Monday 30 March 2015

And so, nine weeks later.....

End of March already - how did that happen?! My grandmother - known to all and sundry as Neena - used to say, "Sometimes, the faster I go, the behinder I get." I fear she was dead right. As Alice in Wonderland's Rabbit said, it's all too easy to be "Late - I'm late" - whether or not the date is important.

Term one is always pretty busy for any school - we are no exception: getting the year started / sports teams involved in  touch and flippa ball / three-way conversations / Phoenix (and for many, Southland athletics) days / Hiwi the Kiwi / assemblies / ukelele / choir / Tuinga Tahi (auditions) / mufti day / Easter raffle... and that's just the out of the classroom stuff!

In general, the kids have done well. Many are getting used to new experiences; be they a new room, teacher, or school; new friends, new interests; new systems and methods. One of the huge challenges for schools is engaging kids; in short: keeping them interested in what they are doing. 

The challenge for schools is that we live in increasingly hi-tech, hi-speed, sound-byte world. Kids are immersed in that culture for the 88% of their time: the percentage of the year they are not in a classroom. While you maybe able to learn all you need to know about fast food / energy drink / the latest i-gizmo in a 30-second TV ad; the same cannot be said of the NZ Curriculum. 

If we could reduce the curriculum to  a series of 30-second 'lessons'....the universities would be full of nine-year-olds. However, it is highly likely that those nine-year olds would have learnt very little at all about persistence, resilience, personal excellence, resourcefulness. And quite likely their social, skills would be those of a Muppet - with no hand inside it - rather limited... 

Kids need to be rounded individuals. They need to have the chance to develop persistence, resilience, that other stuff and...creativity. In an education system being increasingly driven by the political agendas hell-bent on measuring things, creativity - the food that feeds the soul - has been increasingly being sidelined. Why? Because it can't readily be measured. 

No Minister of Education has ever stood in Parliament and claimed, "Due to this government's education policies, New Zealand children's creativity has improved 3.7% in the last financial year." No Minister of Education has ever stood and claimed that kids relationship skills have improved by whatever percent either. But you will hear those claims about reading, writing and mathematics - almost always in relation to the National Standards policy.

For the past couple of years, we have been part of a cluster of four city schools taking part in a nationwide initiative known as the Learning Change Network (LCN). While the vast majority of schools (representing almost 4000 students) focussed on improving students' reading, maths or writing (the most common choice): none of the strategies employed focussed on the National Standards - or anything else that could be readily measured in terms of quantities and percentages. 

Commonly LCN schools focussed on future-focussed learning; engagement with whanau; and/or teacher effectiveness. (We focussed on the last two because relationships between school, whanau, and the kid; are the biggest keys to success - all of us paddling the same boat in the same direction). 

While participant schools fund their own involvement in the LCN; the Ministry of Education does fund a small team of largely part time facilitators to work with clusters. Not surprisingly; one of the requirements was that they report back to the Ministry in a format that included the LCN schools' National Standards data - garnered from each schools end of year reporting.

The chart below shows the dramatic gains against the National Standards made by LCN schools cohorts: 
  
Group
Total learners
% of learners
Percentage Point change 2013-2014
Total (all learners, all subjects)
3795
100%
24.43pp
Writing
2391
63%
24.72pp
Mathematics
946
24.90%
26.01pp
Reading
458
12.10%
19.65pp
Māori
1247
32.90%
19.32pp
Pasifika
714
18.80%
17.65pp
Male
2462
64.90%
22.3pp
Female
1333
35.10%
28.33pp

In comparison; below is the nationwide picture (for all schools); a story of very small gains for 2011 - 2013. 
2014-TopicID-122072-fig1 
The 2014 data isn't publicly  available yet, but the trend of very small gains will undoubtedly remain.

So: we'll keep doing what we're doing in partnership with the families and nga whanau of our targeted students (see - you do make a difference!); and we'll keep on doing what we're doing with all our Waverley Park kids - hopefully continuing to help develop well-rounded individuals as a result.

Finally: if you haven't already; check out Sir Ken Robinson's take on whether or not schools kill creativity.

Cheers.

Kerry