National President, New Zealand Principals’ Federation
Our National Curriculum is lauded as innovative in There is no part of our National Curriculum that lends itself its embrace of localisation, which can disguise the fact that it is more to making young people ‘fully human’ than the arts. also deeply imbued with international economic imperatives. The arts provide the vehicle for young people to explore The economic focus was established through the their humanity. They elevate feelings, emotions, development of the key competencies that grew nuance, and ambiguity. The arts are In his view, the memory, from an Organisation of Economic Development demanding, requiring constant qualitative (OECD) report called Defining and Selecting the purpose of judgements as cognition interacts with emotion. Key Competencies (DeSeCo). This constant interface between thinking and This report posits that, a well-educated, education as feeling is the essence of how humans work. knowledgeable, highly qualified citizenry is The Arts curriculum is the only true therapeutic ‘to make us more curriculum. seen as playing an eminent role in facing the It provides the means to unlock challenges of the present and the future and that fully human’. young people’s experience of the world, to from an economic viewpoint, competencies of validate it and make it accessible to others. Under individuals are seen as important because they contribute to, the guidance of a skilled teacher, these experiences can be shared boosting productivity and market competitiveness; minimizing and curated to help young people better understand themselves unemployment through developing an adaptive and qualified labour force; and creating an environment for innovation in a world dominated by global competition. While the DeSeCo report does not solely focus on these economic drivers, their domination has helped to focus schooling on preparing young people for an uncertain economic future. Young people are increasingly viewed as human capital, a term that is defined as the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population, viewed in terms of their value or cost to an organisation or country. Therein lies the problem. We have allowed our curriculum and the work of schooling to be subverted by economic imperialism that has swept away a vision of education that was resolutely based on realising the full potential of the whole child as a human being not simply a cog in the economy. This is not a new concern. Paul Goodman, the late American author and intellectual, argued against the purpose of schooling Are your school buildings looking tired and in need of a that was focused on delivering personnel to industry. new colour scheme? Let Resene Colour Experts help you Our own Professor Peter O’Connor at the University of rejuvenate your school’s look with free colour advice. Auckland captures this ideological struggle perfectly. He bemoans the absence of an appropriate national vision for education, to counter economic internationalism. In his view, the purpose of education as ‘to make us more fully human’. Bring out the in your school Since the COVID-19 crisis we have found ourselves questioning with Resene School Services! current orthodoxies and O’Connor’s perspective has garnered excitement about the opportunities it now presents to us as a nation. The dominance of a stultifying economic imperative and the For more information visit: absence of a narrative that embraces the whole child, presents resene.co.nz/schoolservices us with an opportunity to rebuild schooling to reflect a more human notion of purpose.
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and the world they are growing into. In a post-COVID landscape and with mounting concern about young peoples’ mental health and wellbeing, the provision of the arts, as a therapeutic curriculum, is palpable. The arts give-the-lie to the tired and simplistic building blocks of many modern systems of education. One of the most influential building blocks of western education is the dominance of assessment practice that assumes that young peoples’ concrete output, such as assessment results and work samples, tell us truthfully what young people know and can do. The judgement of young peoples’ achievement through these means is not credible. It misses what young people know and understand but cannot express through traditional assessments. The arts counter the view that everything we know must be expressed in written words and numbers. They support humans to use the full range of their talents and senses to tell their story; communicate it and make meaning from it through sharing it with others. Not everything we know can be articulated or drawn in concrete terms nor should we expect it to be. Therein lies the true beauty of the arts. It is a curriculum that is truthful. Experiences in the arts are owned by the learner alone; they are experiences that come from within and are drawn out through the expert facilitation of teachers trained in these skills. Herein lies the rub. Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is designed by universities – traditional entities – wedded to lecture-based learning and concrete assessment to judge what their students
know. Graduating teachers have not learned how to support powerful arts experiences, because they are practice-based experiences and the university model does not accommodate such training. The last issue of NZ Principal was devoted to stories of the COVID-19 crisis and lock down and how schools responded. Every story is a story of humanity. None included concrete assessment methods! There were accounts of addressing community inequities; principals wrote of delivering care packs and food to families in need; they wrote of empathy – recognising that some parents would be working through lock down and unable to regularly support their children’s learning; boxes of learning activities were delivered and above all teachers and principals set up regular communication channels with their students and families. Humanity rose to the top. Humanity drove every response because in the end it is humanity that matters. For all its negative characteristics and consequences, COVID-19 gives us a one-off opportunity. It gives us the chance to inject the humanities back into our curriculum. To write a vision for education that has humanity at the centre. To reinvent ITE so that practice-based education drives teacher training. To support redevelopment of the Arts by prioritising an Arts Advisory. It is a travesty for the young people of Aotearoa that their compulsory schooling does not recognise, support and develop their own humanity.
Our experience tells us that traditionally schools review their accounting systems on two occasions – while they are setting their budget – and during the course of their audit. It is always a good idea to ask yourself some questions “How is my audit progressing? Were my draft financial statements at audit prior to 31 March? Is my auditor complimentary about the standard of my Financial statements and supporting workpapers?” We know all accounting service providers aren’t created equal – and cheapest is definitely not best. Come and see why Education Services is the most popular accounting service provider for schools in New Zealand. Experience the peace of mind that everything is done on time every time – and why over 700 schools know us as the real school accounting experts. A busy school principal has quite enough to contend with, without having to manage an accounting system – let us take all the worry out of that – and minimize your risk of misappropriation and fraud.
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Is your school participating in the EVolocity programme this year? EVolocity is all about stimulating innovation and growing awareness of the advantages of electric transport in a sector which may be the global growth sector of the 21st Century.
The programme provides a practical way for secondary school students to engage with engineering, sustainability and the inevitable onset of electric transport into our lives. High school teams are equipped with an electric bike componentry kit, and during the course of the year they design and build their own electric vehicles. The end of the year sees teams gearing up to go head to head at regional and national finals in a range of categories, including performance, innovation, show and reporting.
If your school is interested in taking part, get in touch with us today email debbie.baker@evolocity.co.nz or head to www.evolocity.co.nz