ECE – EDTalkNZ

(A Tale in the style of Listen with Mother)

“Good morning girls and boys.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin.

Once upon a time in Auckland there was a group of lovely Mummys and Daddys who came from a little tiny beautiful island called Niue. They were beautiful people who wanted their beautiful girls and boys to grow up ready for school, and having fun, and being able to speak two languages. Yes, weren’t those girls and boys lucky?

But the Mummys and Daddys from Niue needed a house for their Kindergarten. Do you know what a kindergarten is? It is a lovely little school where girls and boys just like you go to play and to learn and to do things that will help them when they get to school.

Well, the Mummys and Daddys from Niue were lucky and found an old schoolhouse that was no longer being used. It wasn’t very nice but it was better than being outside when it rained! Have you been outside when it rains? It isn’t very nice, is it? All the girls and boys and their Mummys and Daddys used this old schoolhouse for many years because they weren’t able to get the men and ladies from the big office building in town to agree to help them get a new kindergarten. The old schoolhouse became quite a tumbledown affair but still the girls and boys came to the kindergarten.

But, one day, the postman brought some good news. Do you remember what a postman is? Yes? The nice postman brought the Mummys and Daddys a letter that said that the men and ladies from the big office building in town were going to help them get a new kindergarten. Everyone was very very happy.

Along came the builder, his name was Bob. Along came the truck with the cement. And another truck with some timber. Bang, bang, bang went the hammers. Squeal, squeal, squeal went the electric saws. And soon a new kindergarten was built. Shiny and new, after all those years of waiting, the Mummys, Daddys, girls and boys from Niue were going to have their brand new kindergarten. They were all very happy.

But there was one more job to do. They had to build a sandpit. Do you like playing in a sandpit? Along came a little digger to make a little hole for the little sandpit. Then guess what happened? The little digger dug up some very nasty yucky stuff called asbestos. “Oh!” cried the digger man, “Oh!” cried the officials. Asbestos is very dangerous when it is dug up by a digger. And so they chained the gate, locked the doors and went away to find out what to do. And they never came back.

The Mummys and Daddys told the men and ladies in the big building in town about it but they must have been very busy people because nothing happened. The men and ladies in the big building in town were trying to find out who had to get all the nasty asbestos out of the hole. And still everyone waited.

Six months later – do you know how long six months is? Yes it is one whole spring and one whole summer. That’s a long time isn’t it? Well, six months later the new kindergarten, all shiny and bright was still waiting for the digger man and the other workers to come back and finish the sandpit.

“Why are we waiting?” asked the Mummys and Daddys.

“Why can’t we play in our new kindergarten?” asked the girls and the boys.

Then one weekend, when everyone had gone home, some naughty people broke a window and climbed into the new kindergarten. They did some naughty things like throw paint around. They broke windows. They “trashed” the place.

So the girls and boys from Niue still go to kindergarten in their old tumbledown schoolhouse. The new schoolhouse is still empty but now it is also badly damaged. The sand pit is still unfinished and the boys and girls and Mummys and Daddys are sad. They have waited for ten years for their new kindergarten. One day Bob the builder and the digger man might come back and clean up the new building. Then everyone will be happy.

Did you like that story? Tomorrow we will have a happy story.

Goodbye children.”

Studio Announcer:

“That was listen with Mother with Daphne Oxenford. The BBC wishes to advise that today’s story is based on true events that are unfolding in Auckland, New Zealand. Next we have a repeat of The Archers.”

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Happy New Year! Well it is has been for the first four weeks and then all the political parties decided to tell us about their policies for education in this Year of the Horse.

And what did we hear?

First there were the Greens – poverty, poverty, poverty was the cry. This was a replay of the 1980’s when educators seemed unable to get past the fact that some students were hungry, in fact they were so obsessed by this that they forgot to teach the students how to read and write. Later in the weekend Labour was to get on this band wagon and opt for school lunches for the hungry.

There are many systems that provide food to students – the US and the UK both use eligibility for a free school lunch as a key measure of poor learners who learn poorly. The good news is that I am certain the students enjoy the lunches (although Jamie Oliver has a view about how good or nutritious they might be). But there is not a shred of evidence that there is a connection between the provision of free school meals and improvements in achievement on a scale that would suggest that it is other than a social gesture.

Labour made a grander entrance on the Early Childhood Education stage. Full marks to them for noting that ECE is important – it is more that important, it is central to sound achievement and equitable outcomes. But Labour didn’t wish to be too complex about all this.

Rather they preferred to bask in the glory of their (what seems to me to the failed) 20 Free Hours policy and, no doubt ignoring all the complexities of a schooling system that is not delivering equitable outcomes, decided to simply expand it – “20 Free Hours – no wait, there’s more – 25 Free hours.”

When the 20 Free Hours was originally introduced there was no discernable increase in access to ECE services. Similarly when the scheme was freed from any targeting there was again no discernable increase in access to ECE. Those who were using the resource were simply increasing the amount of ECE they accessed thereby consuming more resource with a disappointing and continuing lack of access for those who are unable to go to a quality ECE provider.

Most of these students who are denied the ECE benefits are Maori and Pasifika and they live in communities where there are simply not enough places. Take the Tamaki area in Auckland as an example: there are 7,000 little ones under the age of five who are trying to get into the 2,000 places available. You improve access to ECE services through providing more places. Labour tossed off a quick promise to “build more ECE Centres in high-need areas” but this was something of faint hope and perhaps an afterthought overshadowed by and of lesser priority than the popular promise to spend on seeing that existing services will get higher subsidies so as to have “100 percent qualified staff” – the barons of the sandpits rubbed their hands with glee – higher costs mean higher subsidies and higher fees, excellent for the balance sheet for the large centres that offer ECE services as a business rather than a service to the community.

You only have to look at where the new multi-million dollar ECE places (I almost wrote palaces) are being built – they are on the commuter roads where those in work are able to drop their little ones off at our expense while they go off and earn quite good money in a job.

The ECE 20 Free Hours is simply a badly targeted resource that has not worked. Of course it appeals to the middle class who have jobs and money and this is clearly a key target group for Labour. Otherwise how can you describe a baby bonus for the 95% of babies in families with incomes up to $150,000 as anything but a universal benefit? Again, those without a job, or ECE, continue to swirl in the poverty trap that generation will perpetrate.

That leaves National’s “let’s do something about leadership in schools” cluster of activities, policy initiatives that identify the school leaders who perform and give them a role in which they have a license to change the quality of leadership in schools beyond their own. This policy is a bit of a body blow for the educational leadership industry found in the universities which put on a brave face about the years of first principals, aspiring principals and the raft of qualifications in educational leadership which appear neither to have cut the mustard nor to improve achievement.

This is the policy that seems most likely to succeed. Educational Leadership is at the heart of lifting educational achievement and there have been grumblings about the quality of school leadership in New Zealand for some time. The additional allowances are generous so there is no excuse for involving only those who have proven to be capable in leading teachers.

It is interesting to note that in Finland, every pre-schooler gets to go to an ECE programme, every student gets a free school lunch and nobody gets to be a principal without the additional qualifications and the experiences that the position requires rather than being selected by the educational equivalent of the local bowling club committee.

At last we seem to be taking heed of those systems that are successful rather than claiming as our birthright the right to replicate the failed policies and doomed practices of the Anglo-Saxon systems.

I await with bated breath the announcement of policies that will lift the performance of the school system:

policies that have a zero tolerance for the failure to gain basic skills at primary school;
initiatives that will stem the flow of disengaging students;
challenges to the sectors that have become walled cities that destroy the seamless pathways that are so central to success;
engagement of business, industry and commerce in the business of schooling, especially at the secondary and postsecondary levels;
cross-ministerial initiatives to address the back-log of educational failure – the NEETs of which New Zealand continues to accrue amazing numbers of young people not in employment, education or training.

And that’s just for starters.

Category: ECE

What the naughty people did

Let the games begin!