Posted by: PPTAweb
on 16, Oct, 2011
Tagged in:
Tomorrow's Schools ,
teaching ,
teachers ,
student achievement ,
public education ,
PPTA ,
power ,
OECD ,
learning ,
equity ,
elections ,
education politics
PPTA president Robin Duff responds to the challenge of PPTA being 'dreamers' if we really think politicians of all stripes can work together for a better future for New Zealand students and our education system.
"Dream on"
Firstly, 'dream on' is quite a perceptive comment in that I believe that much of my work has, is and perhaps always will be based on 'dreams' for education as much as it was/is for other areas of my life.
The dream actually motivates and drives us all.
Posted by: Observer
on 29, Nov, 2010
The recent OECD education ministers’ meeting held in Paris on November 4th and 5th was unusual for three reasons: for the first time in its ten-year history it had permitted a brief union presence in the form of Education International (EI) and TUAC, the trade union group that advises the OECD ; the morning session on Thursday was chaired by the New Zealand Minister of Education, Hon. Anne Tolley, and PPTA was there!
As an organisation the OECD works actively to push privatization in member countries more for the benefit of multi-national corporates and its own OECD consultancy arm than for students. Its prime tool for influencing education policies in member countries is its international achievement tests such as PISA (Programme for International Assessment). Even though the PISA comparisons ought to be treated with great caution for the reasons discussed in PPTA’s conference paper, Building on excellence: How to make a great schooling system even better, education ministers seem to be in thrall to the data. The OECD creates a market for its testing products by keeping nations in a perpetual state of performance anxiety about the simplistic global rankings it extrapolates from the tests.
