What’s Going On Here? More National Corruption?
Can someone please explain how Crimson Education were all geared up to go with this at the same time the government announced the proposed replacement of NCEA?.
That immediately makes me wonder who is behind the new assessment system and who has been tasked with the design of the replacement system. Any guesses? It also explains why the new system is almost already to go, once the superficial consultation is completed.
This is yet another example where it looks like government is feeding a lucrative contract to a corporate buddy, and another step in the incremental privatisation of education. It also underscores the government’s education ideology, not based on what is good for the students but on what is good for the elites, and for employers.
Crimson Education is unashamedly elitist.
“Crimson supports Kiwi students to become world-class leaders and learners. In 2024, we celebrate our 10th year of sending Kiwis to the Ivy League, Stanford, MIT, Duke, Oxford, Cambridge and beyond.
When we first started, the number of Kiwi students successfully applying to top universities was extremely limited –– and now, New Zealand sends more students to the Ivy League per capita than any country outside the US!”
Given this elitism, isn’t a bit rich that the founder Jamie Beaton was interviewed over the weekend about the problems with NCEA and that it needed replacing?
NCEA leaves Kiwi kids unprepared for future – Crimson head
‘The NCEA qualification lacks the rigour needed to prepare New Zealand students for competitive universities and workplaces, the chief executive of Crimson Education says.
It comes as an announcement from the Government and Education Minister Erica Stanford is expected imminently on the future of the NCEA system.
Speaking to Q+A, Crimson Education co-founder Jamie Beaton said NCEA wasn’t setting students up well for future success, and lacks international recognition.
“To be honest, it’s rough. NCEA is basically not a rigorous curriculum at all, and students graduating with it are often two years behind in core subjects like maths, science as well,” said Beaton.’
Something smells here…
Switching to another eye-rolling topic, here is a doozy from Erica Stanford:
Watch: AI will aid with NCEA replacement, Education Minister says
“Stanford said New Zealand will continue to use AI as a marking tool, as it already been used for literacy and numeracy corequisite exams.
“We’re extraordinarily advanced in terms of the rest of the world,” she said.
“Many other countries can’t even dream of where we’re at the moment – digital exams, AI marking.”
AI marking was as good, if not better than human marking, she said.”
Someone should tell the UK students who angrily protested a few years back about AI being used to mark their A level examinations. Ah, but New Zealand is advanced in terms of the rest of the world so all will be fine.
It is very obvious that she and others in the government have no understanding of what an AI is, and it works, and see it as a panacea.
Let’s be clear here – there is nothing intelligent about a so-called AI – technically known as a large language learning model (LLM) which is no more than a highly advanced version of predictive text. The label “Artificial Intelligence” was coined to make it seem more special and to enable it to be hyped up as the next big thing in computing and which has already made many people rather rich, as the emphasis has gone into encouraging consumers to subscribe to plans that offer extra advantages over the free basic levels.
Hence the rage when China developed their own LLMs (e.g., DeepSeek) and made these free for all.
A simplistic description of a LLM is a gigantic database of information that has been scraped from websites regardless of ownership and copyright and uses this information to answer questions and tasks posed to it. There is a real danger over time of this database being corrupted as faulty information from AI responses are incorporated, and there are suggestions this is already happening. The old computer adage GIGO is still alive (Garbage In, Garbage Out)
It is impossible for a LLM to think for itself and to come up with original thinking and thus fails any definition of intelligence.
If you would like to know more I highly recommend this book:
“The AI Con – How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want,’ by Emily. M. Bender and Alex Hanna.
Returning to Erica Stanford and the use of AI to mark assessments: yes there is a place for this, where the tasks have a clear answer, multiple choice questions obviously, and also questions that require the regurgitation of facts. However this is low learning learning, not conducive to developing higher level learning and thinking, the assessing of which requires subjective judgement by highly trained humans, teachers in other words.
However if we look at the government’s development of a ‘knowledge based curriculum’ then the proposed use of AI as marking tool makes sense. The intent seems to be to narrow down the curriculum to the basics of literacy and numeracy and little else.
‘Students in Year 11 will be required to take English and Mathematics and sit a new ‘Foundational Skills Award’ test that documents achievement in literacy and numeracy.’
This approach is very much in keeping with the banking model of education described by great Brazilian educator Paolo Friere in his book ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed.’
‘Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiqués and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the “banking” concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits’.
This is outlined is further in Wikipedia:
‘Education is thus seen as a process of depositing knowledge into passive students. Teachers are the epistemological authority in this system; students’ pre-existing knowledge is ignored, aside from what was expected to be ‘deposited’ into them earlier. Freire also refers to a banking paradigm as regarding students to be “adaptable, manageable beings. … The more completely they accept the passive role imposed on them, the more they tend simply to adapt to the world as it is and to the fragmented view of reality deposited in them.’
It’s not hard to draw the connections to this government’s education policy, one favoured by right wing political parties all over the world. In their world view it is not desirable to have an educated populace who can investigate for themselves and to form their own opinions.
Instead students’ learning is restricted by a narrow focused curriculum supplemented by media who ensure that that information passed on is similarly limited, and that the population is distracted by mindless entertainment. Aldous Huxley’s book ‘Brave New World’ describes such a situation, as does ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by Ray Bradbury.
To conclude, it is very possible to infer from Stanford’s statement about AI that use of this as a tool to replace teachers is also a long term possibility. After all, if education is limited to pouring knowledge down children’s throats, then who needs highly skilled and knowledgeable teachers?
Is this what we want?
Great, just what we need, MechaHitler giving notes on Romeo and Juliette.
Did Mr crimson learn to speak so fast by crimson education he was selling their services and product and frankly based on that interview he talked a load of bullshit. However, Luxon has said he wants to privatise education.
He is selling the Harvard dream to rich kids parents who pay him a truck load of cash to lobby all of the american unis .He learned to talk so fast at harvard the same place Jones ,Key and maybe luxon and willis learned to spin shit at high speed .
Yes, gordon I thought the miniature crimson man was talking fast so Jack couldn’t get a word in or ask him a question, notice Luxon does it to.
Yes, gordon I thought the miniature crimson man was talking fast so Jack couldn’t get a word in or ask him a question, notice Luxon does it to.
Scholarships to USA’s Ivy League institutions are generally Chicago school neoliberal indoctrination operations.
“In their world view it is not desirable to have an educated populace who can investigate for themselves and to form their own opinions. ”
If you are arguing that’s a bad thing, well, I’m not sure if we want a world where “doing you own research” trumps expertise either.
So you want a world where everyone accepts as fact whatever the powers of the day deem to be important? Theocracy? Dictatorship? Fascism? Communism? Oligarchy?
“So you want a world where ..blah blah”
That’s a classic opening of a strawman argument. Paint a false position of the opponent you wish to smear and proceed from there.
I thought better of you.
And you don’t have to fall into snappy critical retorts RC. If you are so wise, everything can be up for reasoned discussion. And can be done with humour not knee-jerk acerbity.
How on earth did Jack Tame get so taken in by Jamie Beaton?
He had this fast-talking, multi-degreed (apparently) conman on his show last Sunday.
Beaton sure did the bidding of his right-wing, wealthy mates!
It’s quite simple. Stanford has been sucked into thinking we do not want people to be able to think or question. It was religion once that achieved this aim but now, we have machines to do it.
She’s so simple in her thinking. No originality, no creativity allowed, just accept this rubbish as it is because she says so. She must be the most boring parent. ‘We’ll just sit here and play on our devices. We don’t want to risk getting dirty or finding out something that’s not on this computer.’
We have never had such uninspiring leaders. They are nothing but machines themselves. They’ve accepted the dogma and don’t want to ask if it’s sensible because it would require them to think. They are the first victims of this robotic thinking. I’ve always thought Seymour was like a little robot and now we know I wasn’t wrong. They all are.
Stanford is about as inspiring and original as Barbie.
For all the value we are getting from this CoC govt. we may as well just use AI to run the country.
We are paying them to use their brains and creativity, not fall back on asking machines what to do.
Get rid of them and get someone who can think for themselves.
I think this Crimson thing will fill that AI place joy. And I fear that all our ideas and complaints are going to be picked up by the graduates of the course ‘Politics for Dummies’ whose star is David Seymour. I sense an insolent supercilious sneer coming from the green room already. And the use of crimson in this eddication idea feeds my unease. I have used the Monty Python fantasy of the Crimson Assurance which is a moving vehicle that breaks through the present complaisance and sails off over a cliff with the eager beavers for change. We are up against deviousness in minds that can tame AI to be a hunting dog for them I fear, and not foolishly, when looking at past and current history. Ladies and Gents I present the Crimson Assurance Part 1.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecFBcpY9NHI
Crimson is to Stanford and Luxon like what the tobacco lobby are to Winston and the mining and fish lobby are to Jones .Parasites because little Jimmy is too fucken lazy to apply for a position at a uni but never mind daddy will pay crimson a small fortune for them to lobby on your behalf .
Well said Gordon. This is the most corrupt government in the history of our parliament.
The CoC lot are thinking Joy they are thinking of money and power, and they don’t care what they have to do to achieve this. Stanford has no qualification in education pedagogy and Willis has an English literature degree; how did they get their jobs? I am not saying they don’t deserve them, but they are moving the goal post for many others, and they are insisting they know bests when they don’t.
Yes, gordon I thought the miniature crimson man was talking fast so Jack couldn’t get a word in or ask him a question, notice Luxon does it to.
Nothing good will ever come out of a government that has given up on education. AI marking is for dummies, not halfway decent education systems. NCEA is a thousand different things in every school.
The Lama in Kipling’s Kim wrote “Education is greatest blessing if of best sorts. Otherwise no earthly use.” It is a chimera though, and not to be pinned to a cork board like some taxonomist’s butterfly.
NZ as rested on its laurels too long, and the great scandal of our PISA scores will have to be amended. Once we have a government that concerns itself with our country’s future and not diverting public funds to their own advantage.
Tell me why Luxon takes a kapa haka team when he is doing trade business kraus could it be because some other countries value culture or do you think it is for pure entertainment.
We need to bring back sensible system of education with additions and revisions, that we had set up. This was before the children of the past conservatives took over, and reversed all we had achieved; based on something they heard at a dinner party meeting of many courses with others of their sort. All they learned from that was to say, ‘of course’ to anything that anyone said, who had the required pots and lots (of money and houses).
Now we are back to cranking the vehicle to get it started, and if you still have that type of handle keep it and sleep with it, don’t let it out of your sight. Those ignorant children have never learned practical matters and the refinements of mind that a modern human needs, and which used to be taught when education reached out to all with a ’rounded’ education curriculum.