I've got three daughters, the eldest has been through High School and is now finishing up her BCom on the way to being an accountant, then the middle child is doing NCEA level 1 this year, the youngest being still at Primary School.
Observation - the NZ secondary education system is broken. I'm talking about State schools here, as I have knowledge of them as a parent of children attending State schools.
Basically, NCEA is flawed. Several problems as I see it:-
* being largely internally assessed the children are subject to the whims of teachers;
* the curriculum is delivered in a modular fashion, with little effort to link these modules so students can see a subject end-to-end. The best example here is with Accounting, with students often not knowing how Journals, Ledgers, Trial Balances and Final Accounts fit together.
* With the teachers not being subject to rigorous external review, they pretty much do whatever they like, which in subjects like History means a lot of Movies, Documentaries and TV shows. Anything to avoid actually getting students to improve their thinking.
* The process is more important than the underlying quality of what is being taught or learnt.
Teachers rule the roost. Challenge them and they close ranks fast. And the minimum teaching standard is very low, with the ability to get on with other teachers more important than actual teaching ability. An incompetent teacher is almost impossible to remove if they're liked by their peers.
Need I go on ?
NZ is on the slide and not in a good way.
The solution? A robust system of teacher evaluation needs to be reinstated. In New York, for instance, to get a license to teach requires sitting exams that are - wait for it - really hard. Oh and you need a Masters to boot. In NZ effective control has been handed to teachers alone and that was a mistake, probably governments buckled to teacher lobbying.
Boards of Trustees I hear you say? But teachers have a say there too, no?
Ministry and ERO? Oh c'mon, they're rubber stampers. And they're all teachers too.
The whole system needs to be overhauled. And I mean turn it upside down.
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