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EDUCATING OUR KIDS
Is there a better way? |
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| LISA |
This week the National Party announced its policy to develop national standards for primary schools. The aim is to give parents a better idea of how their children are doing and to help teachers identify problems earlier on, but critics say that primary school children are tested enough already and that the new policy could create unhealthy competition between schools. I'm joined now by Minister of Education Steve Maharey and National MP Bill English, welcome to you both. Starting with you first Mr Maharey what's wrong with testing six year olds. |
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| STEVE MAHAREY, Minister of Education |
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Well I think the point we have to make is made well by the emeritus professor Ken Robinson when he was here that we don't want to confuse standardisation with lifting standards and what we do in this country is we do have standards around areas like literacy and numeracy for example in primary schools, we know that students meet those by using a wide variety of tests and the aim is really to try and allow the students to move as fast as they can through the system, diagnose what is wrong where things are wrong and fix that, so the focus is really on the personalisation of the learning so it focuses on the individual student rather than standardising tests and standardising across age groups. Now I'm not sure that's what National are suggesting but that's what most people understood they were suggesting and that's why they were not keen on it. |
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| LISA |
But we don't have national benchmarks as such so why not tell parents if their kids are failing straight up at the earliest possible age? |
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| STEVE |
Well we essentially do have that, so if you were running a test like Astal to find out how well a young child is doing you'll be obviously relating the results of young Johnny or Jenny to what the standard ought to be, so we know for example when children pass through year eight to move on to intermediate and so on we know that they are in a situation where about 99% of all New Zealanders are reading at a minimum rate, so we know what the standards are, the point is to relate the individual to them, not to spend our time trying to have age related standardised tests that they all move through in some age cohort kind of way, that really is the last century's way of doing things, these days it's all about the individual and how well they are doing. |
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| LISA |
Bill English Steve Maharey says we're already testing our kids, we already know where they're at so why do we need to compel schools to do more testing and have national benchmarks? |
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| BILL ENGLISH - National MP |
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Look Steve and other critics of the policy have been attacking the speech they wished John Key had given but he didn't. We're not advocating national testing, what we've said is that there is plenty of good practice in schools now effective teaching of literacy and numeracy, we want every child to benefit from that, and some schools now are reporting to parents in a way that is effective, that engages parents and we want to make sure that every parent gets the benefit of that and national standards are a tool for doing it, they take the best practice that's going on in schools now and make sure that every single child and every parent benefits from it, because it's pretty clear New Zealand does a good job for a majority of our kids but there are still 20 to 25% who are getting right through primary school, getting into secondary school who do not have the basic competence of literacy and numeracy. So even if we're doing 80% well the other 20% matter, in fact they are often the kids who need the most opportunity out of our state education system, so national standard is a catalyst for ensuring that every parent and every child gets the benefit of good practice. |
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| LISA |
So if you introduce this then and you identify a bunch of kids who aren't doing well what resources is National going to put into helping them, there was no mention of resources in John Key's speech? |
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| BILL |
Well that's a challenge for schools right now, I mean as Steve Maharey said there's assessment for learning in schools every day, teachers are identifying children who need more support, there's a range of tools for providing that from supplementary learning support through to reading recovery, that is an issue down the track but the first debate is to make sure everyone understands where the goalposts are, that there are some standardised requirements across the country so that we can get a national picture, that is how we can get a better idea where to put the resources. |
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| LISA |
Is the problem though really in our schools, your own leader suggested that we have this massive underclass, is the problem in the home rather than in schools? |
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| BILL |
Well yes it is in the home as well as in schools, but let's think of the parents who know their kids aren't doing well at school, they're often parents who are regarded as helpless and hopeless, they're not given straightforward information that they can understand and engage them, and in those schools where this is happening now and Mr Maharey will have visited them, you get a very positive response from parents being told look this is where your child is, this is how you can help them make progress and then parents have a chance to get a grip on what's happening with their child. If it's just a black box where they're told that their child's not doing very well but they're not given any indication of how then they can't help. In these days the IT systems that are available can give detailed diagnostic information to parents any time anywhere at pretty low cost. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring Steve Maharey back into this conversation. Labour is the party of teachers Mr Maharey is that why you don't want to change to a different type of testing, is that why you won't make changes like the National Party is suggesting? |
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| STEVE |
No in fact I'm encouraged by what Bill English has had to say cos the speech I would have really liked Mr Key to have given is the one that Mr English is indicating now and that is that we understand that our schools are doing a very good job and what we want to do is to do a better job, we don't want to change direction off to some kind of national testing standardisation approach from the last century, we want to be flexible and allow a range of things to be done and focus on the individual learner. Now that's the revolution if you like that's taking place in assessment at the moment and particularly in primary schools that you're getting enormous amount of feedback, right from early childhood these days you get a portfolio about your child if you're passing through early childhood, enormous amount of feedback in the primary schools and what's we're seeing is a real shift from the education that probably the three of us had which was really a bit of a black box you didn't really get a lot of information back to now the focus on the individual, a lot of information flying back and forwards between the learner and the teacher getting more involvement with the parents and that's the track we've gotta carry on down, I don't think we should be sidetracked if you like on to the debate about national testing, and I'm delighted to hear that's not what the National Party means. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring our panellists in here going to Deborah Hill Cone. |
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| DEBORAH HILL-CONE - Columnist |
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I've got a question for Mr Maharey. You talked about standardised testing as being from last century, help me out here I'm obviously very ignorant because I see some good things from the old 11 plus system, what about a kid who's at a decile one school who's got great potential and could be a Rhodes Scholar say, those kids would get picked up by something like that, these days what's there to help them, they go to a school where they're gonna learn perhaps a lot of you know great waiata. |
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| STEVE |
Well you see I think this is why primary school teachers took such offence of what was happening this week because the notion that all you do is learn waiata at school is clearly not true, but I think it would be great to go along to a local primary school where you will see the most amazing changes going on with what happens with young New Zealanders today, they don't do one particular subject or one particular area, they are being tested, they are being assisted to learn but the focus is on the individual. The reason you wouldn't want standardised testing from the last century is if you just take the picture of a production line, everybody's aged five they have a test, everybody who's aged six have a test, you can tell immediate what's wrong with that, you're Rhodes Scholar is possibly brighter than that and they're locked into an age 5, age 6, age 7, type of test means they're never going to move as fast or as well as they possibly can. What works is that that young child is tested in a way that allows them to be put against the standards but also move as fast or as slow as that Rhodes Scholar brain will take them. |
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| DEBORAH |
Can I just ask a quick follow up question, because I still would challenge you that a child who is naturally very gifted who's born into say a school area where they're going to go to a decile one school, that child is not gonna get picked up and get the chance to go and learn the kind of academic focus subjects that they would if they were living in the eastern suburbs of Auckland. |
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| STEVE |
I think you're assuming that a decile one school's somehow synonymous with not having great teachers. In fact now Mr Key himself discovered that he went to a decile one school when he was in Auckland and as a result of that discovered what a great school it was a school that is committed to providing good assessment back to students, great teaching. Decile one schools are often assumed to somehow not be doing these kinds of things, but now the schools - as Mr English said before - I go to a lot of schools and I can tell you that you can find schools with stunning learning environments in decile 1, 2, and 3. |
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| DEBORAH |
Oh I agree with you, I'm a trustee of the City of Manukau Education Trust and I know what fantastic work the teachers do out there, and they are - some of them are the best teachers you would find in the country. I totally agree with you but they are also teaching a kind of curriculum that's not gonna get you to Oxford. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring Bill English in here and see what he has to say on that. Mr English some students being taught waiata rather than being pushed in a scholarly way to achieve more, are we asking enough of our students? |
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| BILL |
I think in some schools yes but the difference here is we need to be asking enough of them in every school, teachers parents and children need to see where the goalposts are and that's why we want national standards because we can then - we can all agree on what these kids should be able to achieve and measure progress against them. We found last week that a number of the critics, most of the critics of the policy had never read the speech, hadn't read the speech, maybe Mr Maharey hadn't read it when he criticised it either. So they're creating this big bogey man of some kind of school cert for five year olds, that's rubbish, that's not what we're advocating, but we are quite clear cut every child deserves best practice teaching, every child deserves high expectations and that's what national standards will do and in fact you can't do it without having some kind of national standards across the whole country where everyone can see what we're aiming for and I can't see how the Labour Party are going to continue to oppose it, in fact I think what they'll do is start adopting our language because the public certainly support national standards they want to know how their kids are doing and they like it when they get that information. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring Chris Baldock in. |
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| CHRIS BALDOCK - Editor, Sunday News |
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Mr English I mean obviously we want all children to excel I mean that's the goal for everyone, but is the problem here that competition or the world competition is a dirty word? |
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| BILL |
Well I don't know who's using the word competition, what matters is that the teacher knows where the child is up to and has the kind of strategies that can lift that child's learning. National standards aren't about competition, what they're about is every single teacher knowing what's required, every parent knowing where the goalposts are, the argument about competition is just a red herring, again that's the speech they wish John Key had given but he didn't give it. |
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| LISA |
Alright thank you very much for joining us this morning, that was Bill English and Steve Maharey. |
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| LISA |
This week Auckland played host to an International Principals Convention, over 1600 school leaders met to discuss the challenges of educating students for the 21st century. Well joining us in the studio now we have Oskar Semweya-Musoke, Principal of Schools in Uganda, Lars Flodin, President of the Swedish Association of School Principals and Gerard Mowbray Principal of All Saints College in New South Wales. Welcome to you all this morning. If we can start first with you Oskar, how do you define a well educated student. At the end of secondary school education what makes a well educated student. |
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| OSKAR SEMWEYA-MUSOKE - Principal from Uganda |
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It was something that was touched on in the convention and where all came out agreed that you'd wish to have a wise student than a student who seems to know all the answers to quiz questions and so on and so forth, so really we should be looking to get a student who can cope with the pressures of the world, who can initiate, and someone whose experience holds some education would be their best product. |
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| LISA |
Wise in what way do you think you would want for a student who comes out of secondary school? |
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| OSKAR |
Well they have to have a high standard of knowledge of course, they must be prepared for university, further vocational training, maybe for work straight away, they must have a good knowledge of citizenship what that means different norms and values that are required in society, quality for instance which is a very big thing in Sweden as I know in New Zealand as well, and of course students have to be trained in well coping with a risky society, the globalisation, the warming system, change and risks in society that is. |
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| LISA |
So there's a picture that's painted beyond doing your sums and being able to read and write, being a good citizen would you agree with that? |
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| GERARD MOWBRAY - School Principal, Australia |
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I think it's part of the picture Lisa, I think probably the last debate we just witnessed touched on - I think there's not a parent on the globe that doesn't want their child to be essentially literate and numerate, we have to have that as first base. Beyond that the curriculum needs to engage in I think particular skills and qualities that students have. One interesting thing we picked up through the week was that when Paul McCartney was at school no one identified he had a musical interest or that John Cleese had an interest in comedy or humour. |
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| LISA |
But is that the school's role? |
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| GERARD |
I think the school's role, I'd certainly feel disappointed as a principal because if I had someone who was potentially a brilliant musician or a brilliant scientist or a brilliant builder and I couldn't identify something about skill I think I'd have let that student down. |
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| LISA |
So how do you help students become these people, how do you educate them in that way to achieve the student that you've just described to me? Oskar. |
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| OSKAR |
It depends on the environment you've created. Earlier on you discussed here whether you should have the reintroduction of tests or what kind of education you should have. Something I noticed with some schools in New Zealand the reintroduction of integrated curriculum where you have teaching done on a thematic approach. I find that if you did something like that perhaps you'd be able to target all those things and be able to develop the student, have the knowledge as Lars and Gerard seem to be saying but also be sure that you have a wholesome person. We in Uganda have tests. |
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| LISA |
And these are live and die tests aren't they in Uganda, this could be the rest of your life. |
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| OSKAR |
Oh they are yes, I passed the tests, had I failed them I don't know where I'd have been but they're very high stake tests and it's the performance on the day, it doesn't test how much you know it tests your level of English on that day, if you had a cold or a fever in the morning it could be a problem. Of course that perhaps is good for us at this stage in our development, we're a developing country and we're looking at handling some course work, we still have a long way to go but we're not saying that's the best way to run. |
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| LISA |
How much of a role should exams play gentlemen in the education of secondary school students. |
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| GERARD |
I was sort of cringing at Oskar's scenario, I guess we've moved away from a single exam format and tried to have a creative balance between the pressure of some examinations but a more longitudinal assessment based programme that can assess student in many different ways, so that they have a written format but they also may have other forms of presentation and assessment over a longer period of time, and I think that way you can get a much truer sense of a student's ability. |
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| LISA |
Lars, arguably Sweden would possibly be at the other end of the spectrum to Uganda in its approach. |
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| LARS FLODIN - Swedish Association of School Principals |
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Maybe we are a bit. First of all I would like to say just a comment on the personal development part of the curriculum which I think is very important so I quite agree with what we just heard here about finding out what pupils can do at an early age as to other things than just learning literacy and numeracy. In Sweden we have fairly late national testing, at the age of 15 there's a national test in Swedish English and Maths and you have to pass in all three subjects to be allowed to start the gymnasium which is our equivalent to the upper secondary school and I think that is - I think it's a good system. We had a change of government in Sweden last September, the Social Democrats had to go out and now we have a Conservative government and the new Minister of Education wants to have national testing at an earlier age, ages 4, 5, or 6, it's not quite decided yet, but I'm not quite in favour of that because I think from grade one a lot of information should be given to parents in often meetings between school and home, so I think there shouldn't be a problem to identify the skills or pupil's maybe what they don't know. I think the homes are well oriented about that in Sweden. |
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| LISA |
Alright, let's bring our panel into the discussion. |
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| DEBORAH |
You seem to be talking a lot about character which is yes of course it's so important but aren't we asking just too much of schools. I mean that to me is the sort of thing that I think parents should be teaching their kids. |
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| LISA |
So where is the line there? Gerard. |
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| GERARD |
I think you're quite right, I think any ill that is about on the streets generally come back to it's a school problem, I think we have students for basically six hours a day for six years in my own school and I do think we have a fundamental role to play in some character traits that parents may or may not be addressing and we speak of the fact that we would want a student to be resilient in the post secondary school world, or that they would have a sense of learning beyond school. So I think we obviously try and work incredibly closely with families but families are not always addressing a unified story to their children and I think yeah in those lifelong character issues we have a critical role to play. |
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| LISA |
Lars you were wanting to add something. |
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| LARS |
I agree that there are actually too many goals for schools in Sweden as well, far too many, but on the other hand to a certain extent we must be able to develop both brain halves for our students, both right and left brain half, I think that's essential for being a good student. |
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| CHRIS |
Is it wrong for there to be a basic minimum standard, I mean I've been interested in the last few years both my children being at primary school one has just left this year, they've competed in the New South Wales writing and maths competitions. Obviously they're reasonably capable of doing so otherwise they wouldn't have been entered into it, but when you get the report back you get a complete breakdown of how they have performed against the rest of the entrants, every element of it is broken down. Now if they were performing in the bottom 10% I'd be rather concerned and be appreciative of that information, what's the big deal you seem to be concerned that you know basic minimum standards are somehow wrong. |
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| OSKAR |
I think you can have your basic minimum standards and it should be encouraged but you had this discussion earlier on, but in my opinion the basic minimum standard should be about outcome, what should the person be able to do rather than comparing whether this person had 80 or whatever. Now if your kids presumably they had a good education and they went out of school and were able to compete very well, we have a testing programme and it can kill all sorts of education, there's a test at the beginning of term, there's another one in the middle and it's all preparation for the test at the end of term so that they can do well in the national test, so when do you teach if you have such a testing programme. |
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| LARS |
I agree to what we just heard, well in Sweden most students have their teachers for three years, sometimes even more than that, the knowledge of each student is very good I would say for each teacher, they know who perform well or can't perform well enough to put in a lot of support, so I don't think that's much of a problem. |
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| LISA |
Alright, thank you very much for joining us this morning gentlemen. |
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| WHO'S INTO PROPERTY INVESTMENT NOW? |
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| LISA |
With continuing pressure on house prices as real estate sales remain strong there is now speculation that later this month the Reserve Bank will once again raise its official cash rate which almost certainly means mortgage interest rates will rise. The bank is concerned that our love affair with housing means we are not investing in productive businesses. |
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| DR ALAN BOLLARD - Governor, Reserve Bank |
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On the other hand it's just reflecting what we've already seen in New Zealand which is we like buying houses, we don't like buying and owning our own businesses and so you get these other consequences through the business sector and the trading sector that are generally undesirable. |
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| LISA |
Maybe Dr Bollard should simply cross the road and try and persuade our MPs that investment in housing crowds out investment in business, but he might find that a touch job. This week MPs declared their private investments and 32 of them either owned investment property or had shares in property companies. Both Helen Clark and John Key were among them, but this will be a big weekend for the real estate industry with hundreds of open homes in Auckland alone. Here to talk about our love affair with housing is Brian Thomson CEO of Harcourts. Well who is still buying houses in this market who are these people? |
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| BRYAN THOMSON - CEO, Harcourts NZ |
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I think the vast majority of people buying houses are the same people who always have and always will and that is ordinary New Zealanders looking for a home for themselves for their families for their children in the area they wish to live in. |
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| LISA |
But can they afford to buy where they want to live, there was a survey earlier this month that said it's costing 70% of your average take home pay to service a mortgage. |
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| BRYAN |
I think statistics are great things but in reality if you look at society today we've seen a major shift and if you read all the learnings and the literature and the way generation X and generation Y people think in regard to how they make their decisions they want everything now and I think in the past perhaps our parents and their parents they cut their cloth, they purchased in the area they could they saved hard, whereas we find in society today the younger people coming through they're not very good at waiting, they want to be the CEO today, they want to be the General Manager today. |
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| LISA |
They want the Porsche instead of the Toyota. |
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| BRYAN |
There's a little bit of that yes. |
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| LISA |
So can this boom continue though, if you looked at again some other statistics which show that properties in Auckland were increasing at 12% last month, can it keep going? |
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| BRYAN |
Well I think the first thing you've got to ask is is it a boom and I've got a contrary view to that, I think for a long period of time that property in New Zealand was undervalued and if you think back it wasn't too many years ago if you went to Sydney or indeed to the larger cities in the United States or indeed to the UK you would have said aren't real estate prices high compared to at home, I think the world's become a far smaller place, people are travelling more they come home and they look at Auckland as an example where you can still buy property close to the harbour, compare it to other harbour cities around the world and is it that expensive. |
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| LISA |
So how do you see things going then? |
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| BRYAN |
We believe the market at the moment's really solid, there is good demand and certainly February March 2007 have been strong in the volume of sales and values have been really solid and growing where they're at so we don't see a lot of reason for things to change right at the moment. |
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| LISA |
Can anything Dr Bollard has in his tool kit rein this in do you think? |
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| BRYAN |
I think Dr Bollard has a very very hard job on his hands because what drives the real estate market is pretty simple, it's people's feeling of security in their employment, it's people's feeling of security in the way their businesses are going to go and immigration, and while businesses are doing well we see the employment market is really tight there are jobs for everyone who wants a job in reality, businesses are doing well and immigration is positive, so if you look at all the major drivers of our market unless Mr Bollard can stop businesses feeling confident make the employment situation become poor so that everyone become depressed he's got a real battle on his hands. |
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| LISA |
Let's bring our panel in here, Deborah. |
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| DEBORAH |
You know maybe it's just cos I'm old but you know how you think why didn't I buy a property on Waiheke when I was at university, and see some of this hysteria about housing affordability it's taken me a while to realise I couldn't afford to buy a nine dollar cask of wine you know so don't you think that some of the hysteria is because people - it's always been hard for people to get the money together to buy property and so I think you're going to agree with me so it's probably a dumb question to ask. |
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| BRYAN |
I think you're a wonderful interview then, I think that put it in perspective there's a little fibrolite bach that my wife and I and daughter rent at Christmas and the people who own it have one next door and their parents actually bought the property where that first bach is bought and they paid it off in little wee instalments as they could over time and they didn't put a property on it till they could afford it, so buying a property has always been hard particularly your first home, I mean I can remember the first property that we invested in, it was really difficult, and it's no different now. |
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| LISA |
But statistically some would argue that it is more difficult now, say four or five years ago it was 40% of your take home pay, now they say 70, so arguably… |
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| BRYAN |
And what is causing that, I mean if you look at the way people structure their lives now we're getting married later we're having children later, people tend to have travelled overseas earlier, they've had a lot of experiences that perhaps people in earlier generations didn't have, people purchased their homes at a younger age so perhaps the people who are trying to buy now in their early 30s with their first home if they had have purchased their first home when they were in their early to mid 20s as previous generations did would the situation now be different? |
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| DEBORAH |
I do have a problem for you though which is I wonder you know when you see this sub prime banking in the US melting down I wonder when I drive round Auckland particularly and look at some of those terribly crass little apartment buildings that that's because we had such cheap money people have built things they shouldn't have built and I can't help wondering whether that's fuelled a lot of the housing boom in Auckland anyway. |
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| BRYAN |
I think if you look and there's always for a long time been criticism of some of the apartment developments that have taken place in Auckland, some of the urban design in general, I think that's a separate question because there's a developers' market and there's ordinary people buying home to live in type market and if you're in the business of developing property your aim is to make a profit and if the rules allow you to build certain types of property where there's a profit you're going to do so, so I think there's two different markets. |
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| LISA |
We are going to have to leave it there, but thank you very much for joining us this morning Bryan Thomson. |
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| FINAL THOUGHTS - GUEST COMMENTATORS |
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| LISA |
Let's go to our panel now for their final thoughts of the day. Chris, education, you've got two kids do you want them be tested to the inth degree? |
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| CHRIS |
You know there's got to be a balance, the inth degree might be pushing it, but I think there's gotta be a standard benchmark I mean what are we afraid of, you know personal development is great and a lot of what I've seen in schools since we moved to New Zealand five years ago has been fantastic, I've been really impressed, but there have gotta be standard benchmarks, there's gotta be an element of competition, it is a word I think we really are afraid of, we're just too damn PC. My little girl plays netball at goal defence and she three foot nothing but it's all about the growing experience. Well it's not because we lose 24 nil and she's creaked out and won't play again and I think there is a real fear of competition and we need to address that. |
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| LISA |
Have we become too politically correct then Deborah do we need more competition in schools? |
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| DEBORAH |
I was a bit disturbed by too much talk about you know self development and getting to know - identifying people's talents and all that, I mean the problem is you end up with a hundred people who want to do media studies and no one wants to do actually doing something useful that's you know - so I guess my feeling would be that it might not be the most glamorous thing but we should just get back to teaching kids stuff that's going to actually help them get jobs in a global world. |
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| LISA |
And what is that? |
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| DEBORAH |
Well maths, science, learning to read and write, you know those kind of basic things. |
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| LISA |
Bread and butter? |
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| CHRIS |
English, yeah the whole thing, you know John Key makes a point that if we're gonna foot it on the international stage with economies like Japan, be out there have our people competing and getting important roles, you know we can't have 25% of people leaving school with poor qualifications. |
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| DEBORAH |
And learning all this stuff about culture has been discredited in countries like Ireland, so a bit too much culture. |
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| LISA |
We've gotta go, so thank you to our panellists. |
