Bright Wings

When grammar was king

Finding a folder of school essays today was a poignant, not altogether happy experience.

I was delighted at the insight I had shown many years ago when commenting on then current events, my observations of a quiet evening by the lagoon at Turakina, my thoughts on Keats' Ode to Autumn.

Correct grammar and spelling was the way to get high marks. Original thinking and insight was ignored.

In my haste to get all the thoughts in my head onto paper, spelling suffered. My handwriting wasn't too great, either.  What I now see as insightful comment by a 16-year old was not considered praiseworthy. It just needed some subbing, instead of "6/10. Could do better. Spoilt by careless mistakes."

Yet there were undeniable benefits from this focus on grammar and spelling. It has stood me in good stead as I've untangled other people's tortured and tortuous words. And helped my own writing, although my long-dead English teacher would be horrified to  see me start a sentence with 'and.'

Has the fear of making a grammatical error has stopped other Baby Boomers putting their thoughts on paper, or led to them writing stilted, awkward prose?

Time will tell whether modern English education, which focuses on getting thoughts on paper - any old way - is a better option, although academics teaching English report having to teach extremely basic stuff to first-year students majoring in English.

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If you do find writing a struggle, and especially if you're having to write for the web, Rachel McAlpine's online course is excellent - www.contented.com

 

Photo: Kakisky

Questions remain about National Standards

 

Primary teachers are justifiably concerned about the National Standards, to be implemented in primary schools next year. And educational academics are backing them up.

There are two groups for whom National Standards are a particularly bad idea - low decile schools and those affected by a learning or developmental disability.

Low decile schools

For many children in low decile schools, just making it to school each day is an achievement in itself.  Unlike children from leafy suburbs, education is not seen as necessary to success in life.  They may live in a house with no books. There may be extreme domestic dysfunction, with a series of partners coming and going.

They may be hungry and arrive at school having had no breakfast. There may be untreated health conditions. 

If these children are to be tested, they need to use measurements that are relevant to them and recognise what may be for them significant achievement.  Where self-confidence is very fragile, to be told you've failed to achieve National Standards confirms the student's own opinion that they are "dumb."

Learning disabilities

Within my extended family of intelligent, thinking people, there are two who would have failed National Standards miserably. Yet both those people have gone on to have outstanding careers. In fact one is a Head of Department in a primary school. They were just late developers. They wouldn't have achieved appropriate milestones for their ages; they just did it later than others.

For some children with learning disabilities, just learning to write their name might be a huge achievement. Instead of celebrating a huge leap in learning for them, they will be branded in their own eyes as "dumb."

Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon interviewed Frances Nelson, President of the NZEI, Professor John Hattie from the University of Auckland and the Education Minister Anne Tolley.

Update:  NZEI also concerned that National Standards will marginalise Maori students.

School Trustees and NZEI embroiled in fight over National Standards

$700 million school funding provided by parents and communities

The ODT reports that parents and communities contributed $712.8 million to their children's schools in donations and revenue in 2008.

This figure includes locally-raised funds, fees from international students and investment income.

Post Primary Teachers Association president Kate Gainsford said the figures were "shocking".

She said there were high expectations from communities about what schools should be able to provide but these were not matched by government resources.

"We hear a lot of rhetoric about how it's important to invest in education but in actual fact parents are the ones who are doing that."

She said the ethos of free and fair education in New Zealand was hypocritical.

"Once upon a time we prided ourselves on saying we looked after young people in New Zealand and we didn't like the idea of privilege in your life deciding for you," she said.

"Perhaps we should be revisiting some of those basic tenets."

The divide between the fundraising capacity of schools serving the leafier suburbs and their lower decile counterparts is emphasised in the list of top ten fundraising schools:

Sacred Heart (Auck) $6,377,422
Bethlehem College $5,331,470
Rangitoto College $5,049,506
Avondale College $5,027,003
Auckland Grammar $4,907,426
Macleans College $4,534,045
Mt Roskill Grammar $4,192,924
Hutt Int Boys School $3,876,057
Westlake Boys High $3,855,232
Epsom Girls Grammar $3,745,071

Education Ministry needs new strategy for closed school buildings

It's five years since the Ministry of Education closed several Masterton schools, but the buildings remain, boarded up and a mecca for vandals and arsonists.

The Ministry needs to to acknowledge that sale of no-longer needed schools is often a protracted process, particularly if there are potential Treaty claims involved.

The Times-Age reports another serious arson attack on Harley Street school over the weekend. This is wasting the time of emergency services and degrades the neighbourhood with an ugly, boarded-up, fire-damaged hulk in its midst. And the buildings are now effectively worthless.

There's a simple solution to this. If a school is formally closed the buildings should be removed immediately to storage for potential reuse as classrooms or on-sale to other potential owners.  Foundations are removed, the site is levelled and grassed.

This would be a painful process for the community to witness, but is far less painful than the cancerous decline of the buildings - all with boarded-up windows - over several years.  A large, wide-open space is less appealing for troublemakers looking for quiet corners to lurk in.

The only on-going maintenance required would be having someone mow the grass on a regular basis. An awful lot cheaper than trying to prevent abandoned buildings from being trashed.

Tararua schools review panel quits

Stuff reports that the Tararua education review panel has quit after widespread community condemnation of their findings and no support from Education Minister Anne Tolley.

Boosting town school student numbers appears to have been the sole agenda of the review panel. They took no notice of the wide variation in decile rating between the country and town schools.  They didn't read the ERO reports on these schools.

Most importantly, they didn't listen to the wishes of schools or parents. This wasn't a "community" exercise, it was single-minded pursuit of closing country schools in favour of the town ones.

_____

The review has drawn the Tararua school community much closer together. I hope the school communities can build on this enhanced spirit of cooperation.

Special needs funding to be maintained

The Herald reports that funding for special needs children with physical disabilities is to be maintained for those children who currently in the funding scheme. Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, has restored funding following representations from parents, schools and sector representatives. No new children will be added to the present scheme.

This is a victory for Dalefield School principal, Kevin Jephson, who has been campaigning on behalf of Wiki Tamihana (see my earlier post).  Wiki's high health needs funding - which paid for a teacher aide so she could attend school -  had been withdrawn.

Relief for Tararua Schools

It was great to see the Minister of Education, Ann Tolley, act decisively to dispel fears of wholesale closure of Tararua schools.

I can't quite work out what criteria the working party used to determine which schools should be axed. I read the ERO reports for each of the schools and reports for the country schools were generally excellent, showing committed staff, well-equipped schools, with strong community and parental involvement.

The Minister has asked that submissions still need to be made - by 17 August.

In case you haven't read the original working group reporting that caused all the trouble, here's the link

Proposed closure of Tararua Schools

News of proposed closure of eight Tararua rural schools following a "community initiated" review is causing great disquiet in the Tararua District.

The Government has been accused of "duping communities" into reassessing the education needs of their children, only to get a foot in the door to shut schools.

The accusations and growing anger come from the latest community to be hit with a sweeping education review the Tararua District where eight schools have been signalled for closure.

The review process, called a Community Initiated Education Plan or CEIP, has also been criticised by the Principals Federation, which says the process is flawed as it leaves communities wrenched apart by uncertainty.

I attempted to find the report for the Tararua District on the Ministry of Education website. While there is some general information about the review programme, there was no report. I contacted the Ministry of Education yesterday.  Now there are links to various documents, but no documents behind the links!

The structure of Community Initiated Education Planning smacks strongly of school closures being forced on communities, but with "consultation" appearing to have taken place first. The last Labour Government got its fingers burnt with some disastrous exercises.

Masterton primary schools are still feeling the effects of restructuring some years down the track, and the Harley Street and Landsdowne School sites - still unsold - are a mecca for vandals.

It will be interesting to see what John Hayes - and the National Government - do in response to an uproar in the heartland of his electorate.

While fewer, larger schools may offer enhanced curriculum and infrastructure, I would argue that the smaller rural schools are the glue that holds a community together. Parents are closely involved with all aspects of school life - a key requirement for student success.  School events are community events and everyone gets involved.  Shy, quiet children feel more comfortable in a small school.

I question the assertion that no child will be more than 40 minutes away from a school under the proposed changes. That might be true by car. The Tararua district is full of hilly, narrow, winding roads. I followed the bus from Mangamaire School the other day as it slowly wound its way through the hills, far more slowly than a car.  Most children attending these rural schools already have a long trip to get to their existing schools.  It will be particularly hard on five year olds.

It may well be there is justification for merging one or two schools. I hope commonsense and the needs of children and the community will prevail over wholesale closures.

 

Worthwhile reading

Chris Trotter on the narrowness of thinking of commercial boardrooms and national education standards.

Mac Doctor on Bible graffiti as art and myths about religion.

Those of us horrified at the cost of the anti-smacking referendum may wish to note that smacking is trending downwards according to a Stuff report.

The hotel industry is struggling with low occupancy rates. The Herald reports there are bargains to be had around the country.

Children need to learn to cook

Many New Zealand children don't know how to boil an egg or cook a potato, the result of working parents too busy to teach them basic skills and the closure of school cooking kitchens in the 1990s.

There's some examples of excellent Wellington initiatives to get children interested in cooking in this Stuff article. 

Potatoes New Zealand are also launching a Calling all Grandparents campaign to encourage grandparents to teach their children to cook. As Alison Holst points out, a baked potato is a good place to start.

Dalefield School challenges John Key

Tanya Katterns reports Dalefield School, near Carterton, challenged Prime Minister John Key to spend a day teaching disabled Wiki Tamihana after he justified axing funding for her teacher aide.

Dalefield School principal Kevin Jephson threw down the gauntlet this week and accused the Government of "playing chess with children's lives and their right to education".

The issue came to a head after The Dominion Post highlighted the plight of Wiki Tamihana, 10, whose High Health Needs funding has been severed after a review of her case. The funding of $13,000 a year paid for a teacher aide, who has now lost her job.

Mr Jephson said the move could jeopardise the little girl's right to ongoing education.

John Key declined the invitation.

In a recent interview on National Radio Kevin Jephson talked about how difficult it is for schools to fight their way through the Education bureaucracy to organise funding for students with special needs.

John Key doesn't want to have a go at teacher aiding Wiki. Maybe he could do something about streamlining the funding approval system for special needs students.  From listening to Kevin Jephson it sounds as if applying for funding for these students is a fulltime job in itself.

Parents part of the problem

The Times-Age reports an initiative by The Professionals Real Estate's Keith Archer to provide signs asking motorists to slow down when passing schools.

While anything that encourages motorists to slow down near schools is to be commended, I don't think it addresses a fundamental cause of traffic congestion around schools: parents picking up their kids.

There are so many parents' cars lining the roads - for quite some distance - either side of the road adjoining schools that any warning signs are completely obscured.

It would be good to see "walking buses" introduced in the Wairarapa - children walking to and from school in supervised groups.  It's good exercise for the kids and helps develop independence.

Disabled child loses teacher aid

Wiki Tamihana, 10, with mother Sharlene Morunga and brother Piripi Tamihana, 2

A 10 year old disabled child attending Dalefield School, near Carterton, may have to stop attending school because funding for her teacher aide has been withdrawn (along with 70 other children) at a time when the Government is pledging more money for special education

Dompost reporter Tanya Katterns reports

For the past five years, Wiki Tamihana, 10 who has a tendency to wander and suffers severe epileptic seizures because of a brain injury from meningitis, has been able to mix with her peers at Dalefield School in rural Carterton through High Health Needs funding.

The funding is for school-age children who need constant care and supervision, and who would be excluded from mainstream schools without a teacher aide.

The fund of $6.1 million a year provides teacher aide support for up to 550 pupils. The Government recently announced an extra $51m over three years for special education.

But within weeks of that pledge, the ministry has ruled that Wiki is ineligible for funding because younger children with higher health needs have been identified.

The $13,368 a year for 20 hours a week in school support she received has gone, and teacher aide Ali Rankin, who has supported Wiki throughout, will lose her job today.

School principal, Kevin Jepson says

the only choice left was for Dalefield to rally its community and budget to keep Wiki there.

"For us this has been soul-destroying," he said. "There are just 60 pupils and 10 staff and we are one big family. As we have invested so much time and energy and emotion into Wiki, we are keeping her here but it is going to be tough."

An intensive programme to safeguard Wiki will involve four teachers and a buddy system with pupils.

The alternative is home-schooling, which means Wiki misses out on interacting with other children.

 

Primary principals fear school ranking

Primary school prinicipals fear ranking by media if publication of school literacy and numeracy results planned for next year goes ahead.

Stuff reports

New Zealand Principals' Federation president Ernie Buutveld yesterday told his national conference in Palmerston North that principals were "deeply concerned" by the standards.

In a federation survey of 1000 primary school principals, 77 per cent indicated they would withhold figures if releasing them meant the media could produce tables ranking schools.

Only 2 per cent had no problem with the standards, Buutveld said.

Publication of secondary school NCEA "league" tables has caused huge dislocation and problems within the secondary sector. 

A primary school in a leafy suburb is always going to get good results. Some schools in more economically deprived areas are up against a high turnover of pupils caused by parents struggling to find on-going accommodation, parents who can't help students with homework because they can't read themselves, students who come to school hungry, students with learning disabilities, family dysfunction, etc.

Nobody disagrees that children should leave primary school without a good grasp of literacy and numeracy, but for schools in deprived areas, who are already struggling, this must sound like beatings-will-continue-till-morale-improves.

Bob Bargh an inspiration

There's a wonderful story in today's Dompost about South Wairarapa resident Bob Bargh, who

at nearly 80 cycles 25 kilometres each way, sunshine, southeries or rain, to help children at a rural school with their lessons.

For the past seven years, the retired civil engineer has been an integral part of Pirinoa School in South Wairarapa. Most days, Mr Bargh arrives bright and early at the school near Lake Ferry. He sits alongside children, helping with maths, music and chess lessons.

School principal Steve Davis comments

"A lot of our children, like with today's society, live away from grandparents, so having these wonderful people here gives them a connection they otherwise would not have and one-on-one attention."

No hope for those at the bottom of the education heap

"Cabbage" unit standards may be dropped from NCEA in an effort to improve the NCEA's status as a respectable education qualification. In future NCEA will be based on curriculum subjects, although schools can separately offer non-curriculum subjects as unit standards.

This is great news for all the kids - and their parents - in higher decile schools with good NCEA pass rates, but not so good for those at the other end of the economic spectrum.

Some years ago I worked with a "transition" class in a Decile One school; those who had attempted - and failed - some School Certificate subjects.  A well-meaning teacher had helped them prepare CVs. As the template was designed around trumpeting academic success, these CVs screamed "Failure!"

I asked the class to identify in turn the individual qualities of each class member. The skills they identified in each other included the "soft skills" increasingly required in business today, such as always completing a task, completing tasks on time, focussing on the task in hand, encouraging and supportive of teammates, and a friendly and approachable manner.

We then re-wrote their CVs with bullet points outlining their qualities. At the bottom of the CV we noted that they had "sat" various subjects. These kids suddenly saw themselves in a more positive light and several of them landed jobs shortly afterwards.

It is perfectly possible for a student to get excellent grades in curriculum NCEA subjects, but be sadly lacking in ability to communicate effectively or work as part of a team.  We need to find a way to measure these skills as they are the ones business needs.

The quiet success of adult education

We don't hear much about adult education; it tends to be lost amid the clamour of NCEA results and getting children into the Right Schools.

Some children don't connect with primary and secondary education at all. They may have a learning disability, or their home environment is so impoverished - in several senses of the word - that learning is very difficult. They may also move frequently, making ongoing stable education impossible.

Adult education provides a great second chance for such people.  For those at the bottom of the economic heap - and there are quite a few in the Wairarapa - increasing basic literacy, numeracy and communication skill is critical to improving lives from a hand-to-mouth, dysfunctional, sometimes violent existence, to a future with hope.

A review of Adult and Community Education (ACE) conducted in 2008 by Price Waterhouse Coopers shows that for every dollar spent on ACE activities, there is a $54 payback in economic and social benefits.

A survey of 593 learners and seven learning organisations (including Wairarapa REAP) found:

    * Over 90 percent of learners reported better self esteem and confidence; 58 percent improved health;

    * Improved speaking, reading and writing English,using computers, understanding numbers, and speaking Mäori.

    * 73 percent reported an improvement in home/family life; 87 percent improved their ability to communicate with others.

    * 82 percent of learners intended to progress to further study, either with the same adult and community organisation or elsewhere.

    * 60 percent of respondents expected better career prospects as a result of the adult and community education programme they took part in.

    * Over 62 percent believed their health had improved as a result of further education – over 15 percent said they smoked or drank less, and 38 percent said their mental health was better.

    * 74 percent of participants reported an increase in community participation. The community services in which participants reported the biggest increase in involvement were other community based educational services, other educational services, and employment services.

    * The study showed learners became more accepting and understanding of other cultures, beliefs and ways of life.