Editor
I recently listened to a presentation by Dr Welby Ings. If learning environments their teachers have carefully constructed you’ve never heard of him, find his book Disobedient Teaching, around them. and have a read. It’s fascinating. Then there are those who work in the abstract. They won’t do He doesn’t beat about the bush. He well in tests either but we need those says, ‘when policy is wrong you must New Zealand has just thinkers. The final victims are those disobey it.’ Teaching, he said, is not a who do succeed in tests because they job. It is a vocation. As such teachers elected a progressive are the ones who are risk averse; who are called to do what is right and good Government that many have can’t think if the ground is unstable. for young New Zealanders and they They are the ones who ask about the described as a Government test and what will be measured. Then must be trusted to get on and do it. His greatest criticism targeted the they learn just the topics to be tested. neoliberal approach to education of generational change. His bluntest comment was a veiled which has dominated the past decade. warning that, ‘we must provide He said the biggest mistake of the neoliberal approach is that it superb leadership so that a better resourced country does not confuses a measure of learning with a measure of performance. turn our country into a sweat-shop,’ he said. The ‘testing for ‘They are not the same thing!’ he insisted. ‘Instead of the child accountability’ model leads to mediocrity, not new ideas and being at the centre, we put standards at the centre, and that is innovations, and so makes us an easy target for take-over,’ he said. wrong.’ New Zealand has just elected a progressive Government that He went on to say that today we are testing for accountability many have described as a Government of generational change. and measures, such as standards, are comparative. They compare The parties making up the new coalition Government have one student against others and against defined criteria. ‘We give promised to change the direction the system has followed for a student a mark, grade or position but tell none of the richness the past decade. They have promised to eliminate the Charter that shows us the development of ideas. Tests measure isolated School model and the legislation that enables them. They have skills, content knowledge and a few facts,’ he said, ‘but these are promised to abandon national standards as a high stakes public the least important skills.’ measure of school performance. They have promised to work What the tests don’t measure are initiative, creativity, alongside the profession giving them real input into policy imagination, conceptual thinking, curiosity, effort, irony, development so that only policies that will improve learning judgment, commitment, nuance, good will, ethical reflection, for young people, enable teachers to do their professional work, or a host of other valuable dispositions. ‘These are the most and enable principals to lead quality public schools will be on important skills,’ he said. the agenda. Ings told us that testing generates ‘high dependency’ behaviours Dr Ings will be amongst those loudly applauding that the from students who want to know ‘How did I do in the test?’ neoliberal agenda for New Zealand schools has now come to Youngsters, who are agents of their own learning, don’t need an end. The days of assessment measures controlling everything a test to tell you how they are doing or where they are up to in have finished and the learners of our schools can now truly their learning. They can tell you that any time because they know become the central focus. It will once again be safe to trust those how they learn. Testing doesn’t teach that. institutions that support schools in their work and once again His harshest criticism of the neoliberal approach came as funding for education will not be channelled off into managerial he listed the groups of young people who pay the price of the models, national standards and privatisation opportunities. regime. The reflective thinkers are the first victims, he said. They New Zealand will be saved from its future as a ‘sweat shop’. will fail the test because they want to think about questions over a longer time-frame. They are the sorts of people who invent things, like the student who invented the wheelchair that can drive up steps. Then there are the finely tuned thinkers. When we use blunt tools to understand their learning, they shut down. The testing environment to them creates stress and they underperform. Their test results give a damagingly false indication of the quality