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The Cost of Marketing in Schools Robert Aitken Leah Watkins Robert Aitken Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Marketing, the University of Otago Leah Watkins Department of Marketing, the University of Otago Sanitarium’s recent decision to sell Up&Go in vending machines in schools has drawn public criticism about the growing commercialisation of our schools […]
Knocking down walls and bu furniture? What are Innovative Learning Environments in NZ schools really about? Dianne Smardon and Jennifer Charteris University of New England, Armidale, NSW, Australia Are we facing a learning revolution through Innovative Learning Environments (ILEs) or are we merely recycling the ‘open barns’ of the 1970s? Migrating from the notion of ‘Modern […]
Institute of Education, Massey University, Palmerston North The inequality of school achievement has been highlighted in recent articles in The New Zealand Herald, and rightly so, for it is one of the biggest problems confronting the country today and shows no signs of going away. The debate about what is to be done and why, […]
WHAT IS REALLY MODERN ABOUT LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS? Gregory Lee The University of Canterbury Howard Lee Massey University As regular readers of the New Zealand Principal journal was the academic secondary schools. will know, references to ‘modern learning environments’ Hogben, for his part, maintained that the primary and (MLEs) and to their characteristics have appeared frequently in […]
The idea was very simple. Open up schools to ‘parent power’, and educational failure would disappear. Fuelled by the threat of the loss of students, schools teaching failing kids would up their game to attract students, or would fail. Coming from the dulcet tones of Labour Prime Minister David Lange, it all sounded so rational. […]
Can ‘Investing in Educational Succ Challenge Set For It? A/Prof John Clark Massey University The Investing in Educational Success (IES) initiative was announced by the Prime Minister with great fanfare in 2014. $359 million was to be allocated over the first four years of the project with a further $155 million a year after that. This […]
As is customary following the election, government ministries prepared briefings for their incoming minister. The Treasury briefing made three recommendations ‘to improve educational attainment at lower cost’ (p. 4) (‘get more for less’). One of the three was ‘Implement initiatives to improve school teacher quality, funded by consolidation of the school network and increasing student/teacher […]
Can National Standards real achievement gap? John A Clark School of Educational Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North j.a.clark@massey.ac.nz New Zealand has a major education problem. The Minister of Education, Mrs Anne Tolley (2011, p. 1), in her address to the 2011 annual conference of NZEI, put it this way: ‘the Government’s biggest concern is the […]
School of Educational Studies, Massey University, Palmerston North New Zealand is not alone in acknowledging the serious problem of inequality in school achievement. Chris Husbands, the Director of the University of London Institute of Education, has observed that ‘England is notable for its PISA results for having a proportion of pupils whose performance is among […]
We now know principal leadership makes a difference to school improvement and that innovative schools have effective leaders. Leadership is somewhat a paradox in that we want ordinary, humble leaders but we demand from them extraordinary results. The challenge then has been identifying which aspects of leadership make a difference. What lessons have been learned […]
Principal, Queenstown Primary School lynb@queenstown.school.nz The significant development of students’ self-regulated learning skills can be associated to positive academic growth. (Conclusion from pilot study) After completing a PhD thesis in 2010, which focused on the development of self-regulated learning (SRL) skills in young students, I was keen to continue my research around specific effective teaching […]
After the 2011 General Election, the National-ACT Confidence and Supply Agreement stated that a new kind of school called a charter school would be set up. Based on models in USA, UK and Sweden, these schools would be funded by the state but be operated by sponsors who may be boards of trustees, community groups […]
