When I retired as a primary school principal over 13 years ago, I decided to stay out of the education debate, thinking I’d leave this to current educators. However current developments in education are seriously concerning. Recently I had my writing arm twisted to return to the battle against this government’s education agenda, so here I go.
I did my bit in 2010 and 2011 to battle against the National led government’s agenda of the time, the introduction of National Standards for achievement in Reading, Written Language, and Mathematics (or as some labelled them ‘National’s standards). Sticking my neck out probably wasn’t smart as it wasn’t long before a well known Auckland based wood louse turned his blogging attention on to me, and possibly an unscrupulous person (not a politician) in the Beehive, whose name was in the news at the time, joined the attack as well. My professional life became rather fraught….
The background:
There was nothing new about the National Standards focus; back in the day there was a movement called ‘Back to Basics” colloquially known as the ‘3Rs’ (Reading, ‘Riting’ and ‘Rithmetic’) . As you’d expect this movement was led by those on the conservative (reactionary?) side of politics with a focus on the past rather than the need to educate children for THEIR future, not OUR past.
This focus on the basics is cyclical as you’d expect, raising its head every time a conservative party enters government, be that in UK, Australia, or New Zealand, and is premised on a campaign of fear mongering ‘Our children are failing and we need to do something’. With one exception this narrowing down to focus on basics in New Zealand has been a refrain sung by the National Party, the exception being the 4th Labour Government which started the narrowing of the curriculum to intensely achieving focussed objectives. Guess you won’t be surprised to read that.
The decline in New Zealand children’s educational achievement started then, due to three factors all connected with the introduction of the so-called ‘Tomorrows Schools’:
- The replacement of the Department of Education by the Ministry of Education The old Department of Education, led by highly skilled and knowledgeable educators, had a hands on role in developing educational policy and implementation. The new Ministry of Education, often led by chief executives with little or no educational background, was tasked wth implementing government policy.
- The disestablishment of regional education boards that were responsible for the provision of schooling across their regions. While this system was tired and needed a refresh, a huge amount of knowledge, wisdom and experience was summarily discarded. An example of this was the School Advisory Service, where very experienced and knowledgeable teachers were employed to go into schools to provide support and guidance and to introduce new ideas. These advisers were employed in all subject areas, including Art, Music and Physical Education. Contrast that to the very narrow focus on ‘raising achievement’, in the 3Rs, to the detriment of all other subject areas.
- The introduction of community elected ‘Boards of Trustees’ (BOT) to run each school. These BOTs were given extensive power and, within national guidelines, full responsibility to run their school as they saw fit. The fact that these elected members usually knew little or nothing about education and teaching was incidental. Some BOTs did and still do well, but it is my contention that the bulk didn’t have much idea and if a school did well, it was in spite of the BOT. The higher the socio-economic area of the school, the more the BOT members ‘interfered’ in school operations. I presume nothing has changed since my time.
We hear much about the declining standards in New Zealand education based on children’s scores in overseas testing regimes (some would say these tests are of dubious value). While this is true to an extent, the problem is nowhere near as bad as politicians and the media would have us believe. However, there is another factor which is conveniently overlooked – prior to the education ‘reforms’ that brought us ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’, New Zealand ranked very highly on these overseas tests and the decline started concurrently with the reforms. Note that this testing decline has occurred in all western countries that introduced neoliberal ideology that created inequality gaps ( poverty) not seen since the Great Depression. This combined with the distraction of social media has contributed to failing scores and is not exclusive to New Zealand, in spite of the fear mongering politicians who are trying to convince us that this is so.
Our international reputation was so high that overseas educators used to come to New Zealand to learn from us. Back in 2011 when National Standards were being imposed, I was communicating with a number of US educators, including specialists in the teaching of reading (Ken and Yetta Goodman, as well Professor Brian Cambourne from Australia). They were aghast at what was being done to our primary education system and that we were being taken down our version of the narrow focussed testing regimes that had destroyed education in the USA, the UK, and Australia. You’ll note that overseas educators no longer come to learn from us.
However as is typical with National led governments, ideology rules over evidence any time and so National Standards were imposed in spite of many schools’ best efforts to prevent it.
And the result is a story for another time, when I will discuss the Coalition’s education agenda.
Thanks for your article, my experience with education from 1967-77 initially in a church school then from std 4 in state schools (my parents shifted to the other side of Christchurch) always had me wondering why it needed reforming as I was able to learn easily. Our family didn’t have a TV apart from renting one for the 74 Commonwealth games so I read a lot of books. My thoughts are that the changes in society have made education a lot more difficult as technology and social engineering have taken the focus from learning the basics first.
An excellent summary of the nonsense that’s been imposed in the name of raising student achievement, by amateurs as usual, over the last 35-40 years.
As we suspected would happen at the time, nothing has improved.
Here we are, still allowing amateurs to have all the say and guess what improvements will occur this time?None!
We have a Minister of Education with no apparent educational credentials apart from having 2 children. That does not uniquely qualify her for her role.
She is undermined almost on a daily basis, by a man with no educational qualifications in learning and teaching and who doesn’t have children.
The pair of them offer absolutely nothing to the nation’s children which is of any use at all. They are amateurs posing as experts. Everything they’ve touched so far has been a failure, as we expected, because they do not understand their jobs.
Their lack of background knowledge is as bad as the board of trustees which were thrust upon us by Lange’s govt. That gave parents the idea that they had vast understanding of education which they most certainly did not. The variation between boards was unacceptable but that was the dogma the govt. wanted to establish. i.e. communities know best. No, they don’t, not in education.
Study the montage above and see what different people think teachers do. It is very telling.
This govt. has failed to deal with underlying problems which stop children learning. They will fail, as every former govt. since the ’80s, to make any impact at all on our falling learning standards.
Smoke and mirrors again from National.
In my experience the central government is far removed from the everyday impact of teachers in the classroom. That’s where it’s failed.
Joy thoughtful, passing on experiences and understanding outcomes I would say, more below the line than above under the present systems. In Christchurch there was a trial of different learning along the Brit Summerhill style, but I don’t know if it fitted Kiwi needs.
‘Things are not OK’: Students at experimental school speak …
Stuff https://www.stuff.co.nz › national › education › haeata-…
nz Christchurch experimental college from http://www.stuff.co.nz
21 Jun 2019 — Senior students at an “experimental” new Christchurch school say the self-directed learning
model and open plan classrooms for up to 300 students does not work ..
I think this was trialling similar to what had been done in the UK at Summerhill School.
A.S. Neill Summerhill School Suffolk
summerhillschool.co.uk https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk
3 Mar 2025 — A.S. Neill, founder of Summerhill, set out to make a school that would fit the child rather than forcing pupils to do what parents and educators …
“However as is typical with National led governments, ideology rules over evidence any time”…hahahaha that’s a bit rich coming from the left. Cross out National insert Labour or Greens.
You dopey cunt it was right the first time, National led governments, ideology rules over evidence any time.
There’s no evidence for the genderology in health classes though. That’s politics from Rainbow groups.
Oh Ennius how did you manage to fall down that hole, you’ve swallowed that bad boy, hook, line and sinker. By the way, what colour of the Rainbow are you, or are you so narrow minded you just see things black and white?
Quite the homophobe and racist aren’t you.
Try to be open to learning KH.
4. The transfer of teacher training to universities from teacher training colleges which turned a practical profession into an academic one?
Yes, I overlooked that. Absolutely correct
That too. I had the teachers’ college experience and often wondered if subsequent student teachers got the practical grounding we had.
There were differences between teachers’ colleges too. I was told by one associate teacher that she was always happy to have students from our college because we had a clear understanding of what we had to do each time. That made her planning simple.
Those from other colleges appear to have been dumped in schools with little direction of what they needed to accomplish on any particular visit.
Thanks for confirming that the increase in poverty that we now have is the biggest cause of failing education in NZ .
How did kids emerge with good education during the Great Depression?
Population was smaller and much more teacher interaction, quite simple really.
Of course it was.
You did ask Ennius.
Different politicians and there was a hope for a better future so there was only one thing to do get education with the hope it would be the way forward – but to a cul de sack.
“How did kids emerge with good education during the Great Depression?”
1, Did they?
2. Societal requirements for educational success were measured differently then, higher percentages of school leavers went into trades and unskilled labour, fewer on to higher education, unlike today when tertiary education has become (or perceived to be), justified or not, almost a requirement for financial success.
Why are schools not all funded the same .Just looking at the schools my grand kids attend there is a massive difference .Perhaps there needs to be a good look at that problem .If all schools were exactly the same then the out come for all of NZ would be better .At the moment the average public school pupil costs 9k per year. I think the boarding schools get the same amount from the government and Charter schools get 46k per pupil .
So on that basis I would expect every charter school pupil to be a genius by the time they are 18 along with 50% of the private boarding schools whos pupils are costing 29k per year after the parents pay 20k on top of the government input .
Maybe we should be putting 29k into every pupil in the public system .
Everybody that has been through the education system will remember bad teaching and be oblivious to the good teaching. Thus ex-students must be distrusted to know the realities of teaching.
I remember my education in a public secondary school in NZ in the 1970s as being consistently excellent.
Mmmmm, I did well despite the state school teachers‘ best efforts.
Allan – Thank you for posting this…interesting reading.
The biggest problem with everyone getting a higher education is that there will be less and less uneducated people at the bottom of the heap for the rich to exploit for their cheap labour.
Under neoliberalism we can never all be equal. There must be those many who are less equal than others. Neoliberalism is a rogue, capitalist, psychological disorder and roger douglas and his cronies did this to us. We MUST undo what they’ve done.
Mandate our vote. Ban foreign banking. Investigate the very rich then tax accordingly. Create a basic living wage. Tax property speculation on all houses not the primary home at a rate of 99.99%. A public royal commission of inquiry up and into our economy spanning the last 100 years.
50,000 people = agriculture as our primary industry and yet Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin etc = How? 14 multi-billionaires, 3118 multi-millionaires each with a starting gate net figure of $50 million and four now foreign owned banksters being the second most profitable in the world by stealing $180.00 a second 24/7/365 = How?
100%
Rest assured this is never going to happen:
The biggest problem with everyone getting a higher education is that there will be less and less uneducated people at the bottom of the heap for the rich to exploit for their cheap labour.
In my working for money career I had some great jobs, without any piece of paper to say I had this or this, because frankly I didn’t. I did not have an academic brain, but I learnt more by working than in my high school career and importantly coming from a big family I learnt how to work hard. We are simply not all made the same despite the mantra of ‘the level playing field’. I also read a book a week mostly novels, the great writers who you can learn so much from. And going to great movies over the years.
Kids education in the broadest sense relies on parents to a greater degree, to limit social media and TV and all the other things that sideline kids today. Kids need family time, eat together, if you are watching TV watch together, read together….. these things go a long way to assist in kids development of their social skills and academic ability.
Conservative Lord Barons require compliant peasants to work in their factories and fields, and attend to their horses and stables. Why do you think they eff with the education system EVERY time they come to power. They need failures and uncritical thinking to empower them over their slaves.
Exactly
Excellent summary Allan. Other significant events include Teachers Colleges being absorbed by Universities, the 1990 curriculum, the dumbing down of curriculum via Inquiry Learning (load of science and social studies), ERO, and the ‘school policies’ debacle
The biggest problem for us to face now is to think about what we need to know to remain lords and ladies of our lives. We need to ask ourselves collectively what we need to have in our leaning and training. No thinking according to theories as first move. What do we need as an intelligent society that is beyond just achieving our idea of success – money and possessions, but one that is open to meditation, self-advancing of behaviour self-correction, discussion. Work from our requirements and needs as cohesive citizens and learn what is needed to achieve. Not just top down, start humbly from bottom up in consideration for advancing each other’s gifts as part of widening and enabling our own.
And the concept that we must strive for – is for each of us to find and nurture their special gifts for themselves and the benefit of the whole supportive community they are part of. Not settle back and let our clever machines take over from us doing our own journey through our life to find our full selves. We are born unique but if not concerned to become aware of ourselves and settle for AI wisdom and direction, we have negated the centuries of development and thought which we have effectively by-passed, thinking of recent Aldous Huxley but there are so many.
For instance the 90 minutes series are a good starter. And cover these people amongst others:
Some titles in series are: Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Machiavelli, Descartes, John Locke, Hegel, Heidegger, Hume, Kant, Marx, Rousseau, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Borges, and Nietzsche
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_90_Minutes_series
Further: https://beckchris.com/people/the-greatest-philosophers-of-all-time-ranked/the-greatest-philosophers-of-all-time-chronological/
The story goes that Pope Gregory the Great saw some fair-haired and fair-skinned slaves in a slave market in Italy, and was told that they were Angles. ‘Not Angles but angels,’ he replied.12 Nov 2004
History – Birth of England: The Wessex Kings – BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk › history › trail › conquest › birt…
About this Pope Gregory, who sounds like the person we now need in our time of real tribulation; generous and concerned about the poor. Which is how we need to be; there are two sorts of poor, those without education and means to live adequately and happily, and those who are poor in spirit and weak in understanding of life without money, possessions and self-satisfaction, self-will.. We need to be both Angels, and know all our angles – quantum people, to stay ahead of AI. Be scared, very scared of AI. We can’t settle for what we had in the past, it has not been sufficient to defend and gird us to cope with the post-WW2 onslaught of theories and ersatz knowledge and science used for destruction.
A model for us, sufficiently past so we can’t have misdemeanours presented to tarnish his achievements and gifts!
Saint Gregory the Great
Gregory lived in Rome during a period of wars, invasions by hostile tribes, famine, and destruction. He was the son of Gordianus, a wealthy Roman senator. Like most of the upper class of his time, he was well educated. But unlike many, he was generous and concerned about the poor.
When he was in his early 30s, Gregory was made the chief prefect, or governor, of Rome. He had long been attracted to the religious life, however, and so left his position before very long. He converted the family estate in Rome into the Abbey of St. Andrew, became a monk there, and founded six Benedictine monasteries on his estates in Sicily.
His life of quiet and prayer did not last long; for around 578 he was ordained one of the seven deacons of Rome and sent as the papal ambassador to Constantinople, where he served until 585. When he arrived back in Rome, he was made the abbot of St. Andrew’s.
Five years later the pope died, and Gregory was acclaimed pope by the clergy and the people of Rome. Unwillingly Gregory accepted the role. He was the first pope to call himself the “servant of the servants of God.”…
We’ve solved the lack of uneducated, compliant workers that our insane chosen economic system requires.
They are called RSE workers and desperate immigrants.
Pile on a decent chunk of the population becoming unemployed/redundant and suddenly we have all the cheap and desperate workers that we will ever need.
The various ministers of education are doing their job perfectly from their perspective: it is simply this – dismantling democracy and increasing poverty.
Fuck, it’s such a joke. Why don’t more people realise who is actually screwing us over?
Spoiler alert- it’s not the trans or rainbow community.
I have always though that the majority of issues that were afoot in our education system was due to the Tomorrow’s Schools reforms. Labour tried to fix it by proposing the ‘Hubs’, but there was pushback from the likes of Auckland Grammar.
Other schools and teaching styles – this one in UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior%27s_Field_School
Founded in 1902 by Julia Huxley, it stands in 42 acres of parkland, 34 miles south-west of London and adjacent to the A3 road, which runs between the capital and the south coast.
Overview
Today[when?] the school has 350 pupils aged 11 to 18 attend Prior’s Field, with a third of UK and foreign students boarding on a full, weekly or flexible basis. The Headteacher is Ms Zoe Ireland, who joined in 2024 from Farnborough Hill, Surrey and is the school’s 12th head.[
Also – other approaches for some more information.
1. Montessori.
2. An enquiry into mixing cooking and learning: Dewey – advantages.
3. The – Banking approach. Paulo Freire (1968) and his critical thoughts.
1. A Montessori classroom places an emphasis on hands-on learning and developing real-world skills. It emphasizes independence and it views children as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a sufficiently supportive and well-prepared learning environment.
Montessori education – Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Montessori_education
2. A scholarly look : https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1019&context=graddis
Dissertation Presented
by Cynthia Belliveau
to The Faculty of the Graduate College of The University of Vermont
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of Doctor of Education Specializing in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
October 2007
A New Look at Dewey’s Cooking Lab: a Pedagogical Model …
ABSTRACT
This dissertation examines the link between cooking and learning. It first
examines John Dewey’s pedagogical philosophy in which he asserts that
the kitchen laboratory was an ideal learning environment to teach and
learn about a broad range of subjects, an illustration of Dewey’s
philosophical notions about true experiential education. Second, there is
an examination of a Home Economic Department and its historical role in
teaching cooking which introduces the issues of cooking and learning in
the post secondary, higher education context. Finally to determine
whether Dewey’s kitchen-based pedagogical approach applied in
higher education, a pedagogical experiment was undertaken in which
cooking was integrated into a college-level humanities course on food
and culture. Reported as a case study, the ‘experiment’ was to recreate
Dewey’s University of Chicago Laboratory School’s curriculum with 28
college-aged students in a kitchen laboratory at the University of
Vermont. This qualitative research yielded results that suggest that
Dewey’s methodology is a highly effective pedagogy at the college level
and enhances students’ learning about the role of food in their own and
in other cultures. Finally, these findings make the case for including more
interdisciplinary, experientially based learning opportunities in higher
education, generally, and for using food laboratories as a site for such
learning opportunities
3. The – Banking approach. Freire (1968) introduced the ‘banking’ concept of education whereby he equated teachers with bank clerks and saw them as ‘depositing’ information into students rather than drawing out knowledge from individual students or creating inquisitive beings with a thirst for knowledge: Education…
Key Pedagogic Thinkers: Paulo Freire
University of Bedfordshire
https://www.beds.ac.uk › jpd › key-pedagogic-thinkers-p..
Excellent. I plan to cover Dewey, Freire and others in future articles
The continuiing stoory:
https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2504/S00119/confused-minister-announces-privatisation-plans.htm
Te Hautū Kahurangi | Tertiary Education Union is appalled by today’s announcement by the National-led government that will cripple polytechnics in favour of for-profit private providers making money from Aotearoa’s apprentices, trainees and employers.
Vocational Education Minister Penny Simonds has said “the Government is making changes to work-based learning so that industries have more influence over how they train apprentices and trainees.”
People count for nothing here in NZAO, it’s all photo ops but underneath we are just game pieces, to be moved around or bled for the purposes of those with power and for their gain. There will be few jobs here for the trainees once they have paid for their training, so they will be offered places in the deefence forces as expendable and will die with student debt still owing on their vocational training. And of course the DF offer training themselves for certain skill sets.
Remember that the USA which we use as our model, used to buy people’s blood and in all ways were not responsible government as they then did not treat the blood for disease and spread it to those needing blood. We have lost ourselves to similar, careless, greedy callous people, and they were let in by Labour so who amongst our leading people is going to restore us to a decent nation? One with right behaviour, enabling all citizens to be part of it, happy, inclusive? National and Act and lamebrain NZ First have to be given up by good people. The rest are not all bad, but lost and their attempts at value-based society are drear and a falsity and that includes some religious as well.
There is this STAR seemingly effective approach to fitting education, the student and likely future employment to suit in seemingly practical ways:
https://www.education.govt.nz/education-professionals/schools-year-0-13/funding-and-financials/secondary-tertiary-alignment-resource-star – STAR
*****
The integration of work and learning in New Zealand
New Zealand Council for Educational Research
https://www.nzcer.org.nz › sites › files › downloads
PDF
In New Zealand, the Modern Apprenticeship system was introduced in 2001 and provides on-the-job training for 16- to 21-year-olds (and occasionally older career ..
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https://thehub.sia.govt.nz/assets/documents/STPs-Trades-Academies-web-final.pdf
Secondary-Tertiary Programmes (Trades Academies) 2015
Foreword
One of the biggest challenges facing the school sector is the retention and participation
of students who for one reason or another are at risk of leaving school without any
qualifications that will help them to have a positive future.
Secondary-Tertiary Partnerships (STPs or Trades Academies) play an important part
in addressing this risk. STPs provide an alternative pathway for young people to gain
skills and qualifications. They enable young people to combine school and tertiary study
through a range of trades-based and technology training options. This means that our
kids have more choices to explore and more opportunities to achieve.
STPs not only benefit our young people, they also give business and industry more
opportunities to connect with education and provide local communities with a skilled
workforce…
*******
STAR courses give high school students the chance to experience what it’s like studying at university, get a headstart on their tertiary studies, and meet with other like-minded students from other schools.
STAR programme | University of Canterbury
University of Canterbury
https://www.canterbury.ac.nz › study › other-study-option
*****
(I thought STAR courses were for those needing a less academic style of learning and who were likely to go into working with material things. University studies aren’t hekping to actually build NZAO I think.)
Beehive and Treasury –
Real Life Learning – Gateways from School to Work
Beehive.govt.nz
https://www.beehive.govt.nz › speech
24 Aug 2000 — The Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource (STAR). The STAR policy became operational in 1996, with the single aim of allowing secondary …
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Launch of the Skill New Zealand Pathways to …
Beehive.govt.nz
https://www.beehive.govt.nz › speech › launch-skill-new…
27 Feb 2001 — The Secondary Tertiary Alignment Resource (STAR) funded courses increase the non-traditional and vocational pathways within the secondary school …
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https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/pc-inq-nmte-final-report-tertiary-education-v2.pdf
NZ Productivity Commission 2017
The Productivity Commission aims to provide insightful, well-informed and
accessible advice that leads to the best possible improvement in the wellbeing of New Zealanders.
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(It is strange that I don’t notice much wellbeing floating around seven years later so waste of time and money really. Can we have something knocked together with a hammer and nails that will stand up for itself and to close scrutiny? Too many flimsy ideas, conventionality, verbosity, pomposity even, sink the good ship Lollipop.)
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