The Pigeonhole

By Flying Pig Last month PPTA was notified that the Quality Teaching Partnership Fund (QTPF) will be the latest casualty of cost-cutting at the Ministry of Education.

The QTPF is a fund that has supported the last two subject association forums by covering the cost of accommodation for participants.   PPTA also had funding from it for one of our professional conferences.   

Subject associations apply to the fund for help with their annual or biennial conferences.   Adele Scott, of the NZ Association for Language Teachers (NZALT), has written as follows: “The withdrawal of MOE QTPF funding is an issue and NZALT intends to write to the ministry about this (although I'm not sure that we can expect a change). This will affect PPTA’s national conference and regional languages seminars.  NZALT will certainly not be the only association affected.   Associations will also now have to cover the accommodation costs of their participants at our forum in July, so they are being doubly hit.   The sentence in the letter that is most infuriating is the one that says “In the present economic environment, the ministry has had to reconsider the effectiveness of all services and focus on what is going to make the most difference in terms of student learning outcomes.”   How are they so sure about which those are?   Subject associations provide an invaluable support to secondary teachers, but it is probably true that measuring this is well nigh impossible.   But if something can’t be measured, it doesn’t mean that it is not important.   Furthermore, the reality is that vast amounts of ministry money is having to go on the implementation of national standards for which there is absolutely no evidence of improved student learning outcomes, and ample evidence of the likely negative effects.    But governments can’t let the truth get in the way of ideology!