Posts by Yamis
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Hard News: For want of some purpose, in reply to Kumara Republic,
And I posted on that thread about the real issue - the unwritten class war that is the education system. Hell, I even suggested to the Metro people about it as possible article material.
apologies for going OT here. Stop reading NOW and scroll down 20cm's to next post. Started as a few lines and then took viagara or something.
What would be nice if Metro actually did a series of articles which looked at all the aspects that they reckon make a 'good school'.
"(1) across the board academic achievement (DONE), (2) top academic achievement, (3) values, (4) safety, and (5) breadth and depth of opportunity. "
Of course some of them are impossible to measure but they are not impossible to discuss.
Top academic achievement is interesting I guess. It's also hit and miss year on year at schools. Amazingly talented kids tend to do well regardless of how awesome or incompetent their teacher is. There are plenty of mid to low decile schools that can produce the best student in NZ in an individual subject.
On Values it's not that hard to go to school websites or email them and ask them what their school value statements are and discuss what direction schools are trying to go in these days.
Safety is problematic but can be dealt with sensibly without scaremongering (my school has it's share of drugs, violence, bullying etc but by and large it's confined to a very small minority, your average kid side steps it with good grace).
And breadth and depth of opportunity would probably be a fantastic chance to show just how many amazing things that students can do at schools these days. There are stats out there on participation in sports by school region (West Auckland being the lowest in NZ! believe it or not at about 45% from memory).
Obviously most of the content in those articles would be non personal, or rather non school specific but you can still make yourself useful Mr. Metro. They just have to do the leg work. How many sports do you play in your school? How many teams do you have? How many cultural groups do you have? How many school clubs odo you have?
This shit is just as important as how a school can take a smart kid and make them smarter, or a kid who's flat lining at year 9 and get them to get Level 1 before they leave at Year 13.
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The Crown Goes Wild? Does that mean the judge will be wearing pink bell bottoms and a tank top? :)
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Paul Brislen,
I've heard from one primary school that the data gathered for the ministry is now being assessed on a much lesser scale than the curriculum demands. The reason I presume is to make sure the kids all "pass" in numbers such that National Standards can be declared a success.
Revisiting the start of this topic...
The teacher of my 5 year old said that after a year at primary, students should be at a reading level of 15 according to national standards BUT she felt that level 13 was fine for students at that age. They are just numbers to me but I realise that they are code for the difficulty of book that they can read.
And this is at a decile 9 school where most kids are being read to every night.
We are a reading household, with hundreds of books and my daughter loves them, so if she's below the national standard then where is the bar being set?
Literacy is utterly vital to success in secondary school, I see the results of poor literacy every day and so WE must make sure that all students entering high school are at the required level of literacy in order to even be able to compete. But if we are going to spend money testing then we need to spend ten times more money assisting those who aren't going to be ready. Another issue is the huge number of ESOL students in schools now. Whilst most schools probably have some facility for them to be getting extra help they are by and large chucked into mainstream and when they fail they become part of the failing 'tail' which we get blamed for, nevermind they don't understand us because we aren't speaking to them in Korean, Chinese, Indian, Portugese or Swahili.
bonus round...
Contemporary teenage slang words of the day: "dry" and "care".
You get 1 point if you've heard them used by teens recently and 2 points if you know what they mean and can apply them in a sentence/context.
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No worries. I agree with 100% of the rest of your posts. :)
I think that parents probably did respond focussing on the impact on their childs education of having a couple extra kids in the class. But at the same time they are realising that the poor teacher will have to sit down at an extra desk or two explaining something before arriving at their childs and that sucks for everybody because the clock is ticking.
Most days I am in the situation of having to very quickly explain something in a one on one situation because other students are waiting, or not being able to get to properly get to the kids that are disengaged because I'm too busy focussing on those that are actively asking for clarification on something.
What is EXTREMELY important in terms of national standards, and 'failure/success'... and class sizes is the importance of class sizes based on class ability. Class sizes don't matter so much when class behaviour and class ability is solid because you can get the class to shush quickly, and they all understand something the first time you explain it or near enough. But class size is extremely important when you have students who are less well behaved and take longer to understand new concepts and ideas. As a general rule you could have 26-32 students in the former, but 18-24 is a better number in the latter. Only that never happens. In my experience anyway. They are 28 or thereabouts in both.
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OT by and large but...
Is there much difference between Dio and St Cuths? I heard years and years ago that St Cuths girls were given a more well rounded education and were more tolerant.
Any truth to that?
Are we talking Oxford and Cambridge?
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The human slinky owns Friday.
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Jackie Clark,
Yeah, that. Although not the bit about my rant being irrelevant because, you know.
Likewise. I was responding to an observation that you made Tim!!! Not claiming that that was the main issue. Too intellectual for me :)
I don't know about the Dilworth example though. How many students are changed for life because they went there and got to mix with some Dio girls if they weren't too shy? I was too shy to mix with girls in my own flamin class when I was at high school. It's a city of 1,400,000. It's more that similar sort of opportunity over a much wider area across dozens and dozens of schools in Auckland.
There are so many melting pot schools that have a range of 'deciles' within them.
In West Auckland alone going roughly west to east there's Massey High, Waitakere College, Rutherford College, Henderson High, St Doms, Liston College, Avondale College, Kelston Boys and Girls, Lynfield College, Green Bay High, Mt Albert Grammar (out of interest Steve Price is coaching their league team this year).
Mind you I shouldn't just cherry pick from West Auckland because everybody knows that Westside is where it's at, cos' if you're from the west side of your town then make them other suckas bow down.
Stat attack: From the MoE website - "Currently the ethnic breakdown of school rolls in Auckland is European 42%, Pasifika 21%, Asian 18%, Māori 15%, Others 4%".
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Hard News: Moving from frustration to disgust, in reply to Jackie Clark,
What you said. I arrive at school at about 8am and leave at about 5pm EVERY RUDDY DAY. Well except for the days when my sports team that I manage has an away game in which case it's an hour or 2 later after dropping them all off home after dark.
I'm now going back to marking at 8pm :( Have approximately 100 papers to mark and 140 report comments to make in the next week. Which I can't physically do so guess what I'll be doing in the 'holidays'. My co-curricular sports team takes up approximately 80 hours of my time in term 2 and again in term 3. That's 4 full working weeks just on them :) No extra pay because the school gets given a paltry amount of money for TIC's. There might be 50 teachers who deserve them and about 15 actually get them.
I'm not complaining, just stating how it is because y'know, it's my job and it's what I signed up for, but if anybody believes teachers go from 9 to 3 with 12 weeks off then they can shove it. Or else the teacher you do know who does that is neglecting a large chunk of their job and/or is bludging off the hard work of colleagues or fobbing off their responsibilities on others. And that does happen. I've been on the end of people playing dumb, staying quiet, and 'hiding in the shadows'.
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Follow up to my daughters report which was a list of 'national standardy' type stuff.
We just had parent teacher interviews a couple of hours ago and her teacher said that they had to have those reports written and to the principal 5 weeks earlier and she had actually started writing them in the previous holidays (9+ weeks ago), so the stuff in there that my daughter "couldn't do yet" was all out of date.
If teachers have to spend that much time testing and then preparing these reports that they are out of date and subsequently have less space to mention all other aspects of her school life then what's the ruddy point?
The 20 min meetings with parents that is now common at schools each year is bloody useful though. Came away knowing that smarty pants is doing well (mad art skills and teacher recommends we get her into some holiday art programs) and knowing that her teacher is ON TO IT.
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Nice post tim.
Our teenagers rank VERY highly in the OECD and also our NCEA pass rates nationally have been creeping up year on year since they were brought in and yet there's this idea that things are broken.
What follows is a bit of a rant about sample sizes (in my secondary school because that's what I know, although this league tables thing is more aimed at primary schools right?) and the risk of the data being used to 'track' schools by parents, media, ministry ...
At my school our pass rates vary each year because of the smaller sample size (and we are a BIG secondary school) depending on that particular cohort so it could vary ENORMOUSLY at smaller schools. We might have a year where the Level 2 pass rate is 55% and the next year it's 62% or whatever and the following year it is 56%. I would hate to think that people look at that and say "the school is no good", or "that school is going backwards" or whatever and take their kids out, or don't enrol their kids there based on something as stupid as a (downward) fluctuating number.
If you have a weaker year level, people see those stats, over-react or don't understand them then you could well end up screwing schools where their roll drops, a nearby schools rises and this continues year after year so one school can start cherry picking its kids...
Even my classes can vary a lot each year. One year I might get a class with 15 seriously on to it students where they will do real well regardless of how competent I am, and the next year in the equivalent class I have 4 smarties. I know that my results might be somewhat lower despite the fact that you like to think you're a more on to it, better resourced teacher each year... You get some classes where you think "if I can get those 8 kids out of 25 to pass this assessment I'll have done bloody well", then other years where you know that getting 8 to pass would be a diabolical result.
On primary schools though, I'd hate for people to be looking at any stats from small sample groups (relatively speaking) and drawing immediate assumptions.
They should almost come with a "margin of error +/- 1,000,000%".