Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: What Hekia Parata actually said

Yamis

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 18:46:01 +1300

but you have to pay to get them tested and diagnosedand who'd have thunk...decile-10 private schools were getting as much as five times more funding than lower-decile schools as applications for help skyrocketed last year. ... In 2012, a total of 3418 of the 143,000 pupils who sat NCEA-level exams…

Sofie Bribiesca

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 14:03:14 +1300

It only reinforces my personal experiences of private schools being training grounds for tomorrow’s country club memberships.

I've always felt ,it's a whoyouknow situation here but also everywhere else I go and I concur, it was more beneficial to have grown up in Remuera than many other suburbs even tho…

Kumara Republic

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:04:54 +1300

and who’d have thunk…

It only reinforces my personal experiences of private schools being training grounds for tomorrow's country club memberships.

Hebe

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:25:51 +1300

And when kids do get funding for extra help it only lasts until the end of the school year and then has to be re-applied for in a process that often takes the whole first term.

Yes

Hilary Stace

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:22:28 +1300

Excellent commentary from the excellent Autism and Oughtisms blog about the Green Bay High situation where the board is now spending money to keep a kid out. To think that once Green Bay had a reputation for inclusion!

Hebe

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:20:28 +1300

Should be GP for our kids because the probs (relatively small but still probs) are directed related to prematurity. However, it comes under the education system. Dyslexia alone has only in the last 10 years recognised by the government as an issue deserving attention.

Basically we're cash-challenged right now and…

Sofie Bribiesca

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 10:05:08 +1300

And when kids do get funding for extra help it only lasts until the end of the school year and then has to be re-applied for in a process that often takes the whole first term.

Surely that could just be your GP that signs an ongoing treatment required therefore…

Hebe

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 09:51:02 +1300

move towards equity has just been announced.

Yay. Any news on when it comes into action in the schools?
My son's dyspraxia assessment cost $400 18 months ago; and the NCEA rules appeared to say another assessment would have to be done this year. If we hadn't paid for it…

Isabel Hitchings

Fri, 21 Mar 2014 08:42:09 +1300

And when kids do get funding for extra help it only lasts until the end of the school year and then has to be re-applied for in a process that often takes the whole first term.

Sacha

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 22:27:12 +1300

That's cheering news.Thank you Hilary.

Hilary Stace

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 22:25:00 +1300

I have been following this issue since it was revealed by the Dyslexia Foundation following an OIA request last year. Apparently the Ministry itself did not realise the extent that the private schools had grabbed the funding and the Kings/ Otahuhu College (literarily on opposite sides of the fence) example…

Sofie Bribiesca

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 22:09:05 +1300

Meanwhile at a much smaller private school I know of they have more reader/writers for assessments than we do even though we’d have several times the need!!!

I noticed today, The Greens are asking Questions with regard to a funding request of 2.5 mil for one of the wealthiest early…

Sacha

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:54:55 +1300

but you have to pay to get them tested and diagnosed

and who'd have thunk...

decile-10 private schools were getting as much as five times more funding than lower-decile schools as applications for help skyrocketed last year.
...

In 2012, a total of 3418 of the 143,000 pupils who sat…

Yamis

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:30:59 +1300

Perhaps you fix the long tail by identifying teacher needs, as much as pupil needs, rather than just presuming that mucking with their pay is going to help.

OK, now on this (sort of). It get's me to another issue. We have students with likely (read: bleeding obvious) learning difficulties…

Sacha

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:27:15 +1300

Wrong tool

wrong belief system

Yamis

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:19:03 +1300

...some sort of national math tool.Is that Bill English?

BOOM! :)

Yamis

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:14:19 +1300

If we assume we can do all that, we'd end up paying them according to how well they do compared to other teachers in the exact same environment. i.e. it may well be that teacher A in environment B might get more money than the exact same teacher in environment…

Rob Stowell

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 15:39:40 +1300

Even if all this could be done, is the best pay scheme to use to begin with?
No :)
Even if everyone agreed the measurements were fair, objective, and measured real, valuable, rich educational achievement. Wrong tool.

Konrad Kurta

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:19:56 +1300

it's still very much a system based on passing exams and collecting up magic pieces of paper

Korea was the same – kids are stuffed full of information that they passively regurgitate onto pieces of paper. Most students I encountered know grammatical theory, but can hardly speak a sentence in…

BenWilson

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 13:06:40 +1300

Even if all this could be done, is the best pay scheme to use to begin with?

Indeed. That all sounds like good data to collect, but you could make much more informed decisions about more things than just pay. You might use it to identify which teachers need more…

Dianne Khan

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 11:41:24 +1300

The interviewer might have been prudent to ask Ms Parata what the PACT system is for, what data it will hold, how teachers and their students' performances will be linked and whether any of that information will be used to determine teacher pay or school funding. That's the next thing…

Dianne Khan

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 11:18:25 +1300

PISA is notoriously shaky in terms of reliability. I remember being quite taken with it until I did much more research and discovered how small the samples are, how contentious the data analysis is, and how easy it is to potentially manipulate.

As with any form of test, it is…

Dianne Khan

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 11:16:20 +1300

The trouble is, when we have seen obfuscation from Mr Parata on so very many occasions previously only to discover later that there were indeed preconceived plans, it is no wonder people are mistrustful of her. She speaks in riddles, refuses to give straight answers, get cross if asked to…

Mellopuffy

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:33:14 +1300

Come to Dunedin, Chris!

Russell Brown

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 09:08:33 +1300

Holy crap.

The Brookings Institute this week published an extremely troubling backgrounder on the PISA results that have Hekia Parata so impressed with the shanghai system.

Short version: it appears that the system is deliberately shutting out poor, migrant students on a massive scale. On the face of it, PISA…

Sofie Bribiesca

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:56:43 +1300

All because she couldn’t be succinct or precise.

Her Wikipedia Entry has some enlightening info that could explain her obfuscation.
It may be a hangover from her days of "charging per word",to justify obscene charges ;)

Parata's consultancy firm was contracted to recommend the best options for providing "ongoing high…

JonathanM

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:41:52 +1300

The measuring of value added seems to me fraught with difficulty, particularly if you're wanting it standardised yet comprehensive (these being usually at odds).

Still, if we assume this can be done, then it seems to me that estimating the value added per-teacher, given school effects, socio-economic effects and the…

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:10:38 +1300

Singapore Girl... This'll fly!
Parata's championing of Singapore's incentivising of teachers, doesn't really give the full story of their Education system's changes*.
Nor does she seem to mention that many of the poor parents were monetarily incentivised as well – as part of the already strong nationwide programme to claw…

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 04:46:38 +1300

Lennon to the Left...
I’m trying to imagine a government that would simply state its policies rather than making us guess.
One that would know what it was doing, and can make intelligent hard calls, rather than pandering, to make us like it (during the courtship phase anyway)...
Give us…

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 04:39:01 +1300

...some sort of national math tool.
Is that Bill English?

Lucy Stewart

Thu, 20 Mar 2014 01:44:38 +1300

Last year I had a lower ability class of 17 and we destroyed the internal assessments (in a good way), but I’ve had the same class in other years with 28 or more in there and it’s been nightmarish to teach effectively and get good achievement rates, often times when…

Isabel Hitchings

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 23:08:43 +1300

What makes performance or added value impossible to judge is the amount of stuff that needs to be in place before results can start to show up. Kids can’t learn until they feel safe to take risks and often need to interact with ideas quietly and internally before they can…

Yamis

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 21:08:43 +1300

A few teachers in my department began to tinker with the value added system last year and are carrying on with it this year (as part of some professional development time we'd been allocated). The teacher who's idea it was is from the UK and has been part of it…

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 20:07:52 +1300

I'm trying to imagine a government that would simply state its policies rather than making us guess.

Alex Coleman

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 19:11:09 +1300

Pretty hard to see a clear answer to the fairly direct question:

‘and tell me if I’m getting it wrong… you are talking about pegging funding to delivery progress…outcomes?’

Given she now seems to be claiming she said nothing of the sort, you'd think a 'No, I'm not saying that',…

Felix Marwick

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:53:29 +1300

The confusing nature of her answers have been responsible for a large proportion of Parata’s problems. It once took myself and two other reporters a whole week and four interviews to determine exactly what the story was about teaching creationism in charter schools. All because she couldn’t be succinct or…

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 18:46:50 +1300

*although I note that she did actually front to be interviewed this time. Unlike with Novopay.

Cunliffe says “She has to go"

Danielle

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:53:28 +1300

I love* that our standards for her are so low that we're basically giving her props for being insufficiently obfuscatory. She's trying so HARD to pull the wool over our eyes, and failing, and this apparently means she's being open and honest. Heh.

*which means "hate", obviously

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:47:24 +1300

We are indeed and the spoken word hardly ever emerges in well wrought sentences and paragraphs even when the interviewee is used to being interrogated by journalists. If they do, its usually because the text has been fixed up at a later date and agreed between interviewee and interviewer.

If…

Tinakori

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:42:08 +1300

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:42:06 +1300

This Govt really acts like
pigs can fly with Napoleon up the top and few Squealers to do the dirty work.

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:36:44 +1300

I imagine most commenters would praise her frankness with an interviewer and willingness to actually answer questions

Eh? Are we discussing the same interview?

*although I note that she did actually front to be interviewed this time. Unlike with Novopay.

Tinakori

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:30:44 +1300

As a parent who has had two kids either pass through the system or in the process of passing through (state schools) – one NCEA, and one (with special needs) national standards and currently NCEA – I find the reaction here unrelated to our experience. Today's schools are a major…

Crunchy Weta

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 17:29:24 +1300

Please just ask her directly what Nationals plans for the next three years are. Don't give her wriggle room. It's a simple question and voters deserve an answer. If she has no plans, why not?

Lucy Telfar Barnard

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:53:04 +1300

My cousin is a teacher in the UK. She has taught under the "value added" system, at more than one school. At a hard school, her "value added" was low. When she switched jobs to a wealthier school, her "value added" went up in the first year. But as she…

Ross Mason

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:12:47 +1300

Two pages and you're talking about rent???

Eh?

Moz

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 16:05:29 +1300

By law they cannot increase the rent for the term of the lease. Given current crazy rent prices in some markets that may be a good thing, if the term is actually of such length as to buffer

I thought they could build in regular annual increases? Although in my…

Matthew Poole

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:38:54 +1300

fixed-term leases, with little discernable benefit to lessees.

By law they cannot increase the rent for the term of the lease. Given current crazy rent prices in some markets that may be a good thing, if the term is actually of such length as to buffer against the "It's been…

TracyMac

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:30:54 +1300

And yet our whole rental system is still based on the notion that it's a "temporary" lifestyle, rather than moving towards a more European-style model (where most people rent, often for decades, prices are much more stable, and you don't need to go cap-in-hand to the landlord if you want…

Sofie Bribiesca

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:27:44 +1300

That waffle suggested to me that funding will come out of state Schools and head into Charter PPP schools.That will eliminate the $2 out of $5 expense for property which can eventually be flicked off. With the rules already completely different for assessing teachers within their own system and check…

Ianmac

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:27:19 +1300

The Majority of kids do well in NZ schools.
But along comes Parata with a commodity production model and if re-elected will clearly produce a plan to tie productivity to funding. Simple. She says so as in transcript. As in a factory you count the objects coming off the conveyor…

andrew r

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:23:09 +1300

So true. Depressing how disconnected the populace would seem to be – given as you say, current polling – essentially middle NZ doesn't seem to care to much about er .. anything, house mortgages notwithstanding. Kind of depressing. Engaging with this ludicrous Minister of Education and policy ? Nah not…

Matthew Poole

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:10:57 +1300

The 15% difference isn’t because of overseas-based owners though

BNZ's head economist reckons 12% of Auckland's sales are to overseas buyers. I would say he's got a pretty reasonable handle on the situation. He also says the government should probably be measuring it properly, instead of relying on educated guesswork…

Andre

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:09:12 +1300

Thanks for the heads-up Mathew. The 15% difference isn't because of overseas-based owners though. Oh no... of course not. And did you realise that it is IMPOSSIBLE for the government to give a true figure on foreign ownership other than deals covered by the OIC? Not that they're covering up…

Martin Connelly

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:08:24 +1300

And I agree with everything said here.

Martin Connelly

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:07:18 +1300

After reading this, a couple of things occur to me. Firstly, the Minister was quoted as saying she would favour "performance pay for schools", but actually those words were put in her mouth. Secondly, she seems to be saying that the system currently funds a whole lot of things that…

WaterDragon

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:06:41 +1300

Interview notes substantively agree with the proposition.

Matthew Poole

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:04:39 +1300

as long as 65% of kiwis own homes

Down below 50% for the first time in recorded history, actually. Non-owners are now the majority.

Jolisa

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:02:19 +1300

"what difference I have made in my teaching and learning in this 6 month period"

LOUDLY: Testing every 6 months.

Exactly.

Because, if you're linking school funding and teacher salary – the big bucks – to this notion of progress, are you really going to just take a teacher's word…

Andre

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 15:01:18 +1300

Unfortunately, judging by recent landline-based poll results that still don't include "undecided" voter percentages, the public don't really care if the government is lying to them. Or selling us out to their rich privatisation-advocate mates piece by small piece. You could prove over-and-over again that the entire cabinet is full…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:58:08 +1300

Reading the transcript, one can’t help but get the impression that this minister is completely out of her depth.

And if it’s not incompetence on Parata’s part, then it’s cold, calculating Social Darwinism.

To follow Parata's threats to their logical extreme:

* Schools with low deciles and high numbers of…

Fiona

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:50:26 +1300

Not just testing, which has always happened in schools to measure progress, but standardised national testing at various stages younger than 15/16.

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:48:27 +1300

one can’t help but get the impression that this minister is completely out of her depth

Or obfuscating. I think parents and teachers in Chch would agree with that. Parata acts ruthlessly while speaking vaguely.

Matthew Poole

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:47:25 +1300

Reading the transcript, one can’t help but get the impression that this minister is completely out of her depth.

She'd be out of her depth as member for a local ward in Waikikamukau District Council. As a minister of one of the highest-spending portfolios in the country, she's a disaster.…

Chris Waugh

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:44:52 +1300

The mention of Shanghai worries me. I dunno, I've never been to Shanghai, and I've taught students from every municipality, province and autonomous region of China but Shanghai, but I find it hard to believe it somehow magically has vastly more autonomy than the rest of the Mainland in such…

geoff wood

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:43:42 +1300

So schools that are struggling, usually because of the socio-economic background of their pupils and often also run-down facilities, have their goalposts moved even further away by having their funds cut ?!!!! That's good because the saved money can then be splurged on her pet charter schools that have no…

Tom Semmens

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:42:31 +1300

Reading the transcript, one can't help but get the impression that this minister is completely out of her depth.

James W

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:37:23 +1300

Parata is like a walking cliché regurgitator. I actually groaned out loud when she said she could "unpack" those three dollars.

I've read it twice and I still don't know what her answer was. Is this how she got so far in her career? No one understands her so they…

Ross Mason

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:35:46 +1300

" One of the systems that has been most successful in closing the equity excellence gap are the ones that have strongly incentivised a focus on what difference I have made in my teaching and learning in this 6 month period – not just what's the final result – are…

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:35:38 +1300

At face value, this looks like a massive shift of resources from poor areas to rich areas, and that would really suck.

Exactly. And unless Parata actually denies this is the case, I think we can assume it's policy.

Euan Mason

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:29:58 +1300

Value added is certainly more rational than just stupid league tables based on "national standards" or NCEA. However, you need to ask how progress will be assessed, and also whether it is rational to punish schools that have plenty of kids who are likely to make less progress because they…

Lucy Stewart

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:29:15 +1300

It looked to me (from what you quoted) like she was focusing on value add more than, say, exam results.

Yeah, but value added has pretty well proven to be a total crock in the US, due to the inherent noise in the data from different students, classes, and years.…

Matthew Poole

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:28:48 +1300

It's bloody confusing, I'll give you that. The decile review must happen with the census data having been released, that's a given. It actually surprised me that the Ministry's been stonewalling on answering that question, since it's a mandatory exercise. That they have suggests other mischief going on, to my…

Allan Moyle

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:25:54 +1300

this, and the $350M for Change Leaders etc are about the imposition of this approach. The Change Leaders will be assessed on outcomes – not child focused education ones, but education testing & data analysis ones – potentially to come from corporate providers (because the sector cant be trusted). And further…

Dave Guerin

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:20:13 +1300

It looked to me (from what you quoted) like she was focusing on value add more than, say, exam results. She was also stressing how it was complicated and that there wasn't a simple answer. It looked like she was being quite conceptual and kicking ideas around. That is not…

Hebe

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:18:21 +1300

Gotcha.

Jolisa

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:13:35 +1300

Yup.

Fiona

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:11:07 +1300

I'm impressed he managed to get any sort of story at all out of that waffle.

Surely, the most telling question is the last one that you posted – Milne is very clear in his question and if she didn't think it was going to be up for grabs as…

Lilith __

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:05:42 +1300

Fucking hell.

Public Address

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 14:05:42 +1300

Discussion from blog post.