The education 'lineout'

A headline last week left this mental image in my head: a rugby player, on the sideline, throwing the ball in to a line out. The player on the sideline was John Luxton, and the players in the line out were all politicians, mostly from the right. The 'ball' being thrown had the word 'education' written on it in childish crayon handwriting.

Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/editorial/image-editorial/jamie-george-saracens-throws-ball-into-lineout-10010888o

The words 'here we go again' have kept going round and round in my head. Of course our politicians know exactly what is wrong with our education system, and of course they know exactly how to fix it, in the same way that our local plumber knows how to do the heart valve bypass that a whānau member of mine will need in the next year or two.

Am I sceptical? Yes. Am I more than a little concerned? Damned right, I am. I suspect that a part of the answer will include .. yes, you guessed it.. 'more testing'. What annoys me is that no-one thinks to ask teachers how to improve education once it gets thrown into the political scrum. No-one thinks to look at the weight of evidence that is the 'teachers' 'front row' before suggesting improvements, once education gets thrown into the political scrum.

Yet as a profession we can tell you pretty much all of what is required, and perhaps unsurprisingly there are dissimilarities between what we would say. and what policy makers might suggest. Similarly there will likely be significant differences between what we would say and what the right wing neo liberals would suggest. Their solutions often involve greater choice for whānau. Sadly this in itself is based on.a flawed market model, flawed because it is based on a series of totally unrealistic assumptions like perfect knowledge, and consumer sovereignty.

You see, few educators would try to tell you that we have it right. However lots of educators can point you in the direction of the right answers. Take for example the current poor reading and numeracy outcomes for our learners. Solving this problem is not rocket science. Professor Stuart McNaughton (the PM;s education advisor), in his recent paper on reading, clearly points out that one of the biggest issues on reading in Aotearoa is that there is no systematic and universal approach to teaching reading. The conclusion must be that a good solution would be to adopt a universal approach to teaching reading. Even in this there is no one solution. There seem to be two sides to that argument, both flawed because they assume that the solution is a binary one. The answer isn't EITHER A and B. The loud voices seem incapable fo believing that the answer might actually be a little of A AND a little of B. Similarly with mathematics. Reflection on my own past is depressing when I think that I cam to teaching out of Initial teacher Education with NO (yes that's right ZERO) preparation for h[w to support literacy for learners!!!

The right wing desire to go back to what we have done in the past is another way of condemning the most vulnerable in our society to continuing failure. Our tail of underachievement is largely those of Pasifika and Māori origin, and those on low incomes. This is the result of what we have done over the past, whether it be silo'd subject teaching in secondary schools, or high stakes testing, or the belief that whānau choice will support successful schools and eliminate ineffective ones (educational Darwinism). Those schools that many think are 'successful' are those higher decile schools in which children start life with so many advantages. The success of those children has less to do with the school than with that comparative wealth of households. In this regard, the impact of the Manaiakalani pedagogy in those lower decile schools shows that we CAN make a difference, a big difference, for those children from poorer homes. 

Perhaps the biggest problem is that as a profession we allow ourselves to be taken in by the 'latest shiny thing', without stopping to think about the usefulness, the efficacy, of what we already do.

So .. what would my 'reckons' be (based on the weight of evidence, which is too vast to try to summarise in a simple pre-Christmas post like this) on what we need? Try these:

1. Develop and adopt universal approaches to teaching reading and mathematics. Resource roll out, and insist that these approaches are used. Too many teachers think they know better, with views that are nothing more than 'myth'.
2. Support the roll out of the Manaiakalani pedagogy across all lower decile schools (for those that wish)
3. Deliberately and intentionally support and embed creative and critical thinking (and creativity more generakly.. go back to those wonderful programme Beeby programmes of the 60s) across schools, especially in initial teacher education
4. Reform initial teacher education so that it supports strong behaviour management skills, and the entree into those universal approaches to teaching literacy and numeracy for ALL teachers (not just primary trained teachers). We already know how to do this, just take a look at the NZ Graduate School of Education model.. it WORKS!!!
5. Reform the funding and staffing models for all schools so that they support the demands of 21st century schooling, nit 19th century schooling.
6. STOP politicising education.. we are NOT your political football with which to capture the votes of the right wing, we are our children's futures, our nation';s future.

Well, that's all I want for Christmas.. is it too much to ask? Sadly, yes..