Sitting on the train wondering where to begin with this week's blog. Class size seems a good place to start as Kate Gainsford, PPTA vice president, was on breakfast TV yesterday morning discussing class size - and in the twitterverse a couple of commentators suggested performance pay for teachers would be better value for money in improving student achievement.

Regarding performance pay there are many problems with that particular business model being applied to teachers.  On Twitter I follow @shankerblog and I can recommend the thoughtful discussion of merit pay (performance pay) - easy to read and lots of links if you want to dig deeper.

Often in class size discussion John Hattie is mentioned, sometimes I think the sound bites that people remember from Hattie's Visible Learning research do his valuable work discredit.  Ivan Snook, John Clark, Richard Harker, Anne-Marie O’Neill and John O’Neill raise some valid concerns about the representation of Hattie's research as well as the way he has chosen to report it.

PPTA have a page (or two) of information on Class size - and it will be updated when the Secondary school staffing group have reported. Class size is also on the agenda at PPTA annual conference - we'll be tweeting (hasthtag) #ppta and you will be able to follow the progress of debates online at http://www.ppta.org.nz 

It's term break - time to prepare for next term, catch up on the marking, review the previous term, get in some professional development meetings and reading, and get ready for NCEA exams - and possibly manage the occasional sleep-in. If you are taking the time to surf the web for education news -we do try to collect an almost daily 'round up' of news and research that we think will be of interest to NZ secondary teachers - you can find it on our website - there is an RSS feed and PPTA members can sign up to a mailing list it they want to.

Hope week one of the term break goes well.