Cities and signatures

You could sense the surprise when I went down to the waterfront last weekend. Thousands of Aucklanders were enjoying the sunshine and new vistas, walking the new spaces. Who knew this part of Auckland belongs to us?

But there’s that Cloud – peeping out from behind the still-closed red gate.

The opening up of this waterfront is good timing: an attractive place for visitors for the you-know-what black jersey thingy.

Aucklanders explore the newly opened part of the Wynyard Quarter, also known as the Tank Farm

What’s the message? On Saturday Auckland was open, friendly, even sports-mad. The waterfront is a nice start to giving definition to Auckland.

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Cities have signature messages, and they matter. New York
says, make money. And all of the world’s bankers, accountants, publishing
houses and media moguls seek to join the frenzy of the Big Apple.

Los Angeles says, be beautiful, be famous. The A-List attracts
all the other alphabet lists. Go there to make your name.

Paris says chic. People care about how they look, hold
conversations about art or music or philosophy or la technology with the same stylish consideration they give to a red carpet runway. Go there for Culture with a capital C.

Boston says erudition. Go to Harvard or Yale or MIT to be
stimulated by the greatest minds of the western world. Go there to think.

Like a magnetic force-field, people line up to be part of a scene. Once, Florence was an arts centre. Artists went there to paint. In it’s Habsburg heyday, Vienna danced to class and money. Musicians and power brokers went there.

Smart Singapore today speaks savvy consumption in an Asian world: the clean commerce capital of the region.

Where you live does seem to rub off.

So then there’s Auckland. Ahem. There’s almost something naive about our symbolism as the “big little city”. Despite this interesting park of
industrial tanks, the waterfront isn’t distinctive. It won’t define us in a world of Sydneys and Seattles.

Our front to the water needs some special quality – perhaps a starring role in a South Pacific city with a proud voyaging history, from Kupe to Cook, via stars and sextants, reflecting people who today remain intrepid travellers and adaptable, even innovative and creative.

Somehow downtown Auckland, despite an extended waterfront as
fresh as a new car not yet run in, doesn’t quite say that – yet.

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Auckland is beginning to think differently, about to invest in a distinctive economic and social pattern that could position the city as the hub of the South Pacific.

Downtown Auckland reflects a very diverse community. International students are a youth services business, and institutions of learning here are thriving in a competitive global market. Like car yards, financial districts and restaurants, concentration in this business is healthy. This business is built on Auckland’s reputation for quality education for the rising middle classes; and there is even better business to be done in working collaboratively to shape an Auckland pitch for more of the market. There’s a huge economic impact already: $1,342.8 million of foreign exchange earnings.

These punters don’t live with cars, though. This business needs the downtown rail loop, a convenient connection to the social hotspots and dormitories of the city – a place for the brightest and
best to study and play, to begin a working life here in the restaurants and
libraries and crucibles of innovation that the city’s economic development plan will propose.

The learning opportunity does not have to be exclusive to the well-educated middle class, who freely travel the world, and settle lightly in the world’s hot-spot cities.

For the ones that stay here, we need to develop new kinds of belongingness; messages in our physical downtown and along our waterfront that say, You are part of the Pacific mainstream: part of the learning world.

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Related articles

• Auckland reveals transformed waterfront (3news.co.nz)

On Keeping it Simple

Getting teenagers ready to move on and up seems to be the topic du jour. The New Zealand Institute released a report last week More ladders, fewer snakes on this theme. While its conclusions were no surprise – we need more e-learning in low-decile schools; and somebody taking responsibility for youth transitions – its weight of independent conclusion is satisfying: we should be paying attention to the skills of young people.  School-leaver readiness was also central to a Symposium hosted by the Centre for Studies in Multiple Pathways at Manukau Institute of Technology two weeks ago, and was a theme at the Industry Training Federation conference at SkyCity last week.  Picking a school-exit “readiness” goal is pretty critical to Auckland’s economic planning; it will be no surprise to see it emerge as part of the consultations to start in the next month or so for the Auckland Plan.

But planning is getting a bad name. Yesterday’s opinion piece in the New Zealand Herald from Michael Barnett (The best plan, keep it simple) about the plethora of plans and why Auckland has to have them should remind us that the world of planning and social policy has to become grounded at some point.  Only on-the-ground action can address the complexities of issues like school-leaver readiness in socially disadvantaged communities; and long-term unemployment and dependency for the poorly skilled.  

For a long time now, we have in New Zealand shaken our heads at the growing disparity between those that have skills and those that do not – and it’s effect on incomes and economic opportunity; and have taken only baby-steps towards change. Emerging, though, are some practical innovations that have stepped past the bureaucratic barriers and into new territory, with promising results. The secondary-tertiary high school at the Manukau Institute of Technology is one such. Other schools describe innovative partnerships that bring learning closer to the work place; evidence of a policy direction with jobs in mind becoming translated into school practice.  

Most of the practical innovations discussed at these conferences over the last two weeks are focused on the youth space. Because that’s important. What is not there, however, is consideration of the effect of disengagement many years after these youth have theoretically grown up. Successive tertiary education policies in New Zealand have left a legacy: a gaping void in learning opportunities for low-skill adults that translate into careers pathways, resulting in employability issues that doom them to long-term dependence on either the state or on poorly paid work which traps them in a cycle of poverty.

Like youth, these adults have economic potential; if only there were late-start entries into careers pipelines that helped them to grow their confidence in learning and to resurrect their ambitions for personal and family well-being. It’s like a ladder with the first rung missing: in Auckland we could pathway many Pacific people into jobs, for example in the health services, if only the pre-requisite learning was accessible to the adults.

Foundation learning services for adults in Auckland – literacy, numeracy and digital skills in particular – need to be reviewed.  Michael Barnett’s argument for less planning and more doing has relevance in this way: if we leave planning for learning only to Wellington, we miss the opportunity to really affect the social dynamics of Auckland and get the best value for money from the government expenditure on education. Planning for learning won’t need a shiny document or a complex consultation process. I agree with Mr Barnett. We should keep it simple. We don’t need yet another plan for education in Auckland. What we must do is embed within the Auckland Plan a set of goals for education and skills and develop a framework in which stakeholders can meaningfully collaborate to make a difference.

What has local government got to do with school principals?

Auckland was redesigned as a Supercity because a group of people had the bright idea that Auckland was under-performing economically and socially. Rodney Hide, the figurehead for this change, recently remarked that now it was up to the people in Auckland to make the structure work for them. Too right. As the only city in New Zealand of sufficient size to grow international clout, Auckland does have to perform. The Auckland environment is dynamic.  School principals  – sit up and take notice.

The performance of the education system as a whole in Auckland is coming under scrutiny. City leaders are genuinely interested in the question of how to lift the city’s education record to world class standard. The contribution of education to community wellbeing will feature strongly in the Auckland Plan, due out for consultation in August this year.

There are 542 schools in Auckland City, with over 260,000 students in them. Only 43% are of European descent. The students attend schools highly stratified in the city according to socio-economic status and ethnicity. Close to 3,000 students leave school every year without a school qualification but the underperformance of Maori and Pacific children in particular occurs in schools of all deciles.

 The consensus that education could have a key role to play in making the radical shifts required to enhance Auckland’s economy and social fabric was endorsed by those  at the Auckland Education Summit, co-hosted by COMET and the Cognition Institute on 11 May 2011. It drew more than 180 leaders from across the city’s political, commercial, social and educational landscape and they noted the importance of getting Auckland’s education sector working more cohesively to shift education outcomes.

 The complex skills picture in Auckland is not just about schools, of course. Participants at the summit recognised that there should be much more coherent and active connections between all levels of education in Auckland, and between the schools and community leadership, in order to drive educational change.

But school principals are busy enough and already committed to teaching and learning in their schools. Some would argue that they are already involved in making shifts: what more could we ask?  Realistically, how could principals help the process of sharpening education outcomes across a city?

Firstly, principals already understand the connection between participation in quality early learning and new entrant learning. City backing for increasing the participation of all children in early childhood learning – and actively engaging in that goal – is all the more likely if Principal Associations back the inclusion of that goal in the soon-to-be-consulted-on Draft Auckland Plan.  

Secondly, many participants at the Summit suggested an Auckland education framework or charter that mandates a two-way support process for raising achievement.  A charter could contain explicit goals about lifting achievement for all. Schools – their principals and boards – may be asked to “sign up” to the goals, as an expression of education sector commitment to working together. In turn, schools would receive the active commitment of communities to supporting them in their role and recognition of their value to in their community.

Thirdly, participants at the Summit noted that education is a shared responsibility. Sharing responsibility includes understanding the evidence and data about outcomes. Currently there is no mechanism for a cohesive, widely shared understanding of the performance of Auckland’s education system. NCEA and National Standards data will be keenly analysed for its ability to understand the “big picture” of how the system is doing. There will be considerable interest from the city in the way in which schools report student progress, and the involvement of principals in the discussions about that will be particularly important.  

Finally, the strengths of Māori, Pacific and other diverse communities include the ways in which community networks can support school leaders in making a difference for students. This can come about in surprising ways – and only takes a willingness on the part of school principals to listen and be part of community discussions about educational performance in their local patch.

Auckland needs an education and skills framework for connecting delivery of education in schools to the Auckland Plan; and the setting of simple and clear goals for incorporation into the Auckland Plan.

What is a “framework”?  It could include a whole range of things that work together. It could include an agreement or Accord between the Mayor and the Minister of Education about how he or she will support achievement in Auckland. It could include a kaitiaki governance group that could oversee action and outcomes; serviced by a leader who could be Auckland’s Commissioner for Education. It could include a Charter or City Agreement that key stakeholders could be invited to commit to.  It will undoubtedly include targets, both high-level and specific. For example –

• All children will have access to and participate in early childhood education
• All school-leavers will have NCEA Level 2
• All adults will achieve at least one tertiary qualification.

The targets, part of the Charter or arising from it, could be accompanied by measures, collaboratively set. There could be a transparent, public reporting mechanism that allows the community to see progress.

It is still unclear what such a Framework would actually look like. But there is no doubt that a new way of working is going to be needed if we are to see a significant shift in educational outcomes in Auckland. The mayor’s leadership on that, and the involvement of school principals, will be key.

The ethics for where the Wild Things are

Adults, it seems, find Wild Things more threatening than children.  Today the headline in our local community newspaper, the Howick and Pakuranga Times, said ‘PM urged to stop school’. (Monday 20 June 2011). It reports: ‘Community leaders have vowed to take their fight against a special needs school to the Beehive if people’s concerns continue to be ignored’.

Where the Wild Things Are is the classic Maurice Sendak dream journey: Banished to his bedroom for bad behaviour, little Max finds himself in a room covered in vines all around where the monsters live. He dances with them, plays with them.  By engaging with the monsters, Max gains control of his day and the boredom of his bedroom. Bad behaviour is also at the centre of this engineered community kerfuffle.  But whose?

The local debacle began with a school principal taking his board of trustees and parent community on a little ride of objection to a school for Wild Things being established – shock, horror – Right Next Door, without ‘consultation’. The fact that a school for these students – however challenging – had already existed for many years right next door before seems to have escaped the principal’s notice.

 The central message from the public debate is that the Ministry of Education is a “bully”, imposing a school on a community that does not want it.

Bullying behaviour takes many forms. This community has some astute political champions, and a community with the resources to take the NIMBY line. The families of these special needs students have almost no voice here, and their needs do not feature in the debate.

At the centre of this community uproar is the behaviour of professional leaders. To what extent do principals examine the morals, ethics and values at the base of the schools and communities they lead? To what extent are school principals in New Zealand bound by codes of conduct that promote successful educational outcomes for all students, even the Wild Things, not just those in the schools they lead?

There is no integrity in actions that deliberately undermine learning opportunities for special needs students. Perhaps there is tacit support for the principal of Pigeon Mountain School by the way in which his peers remain silent. Are school leaders in New Zealand so used to acting unilaterally in their own interests rather than in the wider system interest that they no longer are sensitive to ethical issues related to the relationship their own school has with others?

I hope not. System leaders have a role to play here: leading by outrage, that a member of their own profession would act against the interests of students from another school.

 Ethical behaviour is the bedrock of trust. Unethical behaviour from principals may advance their own and their communities’ ends, but it undermines the establishment of a cadre of educational leaders who are willing to act for a cohesive public education system where all children, from every community, can receive the kind of education they need.  Even right next door, if necessary.

Foundation learning – jam-making for the future

I love making jam. My recently-made plum jam joined my selection of berry jams to look great in the cupboard. Such a selection to choose from! Being spoilt for jam was the subject of another conversation I was part of this week – this one about foundation learning.

Like jam, foundation learning is a very sticky subject. Only teacher practitioners really understand the nuances of terminology: bridging education or foundation learning, adult literacy or numeracy, whatever, it’s “catch-up” learning for adults. It’s what you do as an adult when you haven’t got the skills to do a diploma or a degree and you need the pre-requisite to enrol. Success for foundation learners is a mire of honeyed possibility – food for future success; or a trap for the unwary. 

The outcomes for foundation learning are getting renewed attention here. Why? There is a connection between skills and productivity, economic growth and wellbeing – a key issue for New Zealand.  

Bruce Vandal, from the States Education Commission of the US, was the guest speaker at an event hosted by Ako Aotearoa  in Auckland this week in support of the Ako Aotearoa project to increase educational attainment for “priority learners”.

He told us that President Obama’s goal is for the US to have the highest % of the population with post-secondary credentials by 2025 – in other words, win back America’s place as the world’s Number One in education. To reach Obama’s goal, they have to increase “production” of credentials by a whopping 53%.

Nevertheless, there’s been decreasing public investment in the adult learning sector. More “efficiency” is required in the pathway offerings for low-level learners (the jam sales table!)

The failure rates in the US for second-chance and “remedial” learning are very high (possibly higher than here). Instead of Moving On Up, most of these learners never Get Past Go. 

Bruce Vandal had a wonderful diagram describing the “slow leaks” for these learners as they progress through “remedial” and “pre-programme” courses in order to finally graduate with a certificate, diploma, or degree. The diagram prompted discussion about the capacity in the tertiary education system here to collect and analyse data about what is happening for learners.

Mr Vandal made the point that if the goal is increasing credentials, then the pathway sequence needs analysis; not just the outcome for different courses.  How many passed is only half the answer. How many enrol in the next step?

To understand progress against the goal, you need good metrics. He put it like this:

• Measure enrolments in foundation education
• Measure the success that learners have in these courses
• Measure the success that learners have in their “first” year Diploma or Degree programme
• Measure the rate of credit accumulation that learners have. (Too slow, and they may never finish).
• Measure retention rates
• Measure degree completion rates

New Zealand has a Tertiary Education Strategy which places importance on “priority learners” -Maori and Pacific people. It’s a statement from the government that the foundation level part of the system needs to work well – better than it has. There are very large numbers of learners undertaking foundation-level learning; high numbers of them are Maori; they are mostly in Polytechnics and Wananga; they are mostly older (than 40); and more than ever they are undertaking learning for specific vocational purposes, rather than looking for “generic” skills.  This level of participation is a good news story for the country. But the more part-time they are, the more challenging it is to Get Past Go and on to higher level learning.

How important for Auckland. Priority learners are among the 450,000 adults in Auckland with low or very low numeracy and literacy skills. They constitute both our present and future workforce. I think it is worth paying attention to the idea of understanding the broader Auckland picture of who enters Level 1, 2 and 3 programmes, whether they complete, and where they go to next. 

Scarily, the completion rates for foundation learning programmes at various institutions across the country are highly variable. How it that across New Zealand completion rates can be as high as 80% at one institution and at another as low as 19%? As taxpayers we are funding that?

A way forward for tackling Auckland’s skill challenge emerges from this. What do we understand about the city picture for foundation learning?

In Auckland, we need to connect support for “priority learners” to the aspirations of the Mayor contained in the about-to-be-drafted Auckland Plan.  A Leadership Goup is needed to set goals about foundation learning for Auckland; to lead a process for measuring outcomes against those goals; and to advocate for commitment to high quality, well-resourced, foundation learning in the city. It’s about translating economic potential into value-for-money jam for the future.

How to change Auckland’s skill profile

“Business as usual” implies no change. But Auckland needs shift, not same old, same old, in the skills settings for the city.  We can’t afford Business as Usual any more. Change needs to become a properly-managed and properly resourced Project.

I am reminded of one of those remarkable computer-generated charts that explain the things you have to do to complete a project. Engineers use them. Computer project managers use them.  There are lines everywhere which tell you what is happening and when. I was involved fairly recently on the board for the establishment of a brand new campus of schools. At one of the early board meetings, we were presented with an almighty Gantt chart of pages and pages of activities that we would be responsible for. We looked at each other. Gulp. The construction team leader smiled. Those engineering types work with these charts all the time!

The chart definitely worked as the framework for action. It was the project manager’s job to make sure that the build was completed, on budget, on time. It was our job to be the kaitiaki, that is, the trustees who work with the many others involved in preparing the school for students. I’m using this experience as a metaphor for building a new framework for skills action in Auckland .

Last week I attended a forum at which the work of the fledgling Social Policy Forum was reported back to the community.   It was clear that two social development priorities are emerging for the city and government:  they were reported as Community Engagement and Youth Unemployment.

These are two very different priorities; offering significant possibilities for action. The ideas put forward by the experts on Youth Unemployment at the Social Policy Forum table are these:

• Reduce the appalling rate of youth unemployment by creating 2000 extra jobs. (Since there are 6000 unemployed youth in Auckland, why only 2000?)
• Put a clause in all government and local government contracts that includes a requirement to employ young people.
• Put in place ambassadors for youth, so that the Council can model best practice youth support.  
• Strengthen careers counselling and mentoring.
• Encourage large employers to have a certain percentage of young people on the payroll.
• Strengthen industry and education links among tertiary institutions.

Very worthy. And how?

The Social Policy Forum appears to be concentrating on the what – what has to change, what are the goals, what is the funding, what “projects” we could do.  The how is equally important.

How is a goal for Youth Unemployment to be managed? How does it connect to changing the outcomes from the education system? How will we know whether the projects are working? How will we measure how effective the work is? How will we know whether the government contributions and the Auckland Council contributions are offering better value for money?

Here’s how. 

Structure the approach. Put youth unemployment into a context: the skills needs of Auckland, as identified in the Auckland Plan.

Set up the structure for action: an Accord between central government and local government about the skills needs of Auckland that clearly outlines the common goals and the commitments of each to them. The Social Policy Forum is the only mandated vehicle we have for that.

Appoint a driver: say, a commissar for Skills in Auckland.

Shape an Auckland Skills Framework that includes a kaitiaki group who will be the guardians of the goals, informed by the work of community and policy experts.

Set a high target for School-leavers.

Put in place processes that allow ideas like those above to be tested and rejected or adopted and implemented in ways that demonstrably deliver to the goal.  Invest in rigorous evaluation and reporting systems – so that everyone knows what is happening and how effective it really is.

Someone told me once that Commissars do great Gantt charts. Auckland doesn’t need a skills dictator or a freak on organisational detail!  But Auckland could sure do with leadership on skills  – one of the underlying causes of youth unemployment.

Zero Tolerance for Failure

As we were reminded at last week’s Auckland Education Summit, there is no new money for education. If we are to shift educational performance in Auckland, we are going to have to do it by doing less of something, and shifting resources to more of something else.

What’s that something else to be? I was searching for where the answers might lie during the day.

I was inspired by many of the suggestions from the nearly 200 participants at the Summit. A really practical one that comes to mind this morning is that not only does Auckland need strategic goals for education in the Auckland Plan – Auckland also needs twenty-one Local Education Plans. Local Boards could take a lead in developing them and implementing them.

Len Brown opened the day with a passionate exposition of the economic development priorities for the city. His message was that education needed to connect to those priorities – but he was absolutely committed to improving learning outcomes.  My notes are full of excellent suggestions. Among them, Zero Tolerance for Failure as a schools sector goal.

If it’s about Zero Tolerance for Failure, it’s also about full employment for young people.

If it’s about Zero Tolerance for Failure, it’s also about setting a platform for achievement for young people from the early childhood years.

If it’s about Zero Tolerance for Failure, it’s also about targeting resources to where the failure is occurring – at every step of the way.

If it’s about Zero Tolerance for Failure, it’s also about what happens in families as well as what happens at school.

And if it’s about Zero Tolerance for Failure, it’s also about Successful Destinations for young people into the workplaces of Auckland.

And keeping them in work.

Because education is not just about schools. It’s about jobs.

The role of the city?

Participants clearly expressed the view that we have waited long enough for government to make a difference – it’s time for Auckland to Just Do It. I had a sense that people were ready to work collaboratively to deliver a Zero Tolerance for Failure goal. It is possible to take an Auckland approach to education.  And the international evidence is that city leadership is incredibly important in driving for better education outcomes. The city can and should champion and drive education outcomes for Auckland’s economic future.

LINK: Auckland Unleashed and the future of learning in this city.  Responses to the discussion document close at the end of May.

Unleashing social innovation in Auckland

It’s an old argument: that Auckland Council should not be engaged in “unleashing more costs on ratepayers” by setting targets about learning and education. This tired thinking narrows the vision for the Auckland Council. It reflects the silo thinking that wastes value. The government spend is not always well targeted to community need; and community need is not effectively advocated back to government. The report of the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance made it quite clear: the $14billion social spend in Auckland is not delivering social leadership and change that makes a difference to the economy. In fact, Auckland’s social challenges are now a brake on national aspiration to remain in the “first world”.

Education and skills are the tools for growth and wellbeing. After months of planning, I am looking forward tomorrow to the Auckland Education Summit. It is intended to begin a process of shared effort to transform Auckland’s economic and social landscape through education. The structure of the new Auckland Council permits a more joined-up approach to social transformation; and responds to the need for a coherent vision and partnership approach to what has to change and why.

The data from our Snapshot of Education in Auckland tells its own story. In 2009, 45% of young people on the North Shore left with NCEA Level 3 compared with only 17% in Papakura. But we can’t solve educational underperformance simply by thinking about schools. Underperformance begins from the earliest years, and is evident in all parts of the education and training system. The city needs to pay attention to family wellbeing and early childhood learning because the evidence exists about the difference they make. By attending to the skills of parents and adult earning potential, families can access the tools to move out of poverty and contribute to a more productive economy. These step changes strengthen intergenerational cycles of learning. The literacy and numeracy statistics for adults in Auckland show how much unrealised potential there is in our communities.

There is no suggestion that the Auckland Council should pay for, or run, educational programmes in schools, or parenting or literacy courses in the community. Ratepayers are not in a position to pay for the responsibilities of central government. It is certainly true, though, that the Council’s policy on early childhood education, for example, can support or encourage families to participate. It is also true that the city’s investments in economic development can trigger jobs or encourage skills acquisition; the city’s investments in community development can be a catalyst for re-engineering social programmes that actually work for communities. 

With resolute leadership, transformation of Auckland’s education landscape is possible. The Auckland Plan could be the underpinning for a powerful coalition: an Auckland Education Achievement Partnership. When city leaders, national leaders, and community leaders coalesce around some simple, clear educational goals for the city, shifts unimaginable five years ago become possible.

My hope for tomorrow is that concrete suggestions about those shifts, and how we might go about achieving them, will arise. If they are to be meaningful, the targets about education in Auckland Unleashed will need to be widely “owned” . The  ratepayer is not investing in “targets” and “strategies” and “goals” – we are investing in social innovation that measurably spills over into Auckland’s economy. 

The term Partnership is deliberate: collective community contributions create impact. It is not the work of any single player, any single school, and any single community organisation that will effect the powerful transformations Auckland needs. COMET’s experience is that there is new energy to be unleashed in joining up parts of the system, creating new synergies which offer better bang for the government buck for education in Auckland.

Why wouldn’t the Council invest in achieving this?

Tomorrow is going to be a day for commitment.  Together with colleagues at the Cognition Institute, the COMET team has worked to shape a purposeful event that we hope will drive new thinking about education in Auckland.

Competition in the Talent Pool

Auckland Unleashed proposes a target for school-leavers: 80% of school-leavers with Level 1 NCEA within 10 years.  I was considering this target when I visited my brother in Australia over the Easter break (a bit geeky, I know!). The weather was better than over here.  We crossed the Nullarbor Plain by train and it was green!  Although Perth’s housing bubble has burst, the city looked prosperous and promising. And full of kiwi expats. It is unsurprising that there are net outflows of migrants from New Zealand to Australia – Australian businesses and governments are competing vigorously for our skills.

Perth’s population is similar to Auckland’s. Apart from bonds of family, quality of life counts in decisions to relocate. An already vibrant arts district in Perth is being redeveloped to add to the city’s attractiveness. The resources boom is evident in the quality city infrastructure: neatly paved streets, well-kept parks and recreational spaces, useful and well-patronised public transport links, community facilities, bustling restaurants, and a sense of personal safety and prosperity.  

This sense of Get Ahead is built on talent – not necessarily home-grown. About a quarter of a million New Zealand born people were working in Australia in 2006 (at the last census of both countries). Probably more are there now. They are mostly “prime age”.  And today my reading of a Department of Labour report about New Zealand’s skills challenges prompts me to consider how here in Auckland we might compete against places like Perth. Because the news is that we’re facing a serious skills shortage here.  Why?  As well as those quitting to go to Australia, skilled baby-boomers are retiring at the same rate as new entrants are coming into the workforce. Demand is shifting towards “vocational” qualifications and people are slower to get them than degree qualifications. We are reaping the consequences of the almost-no-trade-training fiasco of the 1980s.

You might think that our pace of life (“sluggish productivity”, according to the Department of Labour report) would be an attractive bonus. But no. Apparently, to keep people here and to attract skilled migrants, we are going to have to shift emphasis from low-wage employment to something approaching the global treadmill.   

This doesn’t feel quite right: we already work longer hours than other places.  We already have quite high qualifications levels.  Young people entering the workforce today are many times more likely to hold a degree than the retirees. And the evidence actually is that our migrants are more skilled than the ones leaving, by about 13,000. But increasingly, employers are looking for the q-words: Qualifications, Quality, Quick. Demand for degree-holders is forecast to grow at double the rate of overall employment growth.

It won’t always be green on the Nullarbor Plain. Lake Eyrie will return to being salt marsh. The summer heat will beat the air-conditioning beast and Perth’s water crisis will leave people thirsting for home – what will keep them in Auckland? An economy that delivers more money, better jobs, better prospects. Just getting school-leavers to NCEA Level 1 is not enough, then, as a target for community action on skills. Auckland Unleashed aims low. We need to skill ‘em up – and shoot higher to get there.

Link: Skills Challenge Report, Department of Labour

On setting a target for early childhood education participation

Image via Wikipedia

It is terrific to see that in Auckland Unleashed, the Auckland Mayor’s Discussion Document, participation rates in early childhood education are targeted for improvement. Poor participation in early childhood education services is an equity issue. All children should have access to services that meet their needs; and the city has responsibility to see to ensure that the wellbeing of children is catered for everywhere.

But there needs to be great care in setting  education targets. Early childhood participation rates don’t need improvement everywhere. Where participation is very high (and the data shows that is true in parts of the city), we can be satisfied that services are available for children and of sufficient quality to match demand. 

However, setting a minimum participation rate across the city does not reduce inequality (it is proposed for 80% of all children, still a low average!).  Average participation rates hide where pockets of very low participation actually occur, reducing the effectiveness of action to raise the target average and spreading scarce resources more widely and less wisely.

A better early childhood education target could be either to establish a benchmark of service levels that all children and their families should be entitled to expect.

Participation rates are complex calculations. Low participation is a function of many forces conspiring together: the number of available early childhood education ‘places’; the number of available and qualified educators; the demand from families; the transport options for access to services; cost; and appropriateness of provision (whether services are bilingual; are inclusive of children with special needs; are sessional or full-time; or include multiple health and support services for families) among them.

Pinning the target to a benchmark of participation rates or levels of service helps to avoid a further widening of the gap between those children who have access to quality services and those who do not.  It also encourages a more flexible approach to delivery of the target. After all, just “more of the same” may not be the answer to improving participation rates.

What kind of benchmark might be appropriate?  Starting with the equity argument, achieving a participation rate in the Papakura, Manurewa, Otara-Papatoetoe, Otahuhu, Tamaki and Massey Local Board areas that matches the rate for other local board areas (for example, Devonport-Takapuna or Howick-Pakuranga) could be an appropriate medium-term goal.

How to get there? With the support of the Council, elected Local Board leaders should be invited to understand what this means for their community.  The process for developing the target, setting progress indicators, and implementing action on the target should be championed by the Local Board.

The process must include conversations with central government and community leaders.  Holding a Community Education Forum* becomes an opportunity for creating collective community ownership of change.  With good data and evidence to back action, and consensus on goals and actions, the Local Board will be well positioned to champion action, monitor progress, and own the outcomes.

The dialogue at community level will inevitably raise the matter of what constitutes “participation”.  Formal early childhood education services are only part of the answer to making sure that every child has the very best start in life.  But that’s a topic for another day.  

* Community Education Forum: a new idea with an old history. It is a place where educators and stakeholders together debate local educational outcomes and issues to be addressed, and forge collaborative actions to address them.