Education reforms appear lost in translation
I find it disturbingly ironic that Lesley Longstone who is the recently recruited head of the Education Ministry, was dragged into New Zealand from a similar position in the U.K.
One would imagine, that as she was an advocate of the fatally flawed governmental endorsement surrounding the now infamous strategy of “saving money by creating larger classes with fewer teachers” that she may have garnered such “educational expertise” from the system in the U.K.?
Is the U.K. the font of all learning wisdom and is New Zealand being shaped by their experiences in education? If this is the case, the National government is backing an absolute donkey!
I happen to be writing this from England and right now their Minister of Education (Michael Gove) is having as many “bad headline” days as Hekia Parata. See the link from The Guardian newspaper of June 13th.
The U.K. are embarking on changes to their national curriculum that are being described by experts as “fatally flawed”…where did I read that before? Changes which include the making of a foreign language compulsory learning by age 7, are said to be overly prescriptive and onerous to both teachers and students.
The irony stems from the fact that the U.K. engaged in a think tank to forward the curriculum changes who “trawled the world looking at the curricula of the high-performing countries to collect core knowledge”…so they’d have been looking at New Zealand then?!
Maybe they’re missing Lesley Longstone?
That old adage comes to mind…”In the land of the blind a one eyed man is King”.
