 – that is from$1,663, 585 to $2,325,587. There is no extra money for the so-called one-in-five at the lower end – only national standards which harms these children and bully-boy attacks on their teachers – but there are huge increases in amounts being shovelled out for the one-in-twenty-five at the higher end, and implied approbation of their teachers. (Statistical information from John Minto, QPEC.)

That is why during the interview I called the prime minister a ‘slimeball’ or something like that (I’m finding it difficult recall exactly what I said at that moment of inspiration.) I hope they retain it in the interview.

I said, I was not mainly interested in what went on in New Zealand charter schools: yes – they will use reactionary teaching policies and hectoring control practices, but what happens will not be as weird as occurs in American charter school; my main interest will be on the outside effects of charter schools, that is, the use as of charter schools as a platform to scapegoat public schools and to introduce international corporations into central education decision making.

Education is becoming sleight of hand, distraction from one hand for a trick to be pulled in the other, all to the benefit of the rich and powerful. The call for one-in-five is not about doing something constructive for the one, it is about all five being taught the narrow 3Rs (a long-term conservative aim). ‘Achievement’ is not about genuine education achievement but narrow achievement for the unreflective. National standards are not for identifying children who are struggling (in fact, they are of considerable harm to them) but to commodify education to allow national corporations to take control. ‘Quality data’ is just the reverse, it is data made rubbish by tests being tampered with and high stakes’ contexts.

As for the spread of unemployment to the middle class; well, when Maori and Pasifika children line up with their NZCEA level 2 (secondary school qualification), middle-class children (Maori, Pasifika, and European) will get the few jobs available and the rest will be left with their certificates and their poverty. The point I am making is that charter schools are designed to distract and divide. Samoan and Maori (and some European) leaders to justify their taking of money for charter schools and accruing the status involved will berate public education as failing Maori and Pasifika children when, in fact, underfunded and against the odds public schools have done wonderfully well. As was intended, the position of the rich and powerful will be strengthened by this. Charter schools, as stated above, have been introduced to avoid genuine social, economic, and political change so the proper response by those genuinely concerned with reducing inequality is not to support authoritarian education policies that will strengthen the status quo but to politicise those affected by inequality to agitate for the necessary changes. Margaret Thatcher was the first western politician to realise that ignoring and penalising the poor actually provided an opportunity to increase inequality to be electorally popular as well.

The question that is charter schools does not lie in education but in preserving and advancing the position of the rich and powerful; neither does the answer, that lies in consciousness-raising and politicisation of the poor: which is why charters schools are not about charter schools.

A new creative agenda for education required

By Bruce Hammonds

Reposted from Leading- Learning.

Over the weekend thousands of teachers throughout New Zealand expressed their anger about their dissatisfaction about government’s plans for education.

 I wonder what the public think about it all?

Don’t get me wrong I am pleased that teacher have decided that ‘enuf is enuf’.  The government spin doctors have done a good job spreading the message that schools are failing with their simplistic ‘one in five failing’ – a claim that happily ignores the demeaning results ofpoverty on a growing percentage of New Zealand families. The government’s claim has created in the public mind an unfounded sense of crisis in education

As well the Novapay teacher salary disaster, while it has gained public sympathy, has distracted attention from the real issue – teaching and learning.

Teachers, it seems, have woken up to the true agenda of the government which began with the introduction of ‘Tomorrows Schools in 1986.

The agenda is summed up in the acronym GERM (Global Education Reform Movement) – an agenda that will, when in place, will lead to the privatisation of education – the beginnings of which are to be seen in the push for Charter Schools. The corporate thinkers behind the GERM agenda see education as a fertile ground for private enterprise. As part of this agenda we have National Standards which will lead to National Testing and League tables all to allow for school comparison performance pay and parent choice. Choice, it seems, for only for those who can afford it. The trouble is that the standards will have the effect of narrowing the curriculum and eventually teaching to the tests.

Out the window will go creativity in other areas of the curriculum and the shaming of students whose abilities that do not have strengths in literacy and numeracy?

Instead of being forced into a defensive mode teachers need to put forward an alternative vision based on an educational, not a political, agenda

What I would like tosee is for teachers to put forward a more positive agenda – one that places the side-lined 2007 New Zealand Curriculum at centre stage – with appropriate revision to place talent development central.

An alternativeeducational model should be seen as central to the development of New Zealandas a democratic creative innovative country. If we are ever to be seen as a creative country that keeps and attracts talented individuals then education is the key to achieving such a vision

Education needs to be premised on the development of every student’s gifts and talents – an ideal that has never been achieved. This focus on gifts and talents needs to become the focus of the New Zealand Curriculum and in turn all school programmes.

This would truly be atransformational vision and would require all schools to rethink how theirprogrammes, which have increasingly been limited to literacy and numeracy and academic achievement, would be presented. This is not to devalue such important area but to ‘reframe’ them to provide the foundation skills for creating a personalised learning environment; an environment not based on identifying student failure but building of each individual’s unique gifts and talents.

Such an approach would place the challenge of presenting ‘rich, real and rigorous’ contexts to uncover the talents of students. Student inquiry, individually or in groups, would become central and success would be evaluated by what students can demonstrate, perform or exhibit – by showing they can apply what they have learnt.

This is the agenda teachers, and hopefully enlightened politicians, should be presenting to the public.

1.  New Zealand needsto be seen as a democratic creative innovative country – a country whose survival depend on making use of the skills and ingenuity of all its citizens
2.  To achieve this education needs to betransformed so as to focus on creating the conditions for all students todiscover and amplify their unique talents – schools based democratic inclusiveness
3. Such a vision needs to reframe the current focus on narrow literacy and numeracy so that they are seen as vital foundation skills to ensure all students can ‘seek, use and create their own knowledge’ (New Zealand Curriculum 2007).
4.  Such a vision requires all schools to change radically and for all citizens to contribute their energy towards achieving in contrast to the divisiveness being created by current educational policies.

Now this would be worth fighting for!

Why Are Kiwis Taking To The Streets?

By Dianne Kahn,

Save Our Schools NZ

They are mighty pigged off, that’s why.

This Saturday, 13th April, thousands of teachers, parents, students and other supporters up and down New Zealand will march to protest some very disconcerting things that are afoot in GodZone.

What are we protesting?  Well I’m glad you asked.

Charter schools:  The government is hell bent on bringing in charter schools despite massive resistance and rafts of evidence that they just do not improve achievement, least of all for minority groups.  They are pushing an ideology that will privatise public schools.  No amount of questioning elicits from the government or Catherine Isaac any answers on just how charters will improve anything.

They have no answers – there are no answers.  The evidence is very firmly against them.  

Community involvement is not guaranteed in charter schools (goodbye BOT), teachers can be untrained, money paid to run the schools can be skimmed off as profit.  That’s your tax $$$ going not to resources of trained staff or even to pay for the building – just taken out as profit by the business owner.  Nice.

The largest study of charter schools, by CREDO,  showed that 47% of children did worse in the charter than in the local public school.  Only 17% did better.  Is that worth the cost, both financially and to communities?  I think not.

National Standards and Testing:  Teachers test all the time – we have to, to know where kids are and where to take them next.  Tests are best if acted on speedily by the teacher, to inform their practice.  National standards do nothing to inform teachers – indeed they eat up time best spent teaching or doing more useful testing.  National Standards do not look at the progress a child has (or has not) made, it merely pegs them against a standard that has been deemed to be about right for their age.  This is of no use to the child, to the parents, or to the teacher.  Each student is different – what matters most is not where they are in relation to their peers but how they are progressing.

Add to this the growing and very real concerns that the tests used to determine students’ levels are faulty and are giving inflated results, and we have a huge, huge problem.

Teachers’ Pay and Conditions:  You might think this is about Novopay; it’s not.  The Secretary of Education wants authority to change teachers’ pay and work conditions without consultation.  Like you turning up to work and finding your contract had been rewritten and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Nice eh?  Why would the SoE want to do that, you ask?  Most likely so that performance pay can be brought in.

Performance pay is an anathema to teaching.  By its very nature, teaching is collaborative, it means working in a team to get the best for the students.  The minute performance pay rears its head, that begins to change.  Why share your resources with someone who just got a pay rise when you got none?  Why agree to have more than your fair share of the trickier students if it might impact your wages?  Where it has been implemented, abroad, it has lead to some desperate teachers exaggerating test scores, and so on.  It’s human nature, and has been documented widely by many reliable researchers, including those at the OECD.  We just don’t want that.  We want to continue working together as a team within our school and with other schools in the wider community for the kids.

Christchurch school closures and mergers:  The schools in Christchurch just did not get a fair hearing.  Information was and still is being withheld by the authorities, preventing schools from being able to put up accurate arguments against the proposals.   Dame Beverley Wakem has deemed the Christchurch schools closures and mergers consultation process to be questionable enough to warrant an investigation.  No-one is arguing nothing needed to change post-quake.  But even schools with growing roles and good quality buildings and sites have been earmarked to go.  It makes no sense.

Christchurch has been bullied, there is no other term for it.  And teachers do not like bullies.

It’s time to say NO.

It’s time to insist it remains about the children and not about ideology.

It’s time to demand that changes are research based and not done on the whim of a one-man political party.

It’s time to include community MORE in schools, not less.

Join us – come and show your support.

Public education is a treasure we must protect

by Peter O’Connor

Associate Professor Peter O’Connor is director of the Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre at the University of Auckland.

Reposted from the New Zealand Herald.

(New Zealand) Teachers know they are in an ideological battle over the future of public education. That is why on Saturday they will be marching in civic centres across the country.

They are taking to the streets as they have little trust in the Minister of Education and if it is at all possible, even less trust in the Associate Minister of Education, John Banks, who is about to lead the Education Amendment Bill through Parliament to establish Charter Schools.

On Saturday teachers will be voicing their opposition to the introduction of Charter Schools, the manner in which national standards is collapsing a broad-based curriculum, the development of league tables, the growing threat of national testing and the imposition of performance-based pay.

They have recognised that these are all features of a global education reform movement designed to disable public education. Despite the rhetoric of the reformers these radical reforms are not designed to improve the life chances of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.

They are planned with the primary goal of dismantling the teacher unions, and the creation of a larger privatised education sector. The reforms are already changing the face of schooling in this country forever.

Social studies, science, technology and the arts have all but disappeared from many New Zealand Primary schools. However, as the great dream of a more privatised education sector seems ever more possible for the reformers, teachers are showing they are willing and ready to fight for the things they hold dear.

What has been lost sometimes in the battles over the past four years has been a clear articulation of what teachers are fighting for, rather than against. Teacher union groups have been dismissed as arguing for the status quo, of having a vested interested in a failing system. This is nonsense. They are fighting for a set of ideals about what the function of the state is in relation to education and what the purpose of education is.

Those protesting this week believe that the state has a core responsibility for educating its citizens. That it shouldn’t be sold off to private interests, or in the extraordinary instance of charter schools, simply given to them. State responsibility for education is understood in terms of a social contract that proposes a well-educated population is a public good. It proposes that all schools should be excellent schools of choice for families in local communities. Public education is about equity and social justice, not about business models.

Progressive education, established in this country by Peter Fraser and Clarence Beeby in the 1940s, was created with an understanding that a well-educated citizenry is the greatest defence against the extremism that gave the world fascism. This view of schooling sees the importance of a broad-based curriculum in creating critical and creative citizens willing and able to challenge authority.

Citizens who believe they can act to make their lives and the lives of others more bearable. Public education remains, despite the relentless assaults by government and the far right, the true guarantor of participatory democracy. Therefore, it is tragic, rather than ironic, that Charter Schools have been introduced without even the pretence of democratic process and will be administered by people with little time for or understanding of the public good or the social contract.

Wherever you look in education it seems there is nothing but a sea of trouble. That has been a deliberate ploy by those who would create a sense of crisis to propose radical changes to fix something not truly broken. However, I find my own personal sense of hope comes from visiting schools. For although the future of education looks bleak in the media, in schools and classrooms throughout the country, miracles are happening on a daily basis.

Children come to school and they feel loved, safe, valued and they learn. Public education is a great national treasure that we take for granted at our peril. Public education is the intergenerational gift that ensures we do not have to die in the poverty we are born into and that we can hope for a better future for our children and ourselves.

As the Government continues to refuse to acknowledge – let alone work to repair – the social dislocation and despair engendered by the growing gap between the rich and the poor, those who have less at the expense of those who demand more, between the fearful and the feared, teachers will continue to help feed, clothe and keep safe the victims of globalised capitalism.

Teachers will again be at the forefront of safeguarding the dream of equity, social justice and of possibility. That is why they are marching on Saturday. That is why careful politicians will be listening and parents will be deciding whose side they are on.

Creative Schools – an impossible dream?

Reposted from http://leading-learning.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/creative-schools-impossible-dream.html

Bruce Hammonds 

‘If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses’ said Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

It is hard to believe that something that starts so well results in so many students leaving school with little to show for their experience – and even those deemed successful still have talents and gifts unrealised.

Notwithstanding the powerful shaping of the young by the culture and home life they are born into as soon as formal schooling starts adults begin the process of determining, with the best of intentions, what is right for their students.

Educators who believe that education is more of a process of creating stimulating environments to allow students to begin the process of helping the young explore what it is that they are best suited for have always been in the minority. Most teachers have little choice to put programmes into place that have been defined by their school, by those distant ‘experts’ that determine the curriculum and, most invasive of all, by those who determine the means of assessing students learning. When the latter is in the hands of the politicians supported by compliant principals then the possibility of creativity is all but lost.

In a more predictable industrial age this pre-determined education might have been appropriate but in today’s fast moving times it is counterproductive. Today, to thrive, students need to enter the workforce with all their unique range of talents and gifts identified able to provide prospective employers with the creative mind-sets to add value to whatever the tasks are.  Schools need to focus on engagement, to develop a questing disposition, so as to cultivate the imagination and gifts of all students; to help students discover a voice, a calling, or a passion.

We need to think of the enormous human potential currently wasted in a society when schools focus on assessing a narrow range of human abilities.  What is required is a conversation at the national level about the purpose of education for an uncertain future but, instead, the current government seems dedicated to imposing on schools a simplistic reactionary agenda based on assessing student achievement on literacy and numeracy. The glorification of this narrow assessment is eroding a more expansive view of what it means to be educated and diminishes our understanding of how children learn.

The trouble is that as school success is reflected by achievement in literacy and numeracy (narrowing the curriculum and resulting in teachers teaching to the tests) there are few principals putting forth an alternative point of view – a vision based on personalised talent centred schools rather than standardising learning.

Not that there isn’t a shortage of well-respected thinkers that schools could refer to as a basis of a real alternative, there is.One such thinker is Sir Ken Robinson who believes that creativity is as important as literacy and numeracy. There can be few schools who have not watched his video presentations on the subject of transforming schools to realise the talents of all students but, it seems, few schools have had the courage to actually implement his ideas. Others who might well be included to support the transformation of schools are United Kingdom educationalist Guy Claxton who believes, echoing Sir Ken, by saying that ‘“learnacy” is as important as literacy and numeracy’, and American educator Howard Gardner who has developed the idea of multiple intelligences or ways of ‘being smart’ Gardner is also critical of schooling that focuses on literacy and numeracy.

If Gardner’s ideas about multiple intelligences were taken seriously then all students would be exposed to experiences to enable them to develop their unique set of talents. The eight intelligences are: logical (including mathematics /science), natural history, language, art, physical (including dance), inter-personal, intra-personal (awareness of self/others) and music. It is not difficult to think of important individuals for each – many of whom had difficult times at school. Add to this is the fact that many of our successful entrepreneurs were  also not successful at school – their success being driven by passion for an idea, their  ability to take risks, to make mistakes and by being amazingly persistent.

The trouble is, Gardner has written, ‘attendance in most schools does risk ruining children’ and that ‘schools no longer hold significance for many of them. The real world appears elsewhere’…. and that schools as ‘institutions are becoming increasingly anachronistic’. ‘Teachers’, he writes, ‘must be encouraged – I almost wrote “freed” – to pursue an education that strives for depth of understanding’ ….and the need ‘to assess students in terms of relevant performances’. Gardner sees the challenge as one of of creating a ‘radically different education as too many young people leave school unable to take up meaningful roles in society’. In this respect Gardner is building on ideas first expressed by philosopherJohn Dewey in the early 20th Cwho believed in an integrated experiential approach to learning.

While the current (New Zealand) Minister of Education harps on about the ‘achievement gap’ (neglecting to face up to the debilitating effect of poverty caused by the ‘market forces’ policies being implemented by her government)she neglects to focus on the ever widening ‘opportunity gap’ between the ‘haves’ and the growing ‘have-nots’.

And it is just not educationalists that are worrying about the negative effects of current schooling. The late business philosopherPeter Drucker has written that the countries that develop a creative education system will win the 21^stcentury.  Another business consultantTom Peters, in his stimulating book ‘Re-Imagine’, has bluntly written that ‘Our school system is a thinly disguised conspiracy to quash creativity. We are at an inflection point. We seem to be re-inventing everything – except the school system, which should (in theory) underpin, even lead the rest. The main crisis in schools today is irrelevance. Our educational thinking is concerned with; ‘what is’. It is not good at deciding ‘what can be’.

Peter’s is very critical of our present ways of educating and, although focused on American education, his comments could relate to most education systems across the world. Peters goes on to elaborate his vision for a future orientated education saying that we need:

‘A school system that recognizes that learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers; creativity above fact regurgitation; individuality above uniformity and excellence above standardized performance. A society that respects its teachers and principals, pays them well, and grants them the autonomy to do their job as the creative individuals they are and for the creative individuals in their charge’.

 Wayne Morris (of Future Edge) has written, ‘we have an interesting paradox. We have industry commentators saying that, for a successful future, we need people who think, are creative and innovative and yet our education systems seem to be working against this’

‘Human creativity is the ultimate economic resource’, writes Richard Florida in his book, ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’. ‘Over the past decade the biggest employment gains came in occupations that rely on people skills and emotional intelligence …and among jobs that require imagination and creativity’.  Daniel Pink , in his book ‘A Whole New Mind’,  continues the theme: ‘The past few decades have belonged to a certain kind of person with a certain kind of mind – computer programmers who could crank code, lawyers who could craft contracts, MBA’s who could crunch numbers. But the keys to the kingdom are changing hands. The future belongs to a very different kind of person with a very different kind of mind – creators and empathizers, pattern recognisers and meaning makers. These people – artist, inventors, caregivers, consolers, big picture thinkers – will now reap society’s richest rewards and share its greatest joys.’ Pinks ideas reflect art educator Elliot Eisner’s concept of helping students explore and interpret their experiences through different viewpoints each providing a ‘net’ to capture meaning. Imagine, for example, ‘seeing’  a bridge through the eyes of an artist, a scientist an engineer, a mathematician, a poet,  a historian – each viewpoint  provides a means of capturing meaning.

At least the opposition party have indicated a return to a focus to the currently side-lined 2007 New Zealand Curriculum (introduced when they were in power) which ought to give school leaders some courage to confront current compliance requirements and to transform schools.   The New Zealand Curriculum asks schools to ensure all students leave with a positive learning identity equipped with the competencies to thrive in an uncertain future. The curriculum asks teachers to ensure all students are seen as ‘users, seekers and creators of their own knowledge’. Unfortunately it is a bit light about placing the focus on developing every student’s gifts and talents but it does suggest literacy and numeracy are best developed in purposeful contexts.  Notwithstanding this encouragement almost all primary schools continue to dedicate the great majority of their time to literacy and numeracy! It is, as one commentator has written, as if ‘the evil twins of literacy and numeracy have gobbled up the entire curriculum’. Add to this the insidious effect of ability grouping and far too many students currently have little chance of being recognised for their particular gifts.

For those principals in search of inspiration they need to look no further than to the writings of the late Elwyn Richardson in his book ‘In the Early World’ published in the 1960s. Elwyn’s work was based on valuing his students as artists, expressing their ideas through a range of media, and as scientists exploring their rich local environment – integrated learning at its best. In such environments curiosity and creativity are contagious.

So it seems that the cures for education of the neo conservative reformers(with their obsession with testing, standards, measurement and data and growing agenda of privatisation of schooling) is worse than the disease; and that in any case the proposed cures will not heal the patients. The assessment tail is wagging the dog! Such a demeaning risk averse audit culture needs to be replaced with one based on professionalism and trust as seen Finland a high achieving country educationally that shows greater respect for teachers.

Howard Gardner is clear about the real solution, ‘If we can mobilize the spectrum of human abilities not only will people feel better about themselves and more competent; it is even possible that they will feel better about themselves , more engaged and better able to join the rest of the world community in working for the common good.’ But he adds, ‘it seems easier to thwart gifted and creative youngsters than it is to encourage their flowering.’

Another educator, an expert in developing children’s thinking David Perkins, has written that ‘creative individuals in any field make use of the same cognitive processes as do other persons but they use them in a more efficient and flexible way and in the service of goals that are ambitious and often quite risky’. The good news is that all students can learn the dispositions to be creative and to achieve personal mastery. Unfortunately the predictable formulaic ‘best practice’ teaching that schools have bought into is in conflict with the openness creativity requires. What schools need to do is to encourage students to apply, as old fashioned as it sounds, effort and perseverance – to show what some call ‘grit’.  This also means digging deeply into whatever is studied – to do fewer things well and to encourage students to aim for improving their personal best. A quick look around most classrooms will show a troublesome uniformity in student work even in such a creative area as art. By doing fewer things well students gain the opportunity to acquire the self-discipline, concentration, emotional control, and the shear joy that children learn in the act of creation, that will serve them well all their lives.

The current educational climate has marginalised professional judgment resulting in defensive teaching to achieve narrow imposed targets; hardly the environment to encourage creativity.

Back to Gardner,  ‘by building on the child’s interests and motivations schools might have more success in carrying out what may be their most crucial task, empowering children to engage meaningfully in their own learning.’ An integrated curriculum nourishes Gardner’s multiple intelligences.   Educationalist Jerome Bruner wrote, decades ago, that‘teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation’. Students enter formal education curious about the world around them and it is over to schools to ensure this innate curiosity is keep alive. Learning is best developed and nurtured through authentic tasks where individuals are able to acquire skills and knowledge through effort over time with feedback and encouragement from people knowledgeable in the appropriate disciplines. As Guy Claxton titled one of his books students have to see ‘The Point of School’.

Most real-life most problems bear little resemblance to the predictability of school learning (as it is presently arranged). In real life problem are not presented ready-made but must be shaped out of events and information; they are messy, ill-defined, rich with possibilities capable of generating a diversity of responses. If learners persevere and learn the skills necessary to solve them, then classrooms will reflect the idiosyncratic creativity of students across the curriculum.

 

 Future education cannot be about imposing standardisation, it must be transformed into a personalised environment that takes students gifts and talents seriously – gifts that will serve them well for the remainder of their active lives.

In such creative environments learning is its own reward.

Is it an impossible dream?