New School Year, New Educational Nonsense.
Well, here we go again. The school year has barely started and we are already being dumped on with loads of educational nonsense. I see I’m going to be busy!
Let’s start with advanced stupidity. A couple of days ago, Erica Stanford, Minister of Education (remember her – she’s the educational expert who learned everything she knows from reading one book) accompanied by the bloke masquerading as the Prime Minister (actually Minister of Spotify playlists – seems he knows more about Spotify than he does about running a country, the activities of his cabinet members, or an airline for that matter) made this stupendous announcement about requiring schools to report to parents twice a year on progress in Reading, Writing, and Mathematics (way back last century known as the 3 Rs).
Wow, this is a major advance in education. Whoever would have thought this would so easy. Apparently parents have been asking for better reporting on how their children are doing at school and so Erica has obliged. Good on her, right?
Except, we’ve heard this refrain before, back when Anne Tolley and Hekia Parata were Ministers of Education in the years of the John Key led governments, when the solution to all the country’s supposed educational woes would be cured by the introduction of National Standards of Achievement in Reading, Writing and Mathematics. And to cap this off, schools would be required to report on children’s progress twice a year, because parents had been asking for this.
A question that I hope someone can intelligently answer (that rules out a number of the people who usually comment on my articles, right Bob?) – if this plan was so successful back in 2009 and onwards, how come it has to be introduced again? And don’t fall for the usual cop out answer of blaming the 2017 – 2023 Labour led governments, as they didn’t make any substantive changes. Plans were in place but these were not fully implemented by the time they lost office (yet another example of that government not actually getting things done.)
What was found, back in 2017, was that starting about 2009, there was a sudden drop in children’s achievement in these subject areas. Coincidence of course.
But since then Erica has read a book and now things will be different.
What she ignores is that schools have always been required to report twice a year on student progress, in far more comprehensive ways than Erica’s simple three subject reports. In the past, prior to the National Standards era, reports covered all subject areas, not just the three Rs. Further, most/all schools also held parent-teacher conferences where teachers and parents could go through a child’s progress in detail, discuss successes and concerns, and plan a way forward. Far more valuable than marks on a piece of paper.
As a grandparent I’m always very interested in how my grandkids are doing at school and I like seeing their school reports. Without fail, these days, I’m left scratching my head, feeling somewhat cheated, as the reports are so shallow, limited to ranking children’s progress against set criteria, and I really have little idea of how they are doing beyond these rankings.
I’m always left feeling shortchanged about the minimal or no coverage of the other subjects like science, which was, back in my teaching days, my favourite area to teach. Likewise with Social Studies, which seems to have disappeared, even though a strong case can be made of its valuable role in helping children learn about how people live and meet their needs, both here and overseas. The current state of our world would suggest that this is a huge deficiency in children’s learning.
As for the Arts, where are they? Without the Arts, our world would indeed be a very shallow and bland place, mind you, maybe this would suit the government and their overseas string pullers?
What about Physical Education?
Apparently Erica and government does not see a role for them in our children’s education, or if there is any role, they are subservient to the need to spend the bulk of each school day drilling (and rote learning) in the golden trio of Reading, Mathematics and Writing, focusing, as far as I understand, on the technical aspects of writing, and downplaying the creative side of writing, which is a subset of the Arts.
What we must not overlook, in spite of all the spin, is that politicians see education as a vote catcher, recognising that parents are naturally concerned that their children receive the best possible education. This is especially so on the conservative side of politics who always want to stay anchored to traditions (definition of conservatism). Promoting schools as failing and therefore requiring drastic changes to improve things, is a common refrain, especially from the parties on the right and especially in this neoliberal world. Dr Nick Smith was peddling this back in 1999, a quarter of a century ago.
You’d think we would have learned by now that the best way forward, as I wrote in my previous article, is to kick politicians out of education and leave it to qualified experts to design and manage an education system that meets 21st century needs, not the memories of politicians educated last century.
This is something I will cover in my next article.
