Wow, Anne Tolley travelled to America to visit the radical shaker upper of schooling in Washington DC, in order to get some idea of how to fix NZ's schools. I'm impressed. I wrote about Rhee back in December last year. While I don't think public schooling can be fixed, it can certainly be improved. Paying good teachers more and firing the bad ones would be a great start. Fast tracking new aspiring teachers with Master's Degrees ... mmmmm, just get rid of the need for a qualification altogether.
In my opinion, the biggest thing the Government could do would be to leave schools alone and let parents decide which schools are worth supporting and which are not. Get rid of the odious reporting that the Government requires, let teachers teach and not be bureaucrats. Give principals the power to approve pay rises for teachers they want to keep and the power to fire those they don't want. Let them hire who they want, without any need for teaching qualifications (thus destroying the power of the socialist collective). Remove the restrictive zoning laws that prevent parents from supporting the good schools. And throw out the mandatory curriculum for primary school. Let each school decide what they will teach and let the parents decide if they want to support what the school teaches. Just provide an end of primary school basic skills test in maths and English to ensure that there is a minimum standard guide for high-school. In other words, stop interfering with education, stop asking for nth level information from the teachers and education will improve itself.
Update: The biggest thing would be to do away with compulsory schooling altogether. Making schooling mandatory, when everyone knew it's value anyway, was the beginning of the end of any decent sort of education. It's almost as if the Government has a poisoned touch, whatever it turns it's attention to falls apart over the long term.
In my opinion, the biggest thing the Government could do would be to leave schools alone and let parents decide which schools are worth supporting and which are not. Get rid of the odious reporting that the Government requires, let teachers teach and not be bureaucrats. Give principals the power to approve pay rises for teachers they want to keep and the power to fire those they don't want. Let them hire who they want, without any need for teaching qualifications (thus destroying the power of the socialist collective). Remove the restrictive zoning laws that prevent parents from supporting the good schools. And throw out the mandatory curriculum for primary school. Let each school decide what they will teach and let the parents decide if they want to support what the school teaches. Just provide an end of primary school basic skills test in maths and English to ensure that there is a minimum standard guide for high-school. In other words, stop interfering with education, stop asking for nth level information from the teachers and education will improve itself.
Update: The biggest thing would be to do away with compulsory schooling altogether. Making schooling mandatory, when everyone knew it's value anyway, was the beginning of the end of any decent sort of education. It's almost as if the Government has a poisoned touch, whatever it turns it's attention to falls apart over the long term.
Lucia, it's the associate minister driving this. She has worked very hard to get Tolley to even consider it.
ReplyDeleteGooner, thanks. :)
ReplyDeleteI would also add that schools have the power to hold students back if they dont get up to a certain standard due to lack of effort.
ReplyDelete