Tom Haig
@ThomasHaig
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Hanging in here despite knowing I shouldn't
Wellington, NZ
Joined May 2010
I am shocked - shocked! - to discover the entire “exodus” story was nothing more than lobbying on behalf of the mega-rich. Wealth tax now!
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Unless you're a nurse, teacher or on the minimum wage
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Dealing with the biggest social, health and economic crisis in generations, while spending less than 25% of one year's GDP to keep us safe and working, doesn't seem 'rampant' to me
JUST IN: Treasury has confirmed what National has said all along. When Govt spending runs rampant, Kiwis are left to pay the price. A $66 billion Covid spend up – much of it untargeted – left behind soaring debt, rising prices & a serious hangover for Kiwis to deal with.
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Any educational change that doesn't start with this as its initial premise and problem definition is bound to be at best tinkering, and more likely will end up making this worse
@ThomasHaig Have a look at the stats again and where the problem is and you realize that the problem is systemic inequality over all other considerations, something teachers and curriculum do not have much power to alter alone!
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One of the reasons given for scrapping NCEA is cos students are gaming the system. Teenagers quickly learn that qualifications are a commodity & just a proxy for real knowledge, whatever the system. Just cramming enough to pass an exam, 'Cs make degrees' are the same theory
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This is the sort of braindead take that's driving Stanford and Luxon's decisions here. PISA tests are done by kids during year 11 - blame the curriculum, blame teachers, blame open plan classrooms (if anything) but you can't blame NCEA
A quarter century of dramatically-declining PISA scores in literacy, maths, and science isn't sustainable. NCEA isn't a flawed system that can be gently manipulated back into a functional one. The tail of underachievement has got longer and lower.
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Lockwood Smith introduced the precursor to NCEA with the qualifications framework and unit standards back in the 1990s. When NCEA really came under pressure was when Key's govt set external targets that undermined the validity of internal assessments. Facts, not vibes.
Your belief in vibes based education has failed a generation of Kiwi kids
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Now - this just feels like opportunism and expediency from two shallow politicians. I feel gutted for the teachers and students who will be picking up the pieces for years. Unless of course we can get rid of this govt next year and stop it
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If this goes ahead it will disrupt the school system for at least 10 years. The govt has to bring people along - have real buy-in for the change. When NCEA came in it was supported across-party lines and had decades of teachers and academics working for a new system
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Fundamentally though the thing that bothers me about this is the lack of mandate. Educational change effects hundreds of thousands of students and their whānau, and needs 60,000 teachers to deliver it. This is being driven by a few principals from wealthy Auckland schools
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Luxon and Stanford talk about this enabling better vocational ed - this is deluded. NCEA standards were originally based on the industry training model of unit standards, and allows industry standards to be learned at school. The proposed model destroys 'parity of esteem'
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The removal of standards based assessment to go back to norm referencing is turning the clock back to an era where success at school is deliberately competitive and rationed. Historically this meant even greater educational inequities than we have now
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To justify a hugely disruptive change like this, you need to have a really profound reason for it. You have to be sure that you understand the problem and the solution you're putting up is going to be better. Stanford and Luxon show no sign of either
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I started teaching high school English in 2005, a few years after NCEA came in. Then worked at PPTA from 2011-2019, trying to help make it work at a system level. I know it's not perfect. But today's announcement is profoundly depressing.
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Time to re-up Karl Polanyi
Calling capitalism an “ideology” is kind of ridiculous. “Millions were killed by capitalism” is a ridiculous thing to say. Capitalism is just the default mode of economics. “I made this item and I will sell it for something else” has been going on since ancient times.
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lol what's actually wrong with this govt? just dropped a bill that repeals this:
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No, inheritance tax isn't a double tax on your already taxed, hard earned money. You're dead. You don't pay it. It's paid, to all intents and purposes, by the people receiving the inheritance, who absolutely did not earn it, and don't deserve a massive tax free windfall.
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But whatever these guys come up with will be worse - will be reductive, highly competitive, and based on a massively over-simplified version of 'science of learning'. This perpetual chaos and half-baked reform is not serving kids, teachers or the education system
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