Parata’s school revamp still vexes
Classrooms are undergoing a transformation and children, parents and whole communities will be affected – even what time you drop little Jimmy off at school could change.
This is all part of a monumental shift in New Zealand’s education system – the biggest revamp in nearly 30 years.
Leading the charge on it all is Education Minister Hekia Parata.
Under changes as part of the Education Legislation Bill, currently in the committee stage in the House, schools will have more flexibility in their timetables and be able to cater to the particular needs of their school and students.
Reaction from schools back in March was mixed. Some were ‘‘horrified’’ at the chaos it could cause in terms of pickups and dropoffs for parents while others were keen on the flexibility.
Some high schools have already moved towards later start-times to allow for sleepy teen, who don’t take a lot in at 8.30am as it is.
Children enrolling in online schools instead of going to regular school? Nuts or the way of the future? The sweeping change (part of the Education (Update) Amendment Bill) will allow any school, tertiary provider or an approved industry to apply to be a ‘‘community of online learning’’ (COOL). There will be a rigorous accreditation process and each provider will have to get sign-off from the education minister.
The idea is based on every young person already operating in a world where technology and ‘‘being connected’’ is the norm and this is a chance to update legislation to provide that option in the future.
Under the Education (Update) Amendment Bill, which recently passed its first reading in the House, schools will have the ability to implement a cohort entry policy, which means new entrants could start school only at the beginning of each term.
The earliest a child would be able to start school is at the beginning of the term closest to their fifth birthday – this means some children will be able to start school up to eight weeks before they turn 5 and others will have to wait up to eight weeks after they turn 5.
Schools will have to advertise if they’re adopting the cohort policy.
Also under the new rules attendance will be compulsory for a child from the day they start school – currently the act doesn’t require children enrolled in school to attend regularly until they turn 6. This creates massive absentee issues for schools and can establish poor attitudes to learning.
For the past two years Parata has called for a change to decile- funding because it’s a blunt tool.
A review is under way aimed to ‘‘better align funding with student needs to lift achievement for all pupils’’. The decile system as it stands distributes more money to schools from low socio-economic communities and Parata wants to scrap the stigma of the system that has seen some parents participate in ‘‘white flight’’ and snub local low decile schools, which traditionally have higher proportions of Maori and Pasifika children.
An advisory committee looked at funding proposals, six of which were backed: taking a per-child approach to funding, more funding for children at greatest risk of underachievement in education, more money for small and isolated schools, changes to the way school property funding is managed, better accountability for student achievement and supporting a wider range of education options, like private and charter schools.
The funding for at-risk children would target students that met one of four factors: a parent who had been to prison, if they or a sibling had suffered child abuse, if their family had relied on a benefit for a prolonged period or if the child’s mother had no formal qualifications.
The ‘‘global funding’’ element of the review has been slammed by school unions, who have voted against the idea of schools not being given guaranteed funding to pay for teachers, which is separate from money used for operations costs such as power, stationery and cleaners. The global budget would combine all that money and schools would decide how much money goes toward staff.
Parata has acknowledged the strong opposition to the proposal but has not ruled it out despite paid union meetings around the country concluding with a vote strongly opposed to the idea.
She says the global budget is ‘‘purely a mechanism for paying’’ and it isn’t about ‘‘how we put together how much a school should get’’.
Special education funding has risen 29 per cent since 2009 and every year between 80,000 and 100,000 children receive some sort of specialist support.
Parata has revealed plans to focus that funding at an earlychildhood level, potentially cutting some funding for older age groups.
The idea is that by targeting children earlier, demand for funding at a later age will decrease. But that suggests children who are dyslexic won’t necessarily be dyslexic still when they’re a teenager.
Parata plans to reassess the effectiveness of funding for 18 to 21-year-olds and ‘‘whether there are better ways of helping these students transition out of school’’.