As the name suggests, the NZPF Moot is an annual debate or discussion. It involves defending your position or perhaps shifting your position, depending on the arguments presented. In the end it results in participants being better informed with a broader understanding and agreement on a selection of issues. That is why 120 presidents of regional principals’ associations gathered in Wellington for a day in March earlier this year. The theme for the day was “The Lost Curriculum”. The curriculum drives teaching and learning in our schools and our particular New Zealand brand of curriculum is considered world class. Many believe that the power and importance of the curriculum has been diminished in recent years as principals have been distracted by politically generated issues such as national standards and their reliability (or not) as a measure of children’s achievement, the public sharing of school national standards data, the public comparison of schools through league tables, teachers’ performance pay based on national standards, changes in the delivery models of special needs support, the undermining of public schooling and introduction of private charter schools, changes to the New Zealand Teachers’ Council and of course the ‘mother’ of all distractions, Novopay! As principals have grappled with these diversions, the power and influence of the curriculum has weakened. The regional presidents declared it was time to reinstate the curriculum to its rightful position of prominence and be reminded of the elements that make the New Zealand Curriculum so special. After the official opening by NZPF Kaumatua, Tauri Morgan, the day began with addresses from the NZPF President Philip Harding, NZPF executive member, Peter Witana, Ministry of Education staff member Chris Harwood and the Secretary of NZEI, Paul Goulter. President Philip Harding took the Government’s distractions a step further suggesting that their policies had been detrimental to the sector. ‘The last four years have seen the systematic dismantling of many of the features of the New Zealand education system that have made it so successful, including innovation and experimentation,’ he said. He called on the group to refocus on what really makes a difference to children and their learning progress, and suggested what needs to happen. ‘It requires you to divert your energy away from the systems and processes that merely enhance NS and ensure instead that your school’s focus is on a rich, broad, and exciting education for your children which is supported by world class pedagogy and quality teaching,’ said Harding.
The theme was set for the day and Peter Witana continued the trend with a rousing speech addressing a new strategy for lifting Māori achievement. That our Māori children do not experience success in high enough numbers has challenged teachers and principals for many years. The establishment of Kura Kaupapa or Māori immersion schooling has gone some way to address the issue, but nearly 90% of Māori children remain in mainstream schools. Peter reminded his audience that the key to establishing a healthy learning culture for Māori was making sure that relationships and identity came first. Just how relationships are built and identity fostered will be different in different schools for different children, but they are key factors in ensuring that school is not a foreign or alienating place for Māori children. ‘Once they feel they belong at school,’ said Peter, ‘then the real learning can start.’ He noted that there are a number of very useful publications and programmes which the Ministry has produced, but mostly these come with no professional development. ‘That’s the bit that’s completely missing,’ he said, ‘and that is why we are making no significant progress for our tamariki.’ He went on to say that the profession has taken a lead and launched a joint initiative that NZPF has been working on with Ministry staff. Te Mātauranga Māori will use the LCN (Learning and Change Network) model to form clusters of motivated schools prepared to develop their response to cultural inclusiveness practice for Māori. Whilst there are some fabulous resources out there including Ka Hikitia and Tātaiako, they have not yet been well used by all schools. There is also a lack of confidence for many, and this model will seek to support those schools who are willing to meet the challenge. Chris Harwood from the Ministry was invited to address the audience on the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT). The development of the PaCT tool with its express purpose of improving the reliability of national standards data by making teacher judgements more consistent has not been wildly heralded by the teaching profession. The profession has long held the belief that the intentions for national standards are less about lifting children’s achievement and more about creating a measure by which teacher performance and school performance can be judged to facilitate the passage of teacher performance pay and public comparison of schools. These factors have created blockages to recognizing any merit the PaCT tool has for helping teachers show students’ progress over time and thus assist them in identifying next learning steps for children. Chris Harwood led the audience through the features of PaCT. It became quickly evident that embedded in the tool
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Steve King from Auckland gives NZPF executive member Phil Palfrey something to think about
Discussions continued over lunch
were excellent exemplars from which teachers could make judgements about what children could and couldn’t do and so assess their progress and achievement level. The merits of the tool were obvious, albeit that the process could be very time consuming. What disturbed the audience was that Chris could not assure the principals present that the data resulting from applying the PaCT tool would not be used for other purposes than monitoring students’ progress. She could not give assurance that the PaCT tool won’t become mandatory and that data won’t be harvested by the Ministry. Enthusiasm for the tool thus remains muted and engagement with it tentative. Paul Goulter, NZEI, gave a comprehensive and insightful presentation on the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) which has swept the world in recent years. In its wake we have seen the USA, the UK and Australia take up many of the reforms being suggested by the present Government in NZ, including various forms of national testing, league tables comparing schools’ performance, charter/academy schools and teacher performance pay. Without exception these reforms have resulted in each of the country’s achievement results declining. On the other hand countries such as Finland that have addressed issues of inequity, have only one type of school (public), and have no form of national testing/standards. They place a high value and high trust in the teaching profession and sit in the top world rankings for children’s achievement. New Zealand sits up there with Finland and thus has good reason to be concerned
about the negative effects the GERM could have on Kiwi kids’ achievement levels too. These presentations provided useful background for the curriculum focus and professional development debate which took place in the afternoon. Perry Rush Principal of Island Bay School in Wellington opened the afternoon session with a presentation which sheeted home the day’s theme of curriculum focus. The New Zealand Curriculum invites a dynamic approach where children learn in authentic contexts. To ensure that his school was responding to twenty-first century learning needs, Perry explained to the audience that he had taken his school and parent community through an important process of change based on best practice, best evidence and best research for twenty-first century learning. He engaged Dr Jane Gilbert, author of ‘Catching the knowledge wave’ to present her view of knowledge and learning. To the surprise of many of the school parents, she did not describe knowledge as something to be passed on or drilled into the children’s heads. Rather she described knowledge as a verb, a concept to be discovered by the children. Adopting this view knowledge meant changing the school’s learning and teaching approach. It meant placing children at the centre of learning which gave direction for developing pedagogical practice. Inquiry learning, problem solving and challenging children’s thinking became the key teaching approaches as a result.
Canterbury Principals enjoy a joke during the Moot
Moot-NZPF President Philip Harding joins delegates in the focus group discussions
All of this, Perry explained, sits alongside the school’s philosophy and school culture. The school’s philosophy or ‘what we believe about learning’ is about valuing children’s points of view, challenging their understandings, letting children test ideas and building learning around ‘big ideas’ or concepts. The philosophy itself is built around well respected educational research and theory. The school culture, he explained, is the educational environment and includes ‘what we care about’, ‘what we are willing to spend time doing’, ‘what we celebrate and what we talk about’. New Zealand schools are unique in the ways they partner with their parent communities. Communities contribute to the character of the school and especially what it values. This special relationship is an important factor when considering the levels of success that Kiwi kids achieve. Delegates strongly identified with Perry’s presentation and made many positive and encouraging comments. Some comments related to the all-important professional development, so necessary to keep teachers and principals alert to new ideas and motivated to try out new teaching methods, in other words to maintain high quality teaching standards. The next presentation from Ministry staffer Ray Webb on professional learning development (PLD) opportunities was therefore keenly anticipated. Ray opened his presentation with the statement that quality teaching has the greatest influence on student learning. No argument there. He proceeded to explain some of the inadequacies of past practice for accessing PLD which needed addressing. Where he began to lose his audience was in outlining the new ways of accessing PLD, which took the control and choice away from principals. He noted the following conditions for being granted access to Ministry funded PLD. Schools are prioritised according to need – as identified by National Standards or NCEA ■■ Regional and local offices factor in ERO review, contributing (i.e. feeder) schools and local knowledge ■■ A Regional Allocation Committee makes decisions that take into account capacity and previous allocations. ■■ Some schedules do not fit this design e.g. BeL ■■ Maori medium PLD ■■
Disappointingly, what was also evident was that the Ministry funded PLD was now limited by the introduction of national standards to literacy and numeracy and principals no longer have access to Ministry advisors in the arts, music, physical education, science or social sciences. Enosa Auva’a, President of the Pacific Island Principals’ Association reminded the delegates that Pacific Island children were not yet being well catered for in the mainstream with unacceptable numbers not succeeding. He made it clear that his people were very talented and capable and when the climate was set to accommodate their learning, Pacific Island students could aspire and succeed at the highest level. He challenged the audience to think harder and incorporate Pacific Island children’s cultural and learning needs when planning curriculum. Given that the current Government’s education reform agenda has not been very popular with the sector, delegates were eager to know if Chris Hipkins, MP and education spokesperson for the Labour party had a more palatable policy to offer. Chris won the audience quickly with his line ‘we don’t want schools competing with each other. We want every school to be a great school!’
Having assured his audience that national standards would not be compulsory, that charter schools would not be advanced and that the party had no interest in publicly comparing school performance based on national standards or pursuing performance pay for teachers, there was a general collective sigh of relief. He was not however skirting the issue of inequity and its contribution to an unacceptable number of children not achieving to their potential. He acknowledged the challenges ahead in addressing inequity and that it would take a multiagency approach to make any headway. He congratulated the principals on the outstanding work that they do in keeping New Zealand’s flag flying in the international achievement stakes, and vowed that a Labour Government would not want to introduce any policy that threatened that. Finally researcher Martin Thrupp presented an update on his on-going qualitative study on national standards and their effect on school practices. In terms of curriculum, his news was not great as some schools he has observed are beginning to focus more on national standards outcomes in just literacy and numeracy than on breadth of learning through a rich and diverse curriculum. The focus group discussions that followed generated a number of actions for NZPF to follow up but most importantly, delegates were reminded to return their focus to delivering a quality local curriculum that ensures breadth and engagement for all learners, irrespective of the political distractions.
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