Posted by: Flying Pig
on 05, Dec, 2011
Some teachers seem to have got their knickers in a twist about the circular from NZQA about the changes to external moderation for next year. They seem to think that it's going to add to their workload.
How wrong could they be? How could a few teachers in a school having to collect a sample of every piece of assessment work for one or two students chosen by NZQA possibly be more work than every subject having to randomly choose eight students and collect their work for maybe two or three standards at each level and send it off? 500 students across about 400 secondary schools will mean that some schools don't even get sampled!
PPTA fought for a reduction in the 10% random sample for an agreement rate because it made no sense. Political polls don't sample 10% of the population to find out what people think! NZQA has delivered on this, so let's celebrate that.
Posted by: Flying Pig
on 15, Jun, 2011
Deborah Coddington's spew against NCEA in the latest North and South does not remotely deserve the title of journalism. Fancy hanging a whole article on the unsubstantiated opinions of one source who hasn't got the guts to be named, another source who has no recent experience and little credibility in his subject area, and John Morris of Auckland Grammar who on NCEA is more like a mechanical toy: wind him up and away he goes with the same old nonsense. No comment sought from teachers who might have more balanced views, no comment sought from NZQA or the Ministry of Education, and no comment sought from PPTA. Journalism? Not a chance!
If it didn't matter, would we care? But it does matter. The qualification that the Coddingtons of this world are so desperate to demolish is something that secondary school students work hard to achieve and their teachers burn the midnight oil to deliver. When wild and unsubstantiated claims like"cheating, fudging figures, manipulating marks" and "corrupting everyone it touches" are made, it hurts our kids and it hurts our teachers.
This kind of bigotry is the last gasps of the largely Auckland-based neo-conservatives who always fought New Zealand's moves to a standards-based assessment system. This was because instead of providing a series of drafting gates with built-in failure rates so that the middle- and upper-classes' kids could race through to positions of privilege leaving the working-class kids heading for the abattoir, it values many more types of knowledge and skills and provides opportunities for success for a far wider range of students.
Deborah Coddington should pack up her tent and slink away. She has long since ceased to deserve the title "journalist".
Posted by: Observer
on 09, May, 2011
One thing that is as certain as death and taxes is that the New Zealand public will never be educated by reading articles on education in the New Zealand media. The latest poisonous effort by Rachel Grunwell in the Herald on Sunday was clearly designed to further stupefy the New Zealand public in respect of NCEA. It was followed by a tendentious poll in which 71% of respondents expressed a lack of confidence in the qualification. No surprises there really but was interesting was the selection of examples of practical areas that students could get credits in. (From the article)
“NCEA credits available include:
* Strip and make beds.
Posted by:
on 31, Aug, 2010
I have been playing around with the Reserve Bank Inflation Calculator and it has thrown up some interesting statistics.
My calculations show that teachers rather than being disconnected have been sidelined. Mr Key says we have had significant pay increases over the last 10 years however what is significant is the fact that this has been insignificant in real terms when adjusted for inflation.
Compared are 2000 at top of basic scale $50300 with 2010 top of basic scale $68980
Salary for 2010:
2000 - 2010 CPI adjusted is $65,000
2000 - 2010 Wage increases adjusted is $70,750
2000 - 2010 Food price increases adjusted is $69,000
2000 - 2010 Housing price increase adjusted is $105,000
Averaging these out is $77,000
Salaries have kept pace with food but that is it. In real terms secondary school teachers' salaries are barely keeping up with inflation.
In terms of food and housing someone teaching in 2000 would need to be earning $87,000 in 2010 just to keep pace with inflation.
Actually no New Zealand Government has given secondary teachers a decent pay increase in the last decade. So far it has been a catch up for inflation. Increases in productivity (NCEA workload etc ) have NOT been rewarded.
Posted by: Cynic
on 21, Jan, 2010
Surface readings
Today my head hurts from trying to follow up on a NZ Herald story that quotes from the Unesco report Reaching the marginalised (Education For All global monitoring report 2010):
year 11 Maori students enrolled in kura kaupapa immersion schools did significantly better than Maori in English-language schools (p.206)
so I tried to follow up. I looked at Nga Haeata Matauranga (the Annual Reports on Maori Education)
