The NZPF 2013 conference, ‘Power to Innovate’, hosted by the Waikato Primary Principals’ Association at the new Events’ Centre in Hamilton was a delight to attend. From the moment MC Te Radar gave us his own mihi – and confessed whilst applying for a position with Māori television he thought he said ‘I stand before you’ when in fact he had said ‘my manhood stands erect before you’ – we knew we were in for an open, engaging and entertaining time. Radar, in his introduction, also alluded to the conference theme ‘power to innovate’ suggesting that teachers in the future won’t have to teach children to ‘think outside the square’ because being innovative they will have removed the square altogether. Principals gave a collective hoot of hilarity in sharing Radar’s novel way to eradicate the cliché that has infuriated society for so long. They secretly hoped that by osmosis a few more irritations might join the ‘square’ at the demolition dump like ‘going forward’, ‘fake it till you make it’, ‘no brainer’, ‘paradigm shift’, ‘data driven’, ‘. . . but at the end of the day’ and ‘I want five out of five children succeeding.’ From the ringing of the cow bell calling principals to attention, to the sumptuous conference dinner and entertainment from popular band ‘Late 80s Mercedes’, to the mid-conference Hawaiian Beach Party – world famous in Hamilton – the conference was a show case for everything good about the Waikato region. If anything did go awry on the organisational side, conference delegates would never know. It was so perfectly organised it could even accommodate surprises, like NZPF executive member Gavin Beere’s out of left field request to join the conference dinner entertainers and sing his own version of ‘Mustang Sally’, which, by the way, he also delivered seamlessly! We congratulate and thank the organising committee and the conference company for
Gavin Beere, NZPF executive member singing his own version of ‘Mustang Sally’ at the conference dinner
NZPF Kaumatua Tauri Morgan hongis with his Waikato counterpart
their superb work in structuring such a wonderful three days. The speakers inspired and challenged us and in keeping with the conference theme, each brought an interesting and innovative perspective to their presentations. Each morning a Waikato school was invited to entertain the delegates and they did so with high energy, enthusiasm and obvious pleasure. It was a splendid way to begin each day. As with any NZPF conference, in the end it is the programme of speakers that attracts the principals’ attention. Delegates want to learn, to have their own thinking challenged and to go home with something new to implement, discuss or think about for their own school. Conference is a professional learning and development experience first and foremost and the Waikato conference offered plenty of opportunities. Across the three days common themes emerged from the speakers which included favouring a broad relevant curriculum led by
NZPF President, Philip Harding addresses the principals
CONFERENCE
MC Te Radar in full flight
creativity, entrepreneurship, critical thinking and passion in preparing children for the future. Speakers also cautioned against placing too much emphasis on ‘achievement data’ as the driver of everything, noting that ‘data’ is just one small component of information and not a panacea. Philip Harding, NZPF President In his opening address to the four hundred strong conference audience, President Philip Harding challenged principals to think about what teaching and learning should look like when we are preparing children for a world in which the job that will one day pay them a living is quite possibly not invented yet. A world in which the smart phones we use every day are fast replacing thousands of traditional careers, such fields as banking, retail and even the food trade. He offered Finland’s education system as a successful example to follow noting that the issues we rail against currently in New Zealand, such as national standards, children’s achievement data being made public, league tables and public comparisons of schools, are all absent from the Finnish system. Instead, he said, Finland has prioritised building high levels of societal equity, elevated the status of the teaching profession and the quality of teaching graduates and both politicians and the public place high trust in the professionals to get on with the job of teaching and learning. These are the factors, said Harding, which allow Finland to consistently do so well as a country. He talked about achievement data and the limits of its use by quoting astronomer Clifford Stoll who has argued that data is a tiny contributor to a much greater thinking process. In fact Stoll draws a vivid analogy with the words ‘Data isn’t information, any more than fifty tons of cement is a skyscraper.’ Without dwelling on the detail, Harding then took his audience through some of the current Government’s educational reform agenda which has brought us to the present position where the profession feels anything but appreciated, trusted and revered and remains confused as to why the Government would want to destroy all that is so good about our world class education system. In his final attack on national standards he said ‘The tired conservative argument of “back to basics” has been around for decades, but a modern 21st century education seeks to engage children in broad, rich, and meaningful learning, in a world that is changing so fast that it is breath-taking. Parents did NOT support this policy in two elections. Most were oblivious in 2008, and confused in 2011. Teachers have remained consistently opposed, not to protect their patch, but because it is bad for children when the only thing that matters is two curriculum areas out of eight.’
He then proceeded to tell his audience why they should cease engaging with the development of the Progress and Consistency Tool, a multi-million dollar Ministry of Education web-based tool, being designed to make national standards data more reliable. It would, he told his audience, make national standards a de facto national test with all the negative consequences that implies. Harding encouraged the principals to continue doing what they know is right and best for children’s learning which means focusing on the broad school curriculum, ensuring it is exciting, engaging and provides authentic contexts for children’s learning. He recommended that it should give purpose, value and opportunities for teachers and students to be creative, being mindful always of the diversity and potential of every child. He urged principals to see literacy and numeracy as the tools that they are for calculating, communicating, publishing and sharing learning with others. Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) Debate NZPF President Philip Harding took the opportunity to have an open debate with the principals present on the PaCT. It took very little time for the group to come to a consensus position. After a brief discussion the following motion was unanimously passed: ‘That the New Zealand Principals’ Federation recommends to its membership that the PaCT tool and its development process should continue to be boycotted by schools from any co-operation, engagement, trialling, or use.’ Viviane Robinson Academic Director of the Centre for Educational Leadership, Auckland University Viviane Robinson opened her address with an attack on change and innovation. Change and innovation have acquired a notion of desirability but we should not uncritically revere them, she warned her audience. Just think about what innovation means, she said. Innovation refers to something novel or new. ‘Novo’ also means new. Think Novopay, she smiled. The audience instantly got the point. Not all change and innovation
School children entertain the delegates
Keri Milne-Ihimaera, NZPF Kaumatua, Tauri Morgan and Whetu Cormick at conference
is inherently good. What we should aim for, she said, is not change and innovation but improvement. School improvement efforts, she told the audience, sit in the context of the Government’s ‘Better Public Service Targets’ policy which include 85 per cent of students achieving NCEA level 2 by 2017 and 85 per cent of children years 1–8 meeting national standards within the same timeframe. Whilst the Government’s attempt to reduce the equity gap in student outcomes is to be applauded, she noted that in the past fifteen years there had been no appreciable gains in the equity of achievement statistics and simply defining targets was unlikely to make any difference. Achieving real improvement takes much more. Robinson quoted Richard Elmore to define what we mean by improvement. He says improvement is change with direction and is sustained over time. It moves entire systems and it raises the average level of quality and performance while decreasing undesirable variation amongst units. It means engaging in analysis and inquiry which is central to our curriculum. The problem for principals can be that the general desirability for change and innovation is so pervasive that we can feel left out of the race if we are not constantly changing something. Robinson argued that the best kind of change is to adopt improvement strategies that are consistent with our own analysis, not just blindly adopt every new approach that comes knocking. Improvement strategies, she said, come in two forms, either product or process improvements. Product improvements mean delivering proven approaches and include, for example, the adoption of the Positive Behaviour for Learning programme,
or restorative justice, reading recovery or the delivery of some other proven approach. Process improvement is quite different and is a continuous inquiry process. It begins with an open discussion with all involved including teachers and parents. Data is analysed to help provide evidence and identify areas for improvement and problems are viewed as learning opportunities. All participants are encouraged to question. Agreement is then sought on priorities and goals are set for the future. Goals require clarity, commitment and capability. In all discussions the students’ needs remain at the centre. ERO’s school self-review process is such an example or a school inquiry into student learning needs where teachers are engaged in the analysis and inquiry phase and the principal’s role is to monitor the teachers’ progress towards improvement. In Robinson’s view insufficient attention is paid to the importance of the principal’s role in both product and process improvement strategies. Research evidence tells us that to get school wide improvement requires a relentless commitment on behalf of the leadership and expert guidance is a necessary ingredient for success. Access to that expertise is what principals often lack. It is not available from the Ministry and although there may well be expert knowledge within the profession, principals do not have the necessary networks through which to access these experts. This, said Robinson, is one of the tragedies of self-managing schools. Networks that once were facilitated through the former school inspectorate disappeared with ‘Tomorrow’s Schools’ leaving a yawning gap in identifying expertise.
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In answer to questions from the audience, Robinson emphasised the importance of using more than just data for the inquiry and analysis phase of seeking improvement. The data, she said, will not of itself lead to improvement. It must be analysed in the light of other known factors because it cannot challenge assumptions. What might work in one school will not necessarily work in another. That’s why programmes of improvement must be tailored to the particular circumstances of each individual school, she said, and that means continual hard work and analysis which is also complex. Real improvement, she said, comes through deep and focused learning across many layers. For example, if an analysis of data shows that student writing needs to be prioritised then what the teachers need are ways to teach writing better and principals need to know how to support the teachers to do this. Principals may also require support from academic colleagues in order to support teachers. Such a process may become a two or three year project. It is much more than just getting a writing expert in for some PLD for teachers. Beyond that the principal’s role is to watch, monitor, adapt, sustain and review. These are the requirements for continuous improvement. Sir Ray Avery Pharmaceutical Scientist, Inventor and Social Entrepreneur R ay Aver y was born in post-war Britain in 1947. His early life was a miserable existence as he was ill-treated by his parents and spent much of his childhood in foster care and orphanages. He attended school which was also a miserable time for the boy who was not just dyslexic but who also had poor eyesight and hearing which were untreated. School was about sitting in rows of desks and children were given books to read and treated as products of the education system. His sensory defects were always going to limit him in a system like this. ‘I was sat at the back of the room and basically ignored,’ he told his audience.
What he lacked in sensory capability he made up for in spirit. He ran away from the orphanage and began living rough under bridges in London. Partly to keep warm and partly to satisfy his high levels of curiosity, he regularly visited the Tate Gallery, the Science Museum and libraries, where he honed in on the Encyclopaedia Britannica. This marked the beginning of his ‘learning by observation’. Ironically, he told his appreciative audience, it was a teacher who gave him his first break organising him an internship at an Agricultural College which led to his first job in agricultural research. He entertained his audience with many stories of his life as he followed his own dreams to make a difference for the world’s poor. Notable, was his connection with Kiwi-born Fred Hollows, the world renowned eye doctor who was determined to restore the sight of people in developing countries with blindness caused by cataracts. Avery designed two intraocular lens manufacturing plants in Nepal and Eritrea and developed low cost, high quality lens technologies, systems and distribution networks. Today the Fred Hollows Foundation laboratories provide thirteen per cent of the world’s intraocular lenses market, using Avery’s technology. Introducing these lenses on mass collapsed the global price of lenses such that modern cataract surgery is now available to the world’s poorest people. Coming to New Zealand, he told his audience, was like coming home because here you can be the person you want to be. New Zealand is special, he said, and quite different from any other country in the world. ‘Impossible,’ he said, ‘is just a starting point in New Zealand.’ He went on to say that in New Zealand ‘you
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can dream big.’ The key, he said, is to be ‘customer centric’ not ‘product centric’. ‘We are preparing children for the world,’ he said, ‘so we must not stifle their opportunities for learning. Education needs to be expansive,’ he said, ‘and young people need to believe in themselves and have a plan.’ Avery includes social relationships learning on his list and was clear about the importance of children learning about team work and treating members of a team as ‘family’. ‘That way,’ he said, ‘when things go wrong, there’s no blaming because we’re family and we support each other and care about each other.’ He later talked about what he termed ‘the power of us’ and that ‘no one is as clever as all of us.’ Exchanging ideas together, he said, is important for learning and should be encouraged. He talked about the power of observation and how it had made such a difference in his own life. He said that most inventions actually come from just one observation. ‘Children,’ he said, ‘are natural observers.’ He encouraged his audience to provide as many opportunities for children to observe as possible and not to tie children to a narrow, set curriculum. Learning to listen carefully and refraining from making assumptions was another skill he recommended. He illustrated his point with a personal example of travelling in a taxi to the airport. The driver had asked him where he was going now. Assuming the driver recognised who he was, he then launched into a long and detailed description of his work and former achievements at the end of which the driver said, ‘I just meant do you want domestic or international?’ Avery concluded his presentation by recommending his audience take a look at his most recent book about New Zealand inventions called ‘The Power of Us’: New Zealanders who dare to dream. Did we know, for example, that the plastic syringe was invented by a pharmacist from Oamaru called Colin Murdock? ‘It changed the world,’ he said. If we want this culture of invention to continue, that future, he said, is in the hands of New Zealand’s teachers. Minister Parata Minister Parata’s address to the delegates was brief. She acknowledged the work of principals and the leadership they show in their communities. She also acknowledged the work of various sector representatives, including the NZPF President, and told the delegates that they were well served by their representatives. She thanked the 30,000 teachers who produced such consistency of national standards data over two years.
Principals attending 2013 conference
Her major focus was however the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT). She was aware that the principals had unanimously agreed to boycott the tool and she wanted to respond to principals’ objections. Minister Parata repeatedly told the principals that the national standards data was their data and this tool was designed to address the within school variability which was a problem. It’s just a tool, she insisted and the use of it would belong to the schools. However she said, she did want to have understanding at a systems level and wanted to work with principals on this. She then called on Lisa Rogers from the Ministry to give a short presentation on the PaCT. Minister Parata returned to the platform to announce to the principals present that she was happy to take the recommendation from the cross-sector forum that this tool will not be mandatory. ‘It will make itself mandatory,’ she said confidently. ‘It won’t be compulsory but it will be available to all schools.’ James Nottingham Company Director Challenging Learning How do we positively influence staff and student achievement? James Nottingham gave principals one strong message. If you want intervention or change to be sustainable you need a vision, a plan and mental models. So what are mental models? According to Nottingham, you imagine the best learning environment then compare that picture with what you have now. That’s what mental models are. Knowing where you are going influences the mental model and the system and structure that surrounds that. In turn that influences patterns of behaviour and events. ‘A vision is fired by the people who create it,’ he told the audience, ‘and it must be written in the positive.’ Achieving the vision is a great deal more difficult than creating it. The vision describes success but if we don’t remember the mental m o d e l s w e w o n’t achieve that success. Mental models, he said,
Principals enjoy a drink together at 2013 conference
Choral group of school children entertain the principals
are the principal’s responsibility whilst systems and structures are the responsibility of management. To clarify his point about mental models, Nottingham outlined a set of dysfunctional mental models. These included helping children, praising them, discovering their gifts, grouping them and focusing on grades. ‘The kind of praise we give children,’ he said, ‘will either enhance or decrease performance.’ He went on to say that if we tell children they are bright and clever they will think all they have to do is turn up with their brilliant little brains. If they have an over-inflated view of themselves they are prone to be over-confident and have a fear of failure. So praise for having intelligence just tells the child ‘wow, you’ve got good genes.’ He noted that children in enrichment classes often think if I’m clever I don’t have to work hard. Instead Nottingham recommends process praise which is more about trying hard to increase performance. It is a shift from praising the child to praising what they do. In practice girls seek out praise whilst boys get eight times more criticism than girls, but the criticism involves process. Surprisingly Nottingham suggested that teachers should look to giving girls more of the process feedback that boys get. He offered examples like ‘If you applied that energy to your lessons you could achieve so much more.’ Trying to develop talent is also not good, said Nottingham – to the surprise of some in his audience – “what you are at risk of feeding are attitudes like I’m a gifted poet so I can’t do maths.” He also had heavy criticism for grading children. ‘When we rank order, he said, you get clever kids and dumb kids. He
slammed such practice with the comment that we are telling kids ‘this is your limit,’ when what you are really saying is ‘this is what you can do to date.’ It’s about progress, he said, not grades.
Sir Graham Henry Former All Blacks Coach A most popular draw card for the conference delegates was the final speaker, Graham Henry whose address was entitled ‘Innovative strategies’. As we approached World Cup 2011, Henry told us, there was a competition to enter a ‘festival song’ about ‘Black Fever’. The competition was world-wide with fifty-two entries from as far away as London, including those from celebrity artists. But Henry approached the Principal of Ashhurst School to enter the kids. ‘What was needed,’ said Henry, ‘was an enthusiastic leader, a haka and a school of kids and they had only one week to prepare.’ The winner was chosen by YouTube voters and despite the high class international competition, Ashhurst School won with 10,000 votes. ‘That’s what you can achieve with great leadership,’ he told his attentive audience. Henry himself spent many years as a school principal. He paid tribute to Sir John Graham, who as principal of Auckland Grammar, had employed Henry as a teacher. ‘He gave people opportunities to develop into leaders which meant a number of us got stronger and moved on to be principals,’ he said. Henry made it very clear to his audience that teachers have huge influence as they develop young people and prepare them for the world.
NZPF Executive members are all attention at the conference powhiri
Sir Graham Henry
Also important, Henry told us, is to learn how to change to be more effective. Even when you are getting good results, you may not have the right approach. He told a number of stories of his time in Wales coaching the Welsh National team and how he learned about spirituality and was affected by the awesomeness of the 800 year old cathedral dedicated to the patron saint David. He even admitted that he had once invoked the saint to intervene in the up-coming game against France and when the French missed the last penalty kick, giving Wales the win, he could not discount the influence of St David on the game’s result. He asked for intercession a second time when Wales played England at Wembley stadium and again won by a single point. So it’s not all about analysis, game plan and clinical execution. Sometimes it’s also about self– awareness and Henry admitted during his stint with the Lions that it was not one of his finest hours. ‘I was in win mode and thought I could just do the analysis, game plan and drill them to win,’ he said. ‘But I was inexperienced and didn’t get to know the players and the people and that was a mistake.’ On returning to New Zealand as assistant coach to Auckland and the Blues, Henry finally got his dream job to coach the All Blacks. The first change that had to occur was the All Black’s drinking culture. Henry called a group of senior players and the coaching and management team together to thrash out a different future. What he learned was that the players didn’t want this culture either – nor did they want the pressure of winning all the time.
To win the next Rugby World Cup, Henry knew that there had to be a system of continuous improvement and that was established through the leadership group of players and management so that the status quo was continually challenged. ‘We had to have this improvement,’ he said, ‘and we adopted the idea that improvement never stops but sits alongside our objectives, strategies and evaluations.’ Individual players also had their own personal profiles including their own vision and goals for themselves. For some the vision is big and for others lesser. Richie McCaw, he said has a vision to be the best in the world. He’s very driven, in fact he could be the Prime Minister, he said. These are motivators alongside the team motivators. ‘All Blacks respect the legacy of the jersey,’ said Henry, ‘and there are plenty of historic examples to fire up motivation in the team. Take Dave Gallagher for example, the first All Black captain, who was killed in Passchendaele in 1917. When we play in France we play for the Gallagher Trophy which is hugely motivating because the team is playing for all those New Zealanders who lost their lives at Passchendaele,’ he said. There is no doubt in Henry’s mind that better people make better All Blacks and it’s important to get to know the players as people first. Henry concluded with a brief string of ideas to help leaders be the best they can be. Top of the list was to become self-aware, have strong ethics, exercise every day to feel good, listen and read, work to control your own environment and create leadership teams so you are all connected and on the same page but always remembering that the buck really does stop with you.
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