Rural Ramblings - New Zealand Principal Magazine

Just as winter was starting to feel relentless, nature England – my own being particularly vociferous on the subject. delivered up a glorious blue sky day. The drive to work featured As she ranted she delivered some very hard stares in my father’s a stunning view of Mt Ruapehu’s peak, we opened the staffroom direction. Although it was an unwritten rule in our family that doors and sat out on the deck; it felt like time to book our annual nobody disclosed who they had voted for, she strongly suspected ski trip. him of being responsible for Mrs T’s election. After successive years of disastrous weather no one is keen to I too was devastated by her budget cuts – not because of the pick the date. Two years ago the mountain was open and the day milk, I never touched the stuff – but because at the age of six I was clear – unfortunately school was blanketed in snow and we held the highly coveted position of milk monitor. This meant couldn’t get to the highway. Last year we decided on an overnight that I left class 10 minutes early to take the tops off the milk and trip to give children two days of skills learning. On the first day put the straws in. It also meant that I could get away without I spent an hour with the juniors, who were valiantly battling to drinking any myself! make their skis into wedge shapes while the sleet stung their I was at university in the Midlands of England during the 5-year-old faces. Miraculously nobody cried and after hot chocolate and morning tea they went back out for more! On day 2 we woke to fresh snow and the news that the It is difficult for principals to stand mountain was closed – undaunted my class developed their throwing skills during our whole-school snowball against league tables without fight but there was no skiing to be done. I am hoping this seeming defensive – it is therefore year will be different. In general I’m no great fan of winter – I grew up in encouraging that more than 100 England where winter is grey and miserable and started high school during what the media dubbed the ‘Winter academics in our universities have of Discontent’. There were widespread strikes amongst also voiced their concerns. trade unions, rubbish piled up on the streets and hospitals admitted only emergency cases while workers picketed entrances. . . . Then in 1979 Mrs Thatcher was elected. miner’s strike. I got a job at the local pub; this was as much of At the time I was blissfully unaware of her mission to privatise an education as the lectures I attended during the day. On my national industry and reduce the power of trade unions – in first night I was surprised – given that this was the north of my house she was Margaret Thatcher: Milk snatcher. Maggies’s England in 1987 – when a couple of very well-built men walked proposals to reduce education spending by cutting funding in wearing eyeliner. I quietly asked the landlady whether it for free milk in schools did not endear her to the mothers of was normal for local men to come out wearing make-up – she laughed hysterically and announced to the whole pub that the new barmaid thinks our blokes wear make-up. It turned out that working down the mine meant that coal dust got trapped around miners’ eyes. Of course Mrs Thatcher solved the problem soon afterwards by closing the mine. By the time I graduated the Iron lady had been ousted and we were poised for an election. It seemed certain that I would start my teaching career with a left-wing government which I naively assumed would mean more social justice and egalitarian education policy. I was wrong on all counts. I would be lying if I told you I left the UK because of its political leadership – it was most definitely the weather. My criteria for job applications was a minimum winter temperature of 25°C. So it was whilst working in British schools overseas that I witnessed the horrors of national testing and league tables. National testing meant that children sat tests at the ages of 7, 11

and 14. As teachers we taught for the first two terms and spent the third term teaching children to take tests. According to Derek Gillard, in his excellent online history of British education, in late 2000: Meanwhile, junior education minister Stephen Byers was busy ‘naming and shaming’ eighteen ‘failing schools’, a policy which – combined with the effects of league tables and parental choice – inevitably caused poorer schools (usually those in less affluent areas) to become even worse. As these schools become less popular, they found it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain good staff. It was a vicious circle. Rather than improve the situation for pupils in the poorer areas, therefore, government policies actually exacerbated the problem and widened the divide between successful and unsuccessful schools. It is for this reason that I will be working hard to explain to my community why league tables are a bad idea. It is difficult

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for principals to stand against league tables without seeming defensive – it is therefore encouraging that more than 100 academics in our universities have also voiced their concerns. If we continue down the track that Finnish educationalist Dr Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM (the Global Economic Reform Movement), the evidence from the UK shows that there is much worse to come. The last chapter of Derek Gillard’s history talks about the impact of academies (the UK version of charter schools) and the current move towards free schools – state-funded schools run by parents without an obligation to follow the national curriculum. While NZ education weathers this winter of discontent our school will be banishing the winter blues on the slopes – I will be the one in the sunshine yellow ski-pants so that the children can spot me easily in whatever position I happen to land! Reference Gillard, D (2011). Education in England: A brief history. Available at: www.educationengland.org.uk/history/

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