Soap Opera: Days of Our Schools

Opening Scene: Minister of Education’s Office. The Minister, the Secretary for Education and a private adviser are present.

AT – I’ve got this paper here about NZ’s premier boys’ school and NCEA. What is it about Auckland? So your advice is that I dismiss the board?

Secretary K – Of course, Minister. Otherwise, schools will think they can do whatever they like.

AT – Well, the PM lives in zone. They can do whatever they like. Choice is our policy, you know. I wouldn’t want to argue the toss with the PM. Let’s come back to that one in a minute … Hmm, this paper is about the primary principals not wanting to implement National Standards. So your advice is that I dismiss the boards?

Secretary K – Of course, Minister. Otherwise parents and schools will think they can do whatever they like.

AT – Well, I have been digging my toes in. But quite frankly, the PM hasn’t been too complimentary about my performance at my last appraisal meeting. Perhaps he wants them to be able to do whatever they like.

Secretary K – Maybe, Minister. But I do remember him being quite clear about the policy: National Standards. We did advise you that…

AT – We’re not going over that again. We won an election on National Standards!

Private Secretary A makes a note on piece of paper.

AT – Yes! I do feel that as Minister I am supposed to be in charge of a national education system. The community will back me on that: we need to have standards! After all, so many of our children still can’t read and write!

Secretary K – Indeed, Minister. The NCEA is our current benchmark. As you say, if schools decide not to do it, how will we know whether they can read and write or not?

AT – Well, I guess the kids at Auckland Grammar will be able to read and write! It’s our elite school! It’s a model for everyone to follow!

Secretary K – Probably, Minister. We could just assume that kids at lots of schools can read and write by the time they get to secondary school, and they would be better off doing the Cambridge exams. You asked for cost savings: the kids pay for that themselves! And we could save by not having a national qualification. Respectfully, your policy on National Standards could tell us which schools need not do NCEA.

AT – That’s a promising idea. Except that quite a few don’t want to do it. I can’t dismiss three hundred boards!

Secretary K – Possibly, Minister. But it could get the secondary schools and the primary schools at each other’s throats again. To get an exemption from NCEA, maybe we could require that a secondary school would need to get the local primary schools to show evidence against the National Standards that the kids can read and write properly.

AT – Yes! It’ll be the opposite of pay parity! The secondary teachers hate it, the primary teachers love it! …Perhaps a little judicious squeezing might do the trick. We could bribe the schools with money.

Private Secretary A makes another note on a piece of paper.

AT – Ah yes, Treasury. Well, primary teachers have already got their pay settlement. We’ve still got the secondary pay settlement to work through, though. Hmm… We need to distract these wretched schools from their insurrections. I know, maybe we could try bulk funding.

Secretary K – Of course, Minister. But the whole point of bulkfunding was that schools then will be able to do exactly as they like.

AT – But if we had bulk funding, we could at least bribe the board at Auckland Grammar to do NCEA! And penalise schools that didn’t do what we wanted!

Secretary K – Of course, Minister. When would you like that implemented by? Before the election or afterwards?

AT – Maybe I should ask the PM first.

The Minister and Private Secretary A leaves the room. Secretary K picks up the papers:

(Close-Up on papers)

On firing boards: Confidential advice paper

She crumples up the paper.

Secretary K – (straight to camera) That poem about anarchy might just come in handy.

Read also:

New Zealand Herald: Top school’s revolt against NCEA

EdTalkNZ. Hear we go again!

 

Educating minorities secures the future for all

I’m in the US.  I’m here to learn more about community engagement in education. So I was very interested to read this morning about the conclusions of the report of the Council of the Great City Schools – representing the 66 largest school districts in the US – which expressed disquiet about schooling outcomes for black males. Nearly all fourth and eighth-grade black males fail to read and do maths at proficiency levels – that’s the American equivalent of a National Standard. “Black males continue to perform lower than their peers throughout the country on almost every indicator,” says the report.

Tipping is a fraught experience for me – as for most New Zealanders, I expect. The going rate is supposed to be 15%. In practice it means a bit of mental arithmetic and generosity to vaguely round things up. My experience of African-American males here in Pennsylvania is of unfailing courtesy and service: they serve in the restaurants, as hotel bellhops and taxi-drivers and cleaners. They say ‘Ma’am’. While numeracy may be an issue, they do work out their tips!

Independence from gratuities, however, clearly means graduating into the higher-tech jobs in the state, for which greater levels of skill are required. The demographics of America are changing: most working-age Americans will be black, Hispanic, Asian or Native American within thirty years. So if America continues its educational neglect of ‘minorities’, the whole ship of state will sink. Who will be providing the gratuities of the future?

The Council of the Great City Schools made an interesting conclusion: it would take not school reform, but a concerted national effort “to improve the education, social and employment outcomes of African-American males.” It is calling for a White House-sponsored conference to address the crisis. That might sound like a new litigation effort for the distinctly out-of-vogue ‘socialist’ policies of which the Democrats have been accused this recent election. But note that this call is not just about schools: it’s about the whole social context in which learning takes place.

Proficiency levels in the American education system at least have pointed out where the problems of poor skill are concentrated. Given the extant data about adult New Zealanders and the concentration of poor numeracy in the south of Auckland , one can surmise that an equivalent proficiency challenge also exists in young South Auckland learners in our schools. National Standards are likely to pinpoint this more clearly, but won’t fix it.

In the past, Aucklanders might have been able to ignore Maori and Pacific learning outcomes because the rest of us were doing just fine. Auckland’s demographics, too, are changing. The education of children born in the south of the city and to migrant families are now everybody’s future business. If we don’t all paddle the waka together, we could all be swimming.

This American report pays attention to the connection between the social and economic environment from which underachieving students come and the educational setting into which they are sent. Reforming schools is not enough; everyone in the family needs to be involved in learning!

That’s an argument for family literacy, too.

Related Articles

• Video: Troubling Trend for Black Males (cbsnews.com)
• Mike Green: National Crisis: Black boys failing (huffingtonpost.com)

Counting Skills

My eldest grand-daughter Charlie stayed last weekend. Her birthday is soon. She is five years old and eleven-twelfths, she told me. I asked her to explain. “There are twelve months in a year, and this month is my birthday and I am nearly six, and eleven is nearly twelve.”

This complicated answer may or may not indicate that she is at or above expectation for the controversial National Standard in Mathematics for Year 1. Her genes are good – at least one of her grandparents has better than School Certificate Maths. Her school is good, because she loves school. Her motivation is good, because she loves the attention she receives when she makes remarks like that.

So the expectation is that in ten years time – when she is sixteen – she will achieve NCEA Level 2 Maths – the benchmark, apparently, for being a numerate citizen. A paper released from NZCER this week noted that the National Standards for numeracy in primary schools are worked out backwards from NCEA Level 2 Maths.

Holy Moly, that’s a challenging target for “at expectation”. Right now, if we tested grown-up Aucklanders against that standard, 51% of us wouldn’t reach it. According to data from the international Adult Literacy and Numeracy Survey, about 478,000 Aucklanders have “low numeracy”, about 200,000 of these “very low”. That’s way less than NCEA Level 2 Maths.

Sure, high targets are a good thing! If all school-leavers in Auckland had NCEA Level 2 Maths, the city’s economic outlook would rapidly improve.

On the other hand, failure to reach “expectation” at any step along the way saps enthusiasm. Most kids quit before they get to Level 2 Maths. Only somewhere between 14 – 20 percent of students in Year 12 even study the subject. That’s not surprising. Many of us would admit to a phobia about failing Maths.

It’s not good enough, though, in a fast-changing world economy. We need ever more sophisticated Maths skills to be a plumber or an electrician or an engineer or a nurse. We need it to run our business or count the stocktake for the boss. We need it to cook, to shop, to travel, to take our meds, to manage our money. If the new National Standards for Maths are to be plausibly achieved, we better all get stuck in to improving Maths in the workplace, at home, and at school.

Raising numeracy standards isn’t just a school issue: it’s a whole of community issue. There’s a community leadership vacuum around upgrading numeracy skills. What a wonderful opportunity for a new City Mayor! A community-led campaign on numeracy, led by the Mayor, would be a great place to begin to pull up Auckland’s economic socks. (We’ve put that idea up in our latest Working Paper, released 16 August).

Meanwhile, Charlie’s learning is already meeting the expectations of her family. Ask me how much twenty and ten is, she confidently demanded. That puts her in Pukeko group…is that OK?

Measures of Educational Success in Auckland

Aucklanders need simple measures of educational success and system performance to rally around.

 After years of controversy and whipped up hysteria, NCEA has recently become a good news story. In March 2010 the New Zealand Herald reported improved results. A full-page graphic spread provided comprehensive tables on “How your child’s school is performing”, complete with comparisons between 2004 and 2009.  Understanding that home background counts, the newspaper sorted (secondary) schools by decile so that like could be compared to like. The headline over an accompanying story read: “Poor schools make big NCEA gains”. Applause for Simon Collins of the New Zealand Herald, then, for delivering such positive coverage of an important educational marker.

 What rich but complex data!  And from a public perspective, almost reassuring. But I’m not sure that NCEA Level 1 data is as useful as it first appears about what matters in the system.

 Aucklanders really need to know: Are the students coming out of our schools ready to move into higher level learning – a core requirement for the workforce of the 21st Century?

 According to a recent survey of New Zealand employers, literacy and numeracy are ranked in the top three skills that employers look for in an employee. There is no doubt that literacy and numeracy are important for someone’s ability to progress at school and onto higher education. Surely the goal for education in Auckland must be that achievement of literacy and numeracy standards should become the minimum output of the system for 95% of all Auckland children by the time they leave school.

 International case studies show that it is possible to achieve such high targets. 

 But it takes a whole-of-system, whole-of community approach. To ensure that every single child makes it, and that it is “All Systems Go” on the target, Aucklanders need clear whole system markers -   both the National Standards data from primary schools and NCEA literacy and numeracy standards data – to help drive our aspiration.

 In future years, when we open our copy of the New Zealand Herald, we must surely discover full-page newspaper reports that celebrate how many children in each Auckland ward have reached the literacy and numeracy school-leaver benchmark.

National Standards & the Super City by Bernardine Vester

If the Super City is going to make a difference to our economic future, Aucklanders need simple measures of educational success and system performance to rally around.

After years of controversy and whipped up hysteria, NCEA has recently become a good news story. This week the New Zealand Herald reported on improved results. A full-page spread provided comprehensive tables on “How your child’s school is performing”. Understanding that home background counts, the newspaper sorted (secondary) schools by decile so that like could be compared to like. The headline over an accompanying story read: “Poor schools make big NCEA gains”. Applause for Simon Collins of the New Zealand Herald, then, for delivering such positive coverage of an important educational marker.

But what complex data! 

What Aucklanders really need to know is: Are the students coming out of our schools ready to move into higher level learning – a core requirement for the workforce of the 21^st Century? According to a recent survey of New Zealand employers, literacy and numeracy are ranked in the top three skills that employers look for in an employee.

Surely the goal for education in Auckland must be that achievement of literacy and numeracy standards should become the minimum output of the system for 95% of all Auckland children by the time they leave school.

International case studies show that it is possible to achieve such high targets.  

But it takes a whole-of-system, whole-of community approach. To ensure that every single child makes it, and that it is “All Systems Go” on the target, Aucklanders need clear whole system markers –   both the National Standards data from primary schools and NCEA literacy and numeracy standards data – to help drive our aspiration.

 In future years, when we open our copy of the New Zealand Herald, we will surely discover  full-page newspaper reports that describe how many children in each Auckland ward have reached the literacy and numeracy benchmark.

Summer in the Super City

Omaha, Pauanui, Matarangi – they are beach-side holiday havens. It’s aspirational: to have a place there too among the relatives and friends and neighbourhood acquaintances – people like us – who invite us to join them in January relaxation. Not too long ago a caravan or maybe even a scruffy remote bach visited once a year would have been a sufficient marker of affluence. As we get older, the camping gets replaced by something smarter, slicker, more “Auckland”, less knock-about and make-do, though not less fun. Is it a generational thing? Probably.

An item on Campbell Live this evening, however, brings a guilty smile. Campbell invited us to drool over three Omaha McMansions.

Relative luxury is the point. But Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in The Spirit Level, point out some sad correlations for our social one-upmanship. Their thesis is that unequal societies are bad for everyone. And they prove it by displaying data which shows that almost every modern social and environmental problem you care to name – ill-health, lack of community life, violence, drugs, obesity, mental illness – is more likely to occur in a less equal society: that’s by far the US, but New Zealand is up there with the UK, Israel and Portugal!

The radio this morning discussed a study suggesting that we’d all be happier if we settled for less. Maybe.

This is relevant to the Super City. What the Wilkinson and Pickett reading is telling me is that if we want to make a difference to Auckland’s desirability as an urban place to live, work and play, then we are going to have to do something about the difference in lifestyle opportunities between those that live in Howick, Remuera, or Takapuna, and those that live in Mangere, Manurewa, Otara and Ranui – who can’t afford beach places in the mostly private resorts of Omaha or Matarangi.

An Education Policy Barometer, by Bernardine Vester, CEO, COMET

There may be a stoush shaping up between the Minister of Education Anne Tolley and the education sector. It is to do with the imposition of a system of National Standards that will require schools to report on student achievement against benchmarks for learning. There it was at our dinner table: “I would like to know whether my daughter’s school is up to standard”. It’s easy to tell. If it’s a high decile school, it’s likely to meet the expectations of the parents, no matter how bumbling it is. So, what do National Standards change?

Kids leaving school without qualifications – that’s a wicked weed for policy-makers and governments. It still hasn’t been zapped after twenty years of reform at different levels of the system: Management Systems (Tomorrow’s Schools and the arrival of Boards of Trustees, etc); Qualifications Systems (NCEA and Unit Standards); Systems about Teacher Training and Skills (putting competition in the teacher education and professional development markets); Teacher Appraisal Systems and quality standards in the profession (through a Teachers’ Council and teachers employment agreements); raising the leaving age to 16; Curriculum Design and Redesign.  Despite all that, system upheavals have still to make a difference to the futures for many families in South Auckland, especially if they are Maori or Pacific Island.

This is a community wellbeing issue, and strikes at the heart of the challenge for the Supercity – there’s an anchor drag of poorly-skilled people out there. Will National Standards fix that?

If you are a principal in a South Auckland school, it’s pretty scary to realise that National Standards might make the achievements of brown people much more transparent. The sector (as represented by their unions and principal leadership organisations) views the use of testing against standards as damaging to children and evidence of a blame-and-shame mentality that does nothing to improve children’s learning. Quite right. But from a city perspective, the data generated by requiring schools to report against standards may be exactly the ammunition required for targeted investment in community social settings that impact on children’s learning.

Education policy is created in Wellington, where the Auckland context is invisible, but this is not a new complaint!  I am more surprised that someone down there hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that local government and central government have something to offer each other in dealing to the issues. And this is especially important because of the critical political mass that resides in the Supercity.   

The Standards debate reminds me of the brinkmanship which characterised Lockwood Smith’s time as Minister of Education in the 1990’s. This was a time when professional and union perspectives on education policy, notably bulk-funding, sharply differed from the government’s ambitions to impose change.  The bulk-funding stand-off was finally resolved through a change of government.  Even then, alternative policy was only developed by the opposition when it was clear that an electoral point of difference was needed to swing votes. What drove the bulk funding policy into the ground were public perceptions of its value. Today, a parallel process is in place. The government’s policy on National Standards is having rocks thrown at it from the teacher professionals, whose perspectives are may drive public understanding of its purpose.

The Minister looked lonely for a while there. Her party makes supportive noises, and the voice of school trustees is there beside her too, but the Minister and her officials are being left to push through national standards with creaky community backing, despite an ostensible ‘community mandate’ through the election manifesto. It is debateable about whether National Standards by themselves will make a difference to the pockets of poverty in South Auckland, but they are likely to provide a level of data to the wider community that will be useful. However, the Ministry and the Minister are likely to miss the big prize:  the data could inform a genuine community partnership and shared ownership of the problems of education in places like South Auckland, if only the structures for collaboration between central government and local community leadership were there.

Instances of the use of local government influence and leadership to drive education change do already exist, and I once wrote a thesis about it. So now we have a cabinet decision to create a Social Policy Forum for Auckland.  I wonder whether the Minister and her Ministry are up to the challenge of creating a greater sense of shared purpose for schooling improvement and student achievement by using the Social Policy Forum and its attendant structures to shape government responses to the wicked policy weeds in education.  The danger is that the Minister will be so bogged down in the National Standards debate that she will set aside the opportunity to engage in more strategic and collaborative thinking with community stakeholders and leaders about how Auckland could use the National Standards to make a difference to the drag effect of low skills.

Reforms come at a price, both political and financial. The Social Policy Forum in Auckland could become the testing ground for whether education policy initiatives really contribute to changing for the better key measures for social well-being. Most importantly, it could be a barometer that measures the planned outcomes against the pressure of community aspirations and expectations. It’s side effect – a political winner! – could be that the Forum will forge new champions for the Minister’s education policy directions.

Bernardine Vester, CEO, COMET