(b)Status of Teaching:

The status of the teaching profession in New Zealand is a major concern now and over the next five years I believe this will become the main issue in education.

Currently in the UK teaching is seen as an "unsustainable profession" by many educational commentators and not sufficiently intellectually challenging by many university graduates and requires radical change if it is to attract a new generation of graduates into the classroom. The lack of intellectual challenge says a lot about how people outside teaching view what happens in our schools today.

- Such a situation is also imminent in the New Zealand context.

- Poor pay [example $60k max], low status and falling morale, allied to high levels of stress resulting from constant change, increasing bureaucracy and increasingly challenging students are key factors in our profession being unable to recruit and retain enough quality teachers to sustain itself in the long term. (N.B 3rd year lawyer earning more than 90% of my staff)

- I don't believe it is simply a matter of money although poor pay is a strong de-motivator.  Top

2.Growing Achievement Gap:

There is an assumption that certain groups in our society have no chance of academic success, so why bother with the hard stuff. Give them material they can do without trying. Americans have coined the term 'Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations'

The result is too many children segregated by low expectations, illiteracy and self doubts; "achievement gap". Too many educators have certain beliefs about who can and who can't learn.(NB Russell Bishop becoming the new guru of the MOE and Mr Mallard) Therefore the bar is lowered which robs those children of opportunities to grow intellectually.

The Minister recently proudly noted that more students were leaving school with qualifications since the introduction of NCEA. My question is: are these qualifications valid and meaningful or simply not worth the paper they are printed on.

New Zealand in fact has one of the poorest rankings for 'bottom end inequality' - a measure of the extent of the difference in achievement between children at the bottom and at the middle of each country's achievement range. Only Belgium scored below New Zealand.

The wide gap is reflected starkly in the PISA study, which showed that New Zealand had relatively large proportions of people in both the top-performing and low-performing categories.

Other evidence supports the view that a significant performance gap exists between different groups in society:

-in 2001, fully one-third of Maori and one-quarter of Pacific Island students (versus 17% for the population as a whole) left school without a qualification;

-between 69 and 72%of Maori and Pacific Island adults in the mid-1990s performed at literacy levels that are inadequate for everyday work and life in a developed society (versus 46% for all adults);

-fully one-third of those unemployed who have no Secondary School qualifications are Maori, and a further 10% are Pasifika;

Furthermore, surveys from the past 25 years show that New Zealand is the only country where the bottom 20% of students is getting worse!

My own personal feeling is that we need to get back to a belief in the concept of meritocracy and a maximising of potential rather than a subtle unintentional undermining of it.

Everyone should be provided with an equal opportunity to make the best of themselves.

Such a core policy has been abandoned by successive governments over the past 30 years in an effort to get equality of outcome. However, I believe that true fairness lies in providing equal opportunities to achieve good things.

Quote - Karl Stead: "You cannot create equality by legislation; you can only create opportunity and let time and individuals do their work. Equality of opportunity is the moral principle. Inequality of talent, energy, commitment, intelligence, strength of purpose and will is the fact of life." (1992)

Current government policy, far from promoting equality, has only resulted in greater inequalities and a society that is more polarised than ever because it has abandoned those at the bottom of the heap to not only a lack of skills but also to illiteracy and innumeracy as well. These most needy children have been left worse off of all - effectively abandoned and trapped in disadvantage by their lack of a proper and meaningful education.

In this context studies overseas have consistently shown that a traditional education offers the only means whereby children from disadvantaged homes can secure the knowledge and skills that will enable them to improve their condition.  Top

3.Qualifications Fiasco

Over the past year I have deliberately stayed out of the public debate surrounding the NCEA, preferring instead to focus on ensuring its successful implementation at Auckland Grammar School and also concentrating on ensuring our students were well prepared for the Cambridge University International Examinations.

But all the publicity about inconsistent results in level 4 Scholarship and, in fact, at all other levels of the qualification warrants comment.

In a perfect world there is probably a place for both the traditional, exam-based, norm-referenced assessment system which, in essence, reports results of a student in comparison to other students, and the alternative standards-based system, which essentially entails reporting results in terms of judgments about how much students should know.

These systems are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Nevertheless, when we are forced to rely absolutely on a standards-based system that has been proved overseas to be unsuitable for conventional academic subjects, the whole credibility of our previously well-regarded qualifications system is put in doubt.

In Britain, educational assessment experts like Alison Wolf have thoroughly researched this whole area of assessment. Her conclusion: standards-based assessment practices are only really useful in the areas for which they were designed-the trades and vocational education.

The frustration in all this is that the Qualifications Authority consistently refused to accept that standards-based assessment alone would not give fair or transparent results consistently.

I have made numerous submissions over the years on these matters, predicting that the introduction of a standards-based assessment system would:

- Undermine the coherence of individual subjects and the importance of integrating understanding

- Increase teacher and student workloads as a result of the introduction of a significant proportion of internal assessment in all subjects

- Encourage plagiarism, copying, excessive parental help and use of internet sites that supply students with ready-made assignments and essays because of the increased emphasis on internal assessment

- Remove comparability between schools

- Remove a consistent national standard and benchmark

- Complicate reporting to students, parents and employers

- Create uncertainty in university entrance qualifications

All these have unfortunately come to fruition and the consequence is that our students are being subjected to an artificial and inappropriate way to assess many subjects, particularly academic ones.

Children unfortunately have to rely for their qualifications on a fundamentally flawed assessment system that is neither valid, reliable nor manageable.

This is not meant to undermine the efforts being made to provide a wide range of students in increasingly philosophically diverse schools with appropriate and challenging courses. But surely everyone deserves from their efforts a qualification that is valid and meaningful.  Top

4.State School 'Meltdown'

- Government only interested in 'one size fits all' schools (bulk funding repealed and self management being eroded). School charters have been wiped to be replaced by more compliance demands.

- Flagship state schools not encouraged (not allowed to be different)

- Government seemingly happy to advance the cause of private education � cheaper alternative for government.

- Growing gap in achievement between state schools;(U of A survey - 90% of bursaries gained by Auckland schools came from 10% of schools)

- Clear division between 'popular' and less popular schools.

- The self-managing school concept does not seem to fit into this government's policy.

- Intention of 'Tomorrow's Schools' was:-

-to treat schools as mature institutions

-to allow them to run their own affairs with little control from national office

-to free schools from oversight of regional boards.

- Much of the intent has now disappeared.  Top

5.Enrolment Issues and Immigration

By guaranteeing access to a school within a geographical zone and because of the looseness of some of the language in the Act relating to definition of 'living' in zone, the new legislation is encouraging families to shift temporarily into the zone to guarantee access to a school of their choice. After settling into the school some families then return to their home out of the zone.

Significant numbers of new enrolments arrive continuously throughout the year and most of these families are renting or leasing for three months only.A lesser number, but still significant, are boarding with their 'Aunty' or extended family in zone to get a place at 'popular' schools. To combat this we have had to introduce our own regulations-we await the Ministry backlash!

The new policy does not improve the use of the current network of schools and the inability of schools to cap their rolls is forcing some schools to grow beyond their desires.

Some popular schools will never be able to use the ballot to allow out of zone students the chance to attend their school as they will always be full.

This means essentially, they will have no out-of-zoners. At Auckland Grammar School this means no Pacific Island or Maori boys because very few of these ethnicities live in Epsom, Remuera, Parnell or Mt Eden.(2005 Fm 3 - 6 PI/480 and 10 Maori/480)

This legislation is not helping us to close the gaps or help the disadvantaged.

What is needed is greater choice for parents. A variety of studies overseas shows that increased choice and competition in schooling does deliver benefits in the form of lower costs, improved quality and increased innovation, and drive improvements throughout the system.Competition would increase the pressure on schools to be efficient and to meet the needs of families and local communities.

New Zealand's own experience and flirtation with de-zoning and other 'market-based' reforms in the early 1990s shows that choice was popular, especially among Maori and Pasifika students. For example, in 1990, only 21% of Maori and 18% of Pasifika students attended 'non-local' schools. By 1995, these figures had increased to 39% of Maori and 38% of Pasifika students.

In addition, many Catholic integrated schools are currently expanding, new ones are being built, and others have waiting lists. The Targeted Individual Entitlement (TIE) scheme, which provided vouchers for low-income students to attend private schools, was oversubscribed and was regarded as highly successful. That didn't survive the Labour Government's obsession with central control and no choice.  Top

6.Internationalism

Schools world wide are increasingly becoming self consciously international, especially in the curriculum because the current generation of young learners must become literally world citizens.

This being the case I believe our schools can no longer be parochial or insular about their curricula or about the performance levels of their students, for they will find themselves in an international workplace alongside of, or in competition with, people from neighbouring countries, and where the jobs themselves (and the existence of those jobs) depend on international rather than national conditions. Their credentials must have international currency.

It is simply no longer good enough for students to compare their performances only against those of other students in the same year in the same city, province or country. This generation of students therefore must learn to become global citizens through an education and a curriculum self-consciously international.

By introducing the concept of International qualifications to New Zealand and adopting CIE exams as our Dual Pathway, we are at the leading edge of this educational globalisation in New Zealand.  Top

7.Conclusion:A Philosophy of Education

Any education system must have an underpinning philosophy.I believe that such a philosophy of education must have at its heart the study of the best that has been thought and said, an end in itself with no further instrumental purpose.I do not believe children go to school to be trained for a job.

As Philosopher Michael Oakeshott has argued, this sort of philosophy sees education as a transaction between the generations in which the young are initiated into the world they are to inhabit.

It presupposes that it is our responsibility to teach our children about science, maths, literature, history and art for it is upon these disciplines that our humanity depends.

And the critical thing is to TEACH. These days trainee teachers at Teachers College are informed about facilitation, learning skills and empowerment but nothing on the teacher as an authority whose job it is to teach children something which they otherwise wouldn't know.

This philosophy of education which I am encouraging is often referred to as the "liberal" philosophy of education and

is diametrically opposed to the child-centred voyages of discovery encouraged by the "progressive" school of education.

The sort of education I am describing is by definition broad and comprehensive; it gives all children the chance to understand, appreciate and master a range of educational experiences. It is far more preferable, I believe, to the present thrust that sees education being reduced to what is practical and utilitarian.Schools must be encouraged to educate in their fullest sense and not be constrained by what is technologically determined, economically desirable or politically expedient.

John Morris

Headmaster