Godzone falling in the international education ratings

[BoristheBiter]

Some good points there, but as I see it the majority of people who place any emphasis on these results, which incidently are a one off test aimed at about 5% of our students, think that the sector and therefore the teachers are at fault. The problem I see with external expertise is all the experts I have dealt with since entering teaching have very little idea of the complexity faced when dealing with over 100 individuals a day. Personally I would like to see this data ignored and let us consolidate the multitude of changes brought about by experts (that have never been in a classroom) followed by an attitudinal shift by politicians to stop using the students futures as a political football and actually spend some of my hard earned tax dollars to ensure we once again have a world class education system, not a rip off of the failing american one. Hopefully one day this society will begin to show real respect for people who succeed in their academic fields and then maybe we will not have the problems we face daily when trying to inspire the future citizens of this country.
As for the lack of higher education not being advantageous I don't believe this, it opens doors and allows people to make a greater range of choices.

Can you back up your claims of only aimed at 5% of the students?

[avgas]

The perennial problem...
IMAGE

Interesting concept. I wonder if NZ should embrace all languages and stop teaching English and Maori. That way we could have a fair education system.......but no one could speak to each other.

Don't want Math - no worries its gone. You can get ripped off by the next one who did learn it. (Beanstalks come to mind).

Science is for amateurs - you can learn all lifes lessons in P.E.

Social studies should be ignored. Who needs to learn about failed civilizations when you can make cupcakes in Home Ec. Interestingly enough Home Ec does not teach you about Power Bills and Rent/Mortgages......so Home Ec graduates can expect an illustrious life as a stay home parent (possibly unemployed). But who cares if you cook a mean quiche.

Or we could teach everyone some absolute basics of every topic, get a national average of intelligence and then leave it up to them what they want to learn.

As for testing students at high-school......I have changed my mind......I think we should remove all but one set of exams. We can call it University Entrance.
It proves if your good enough to get into something or finish anything.
If you fail - off to the coal mines.

This could decrease unemployment and improve the cost to product coal. Thus creating an interesting new underclass. Much more interesting than the one we currently have.

[BoristheBiter]

The old system of 'one size fits all' (SC and UE for example) was what that cartoon was getting at, right? Deemed to be a failure by NZ educationalists and changed to NCEA.

You might be so but that depicts is a physical test between species not an academic one.

[mansell]

Can you back up your claims of only aimed at 5% of the students?

I don't know the exact figures but we were involved with this in 2009 and the sample base was of about 30 students, this is the first time in 14 years of teaching that a school I was at was asked to contribute. I am sure you could find the actual figure somewhere on there webpage but it doesn't look at the entire student body of New Zealand and is still only a single assessment run on a single day. This is not bad sampling theory but I would also like to see standard errors and if there is any removal of bias.

[oldrider]

1+2 = 3

Until a child tells you what they are thinking, we can't even begin to imagine how their mind is working....

Little Zachary was doing very badly in math..
His parents had tried everything...tutors, mentors, flash cards, special learning centers.
In short, everything they could think of to help his math.

Finally, in a last ditch effort, they took Zachary down and enrolled him In the local Catholic school.
After the first day, little Zachary came home with a very serious look on his face.
He didn't even kiss his mother hello.
Instead, he went straight to his room and started studying.

Books and papers were spread out all over the room and little Zachary was hard at work.
His mother was amazed.
She called him down to dinner.

To her shock, the minute he was done, he marched back to his room without a word, and in no time, he was back hitting the books as hard as before.

This went on for some time, day after day, while the mother tried to understand what made all the difference.

Finally, little Zachary brought home his report Card.
He quietly laid it on the table, went up to his room and hit the books.
With great trepidation, His Mom looked at it and to her great surprise, Little Zachary got an 'A' in math.

She could no longer hold her curiosity.. She went to his room and said, 'Son, what was it?
Was it the nuns?'
Little Zachary looked at her and shook his head, no.. 'Well, then,' she replied, Was it the books, the discipline, the structure, the uniforms?

WHAT WAS IT?'

Little Zachary looked at her and said, 'Well, on the first day of school when I saw that guy nailed to the plus sign, I knew they weren't fooling around.'

[BoristheBiter]

I don't know the exact figures but we were involved with this in 2009 and the sample base was of about 30 students, this is the first time in 14 years of teaching that a school I was at was asked to contribute. I am sure you could find the actual figure somewhere on there webpage but it doesn't look at the entire student body of New Zealand and is still only a single assessment run on a single day. This is not bad sampling theory but I would also like to see standard errors and if there is any removal of bias.

Oh man I don't know where to start on this,

The sample group is below the margin of error.
no age was given, no standard age test was given.
So basically what it says is the 30 students that where the sample base are dumb.

But yes the theory was right just extremely badly implemented to have no value at all so to quote it like you did is just a little off.

[mansell]

Oh man I don't know where to start on this,

The sample group is below the margin of error.
no age was given, no standard age test was given.
So basically what it says is the 30 students that where the sample base are dumb.

But yes the theory was right just extremely badly implemented to have no value at all so to quote it like you did is just a little off.

30 kids from one school, they do use more than one, what I was trying to say is that this is a snapshot taken on one day and used to represent the total student population which is valid in terms of sample theory but with out the exact number or the standard error of the test it makes a one of data point pretty much irrelevant. What is important though is the debate this has brought about which needs to be more robust and not just focussed on what happens in a classroom. Trust me this data came as a shock to most of us and as a profession we will be focussing on making improvements. In my opinion, largely based on what I have read and seen throughout my time teaching the system in New Zealand is working well but is under funded. Teachers as a whole are trained to a good quality and the practises within schools are working so I am a little annoyed that everyone seems to be jumping on this figure. Incidently in another OECD release NZ was ranked first equal in the quality of education.

[PrincessBandit]

What would be the single most effective tool you could add to your classroom today? Mini bar? a non-lethal weapons selection? Another teacher? A mute button? technology?

All of the above; especially the last three!

The technology available today is very impressive. I went on an iPad PD course during the term 3 holidays (see, so devoted to my job I actually do professional development in my holidays so as to not take time away from the classroom ) and was amazed at what there is that can be used to make things more relevant and fun to do in class. Sadly most of it is dependent on students having some form of compatible software on their smart devices - the vast majority of our kids don't have these

[BoristheBiter]

30 kids from one school, they do use more than one, what I was trying to say is that this is a snapshot taken on one day and used to represent the total student population which is valid in terms of sample theory but with out the exact number or the standard error of the test it makes a one of data point pretty much irrelevant. What is important though is the debate this has brought about which needs to be more robust and not just focussed on what happens in a classroom. Trust me this data came as a shock to most of us and as a profession we will be focussing on making improvements. In my opinion, largely based on what I have read and seen throughout my time teaching the system in New Zealand is working well but is under funded. Teachers as a whole are trained to a good quality and the practises within schools are working so I am a little annoyed that everyone seems to be jumping on this figure. Incidently in another OECD release NZ was ranked first equal in the quality of education.

Some good points.

I can only go off what i have seen and that is the kids leaving school are not at the same level I was when leaving. (our year had around the 85% pass for 5 subjects or more at SC.)

Whether that is due to under funding, bad teachers, bad kids, bad parents, bad coffee or harder tests who knows.
You are probably in a better position than most and the best you can come up with is the poor kids fail because they're poor, the parents don't care and tests don't work as they are only good for 5% of the students.

the one thing I whole heartedly disagree with is your comment on not just focusing on the classroom. This is the only place where you ( the teachers) have any influence. It should all be focused at what happens in the classroom as that is what the teachers are paid for.
Yes there maybe outside influences but teaching the students to an acceptable level is your job.

[BoristheBiter]

All of the above; especially the last three!

The technology available today is very impressive. I went on an iPad PD course during the term 3 holidays (see, so devoted to my job I actually do professional development in my holidays so as to not take time away from the classroom ) and was amazed at what there is that can be used to make things more relevant and fun to do in class. Sadly most of it is dependent on students having some form of compatible software on their smart devices - the vast majority of our kids don't have these

What about stream lining classes?

[mansell]

Some good points.

I can only go off what i have seen and that is the kids leaving school are not at the same level I was when leaving. (our year had around the 85% pass for 5 subjects or more at SC.)

Whether that is due to under funding, bad teachers, bad kids, bad parents, bad coffee or harder tests who knows.
You are probably in a better position than most and the best you can come up with is the poor kids fail because they're poor, the parents don't care and tests don't work as they are only good for 5% of the students.

the one thing I whole heartedly disagree with is your comment on not just focusing on the classroom. This is the only place where you ( the teachers) have any influence. It should all be focused at what happens in the classroom as that is what the teachers are paid for.
Yes there maybe outside influences but teaching the students to an acceptable level is your job.

The classroom is my focus, I was talking about society as a whole not just what I do in the hour a day the students are in front of me. If you read any educational theory the influence of the teacher is only a small (although important) part of the overall attitude and attainment of the students. There are so many more influences on their lifes that we don't have any input into that really need to be addressed. After all my students are people too.
Your comment about an 85% pass rate in S.C. is interested as this was a norm referenced assessment tool and 50% of the students sitting the exam were going to fail, which would lead me to the conclusion that your high school was one of the better ones if you can compare schools, which is something I personally hate to do. I have taught in big decile one schools up there in Auckland and there were huge social issues in every aspect of the school which meant that the learning that is supposed to happen in the classroom was often overshadowed by outside influences.
Believe me when I say that NZ Teachers are trained to a very high standard and the majority of us work incredibly hard to raise student achievement.

[mashman]

All of the above; especially the last three!

The technology available today is very impressive. I went on an iPad PD course during the term 3 holidays (see, so devoted to my job I actually do professional development in my holidays so as to not take time away from the classroom ) and was amazed at what there is that can be used to make things more relevant and fun to do in class. Sadly most of it is dependent on students having some form of compatible software on their smart devices - the vast majority of our kids don't have these

My wife was having a discussion about my daughter not being accepted into a particular class because her parents (my und missus me) would not buy her a device to take to school. Next year they are having 1 maybe 2 classes in a year that will have access to "pads"... even though not every student in that year will have access to them. The devices are to be insured by the parents and are to be kept on school premises overnight. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out, but I'm gonna fight for the right to not buy handheld devices just because the school want to experiment... as I believe that MoE should have sprung for the devices if they had wanted to test tech applications out. My eldest daughter ain't too impressed by my decision, I told her to get a job and buy her own

I'm not overly thrilled at the idea of too much tech in the classroom. Care to expand upon what you found useful?

[BoristheBiter]

My wife was having a discussion about my daughter not being accepted into a particular class because her parents (my und missus me) would not buy her a device to take to school. Next year they are having 1 maybe 2 classes in a year that will have access to "pads"... even though not every student in that year will have access to them. The devices are to be insured by the parents and are to be kept on school premises overnight. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out, but I'm gonna fight for the right to not buy handheld devices just because the school want to experiment... as I believe that MoE should have sprung for the devices if they had wanted to test tech applications out. My eldest daughter ain't too impressed by my decision, I told her to get a job and buy her own

I'm not overly thrilled at the idea of too much tech in the classroom. Care to expand upon what you found useful?

Fuck me hell has frozen over, I agree with Mashy.

[avgas]

My wife was having a discussion about my daughter not being accepted into a particular class because her parents (my und missus me) would not buy her a device to take to school. Next year they are having 1 maybe 2 classes in a year that will have access to "pads"... even though not every student in that year will have access to them. The devices are to be insured by the parents and are to be kept on school premises overnight. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out, but I'm gonna fight for the right to not buy handheld devices just because the school want to experiment... as I believe that MoE should have sprung for the devices if they had wanted to test tech applications out. My eldest daughter ain't too impressed by my decision, I told her to get a job and buy her own
I'm not overly thrilled at the idea of too much tech in the classroom. Care to expand upon what you found useful?

I dunno - I used to think like this.....but then something clicked.
I have a library - I kid you not a fucking library of books. I had a room dedicated to crap like school computers, books, portfolios.....

The average school student is collecting this crap and hording it.

As much as I had Apple - getting my son an ipad is a fucking godsend when I think of the mountains of shit he would have got if he didn't have it. It doesn't replace a bike or a ball. But fuck me could you imagine consolidating a DVD collection or a book collection.

So I put the "take a device to school thing" with the same grain as buying your kids a computer or a encyclopedia Britannica. Times have moved on......if kids can now have shit consolidating to 1kg of electronics. I am all for it. At its worst at-least it will fix their back problems.

Though in saying that - there needs to a budget limit - possibly even a government plan to sort that our. WINZ sponsored tablets? Sure if it makes kids as quick as the first world. But right now schools waste money on having computers and libraries......not even companies do that these days. Its all BYOD and wikipedia.

[PrincessBandit]

I'm not overly thrilled at the idea of too much tech in the classroom. Care to expand upon what you found useful?

It seemed to be largely along the lines of being able to set quizzes or do surveys, setting up collaborative electronic "pinboard" type things that students could contribute to. The idea being that with a piece of software that acts as an appletv, wirelessly transmitting what's on your iPad to your classroom projector, you can all hook up the devices (wirelessly, of course) so as to show each person's (teacher's included) monitor onto the projector and everyone can view each other's work simultaneously.
There was more to it than that, but the most basic gist of it was the ease of information sharing as well as stuff like the surveys/voting stuff being able to be done anonymously etc.
A number of websites also can be accessed with students all being able to be directed to specific exercises etc. that are answered online (again, using the appletv substitute - damn, I'm trying to remember what the app was called ) the teacher can immediately see who is doing what on their devices thereby monitoring who has completed stuff, or where various students are at in the exercises.
I feel I haven't explained that very well, but we are encouraged to increase our use of IT in the classroom as a way of making education more relevant and "authentic" (the educational word-of-the-year) to students. We still have a library etc. but educators obviously feel that IT is the way of the future so pushing to have it at the forefront of how we teach makes it more meaningful to todays kids rather than the old fashioned methods of research and note taking.