Max starts school

New Zealand primary teachers have a tradition of teaching that keeps alive the sparkle in the eyes of new entrants.

 

We focus on learning rather than on measuring. We must build on this, while resisting the clutter and burden of unnecessary assessment and the straitjacket of National Standards, says former teacher, principal, teacher educator and academic Ruth Mansell, who has been asked to comment from some of her experiences.

My neighbour Max has started school, bursting with confidence and curiosity. In the unique New Zealand tradition, he came to school on his fifth birthday, the only child to start on that day. He wasn’t one of a crowd of new entrants. He was special. His teacher and his classmates focussed their attention on him as an individual, got to know him, and supported him as the new boy.
New Zealand primary schools have a special ethos of learning and teaching that builds on each child’s natural enthusiasm and imagination, keeping the focus on learning at their own rate rather than on measuring and comparing. Learning is understood as exploration.
Teachers are often surprised by what the children learn and achieve. A Ministry of Education official stated on National Radio that if we don’t know what we’re aiming to achieve we won’t achieve it. I disagree. One of the joys of teaching and learning is delight and surprise at what children come up with, the questions they ask and the effort they make to find out more.

Listening to Max and his parents as he started school, I thought about how lucky we are to be part of this New Zealand education system, about what I particularly valued during my own experience as a teacher and parent, and about what most concerns  me  now as Max and his generation are entering primary school. Throughout last year’s debate about National Standards, very little was published celebrating what is already special about New Zealand primary schools. Neither did the media report the  questioning by teachers and academics of the assumptions underlying current Government policy for National Standards and the way these could in the long term affect children and teachers. This piece offers just a few of my own thoughts and ideas on what we can be proud of, and how that might be threatened by policies based on unexamined assumptions.

In the Early World

When I started teaching in the 1970s, I already had invaluable playcentre training and experience with my own children and friends, as well as my new graduate teaching qualification. I was inspired by many other creative primary teachers, including my own mother who had taught in the 1930s in tiny isolated Maori and rural schools and who in the 1950s was a pioneer in special education, working in new ways in partnership with parents of the children.

Another strong influence for me was Elwyn Richardson, whose 1964 classic In the Early World demonstrated his children’s marvellous artwork, writing, and maths and science learning, growing out of their explorations and activities in the natural world around their small rural Northland school. Elwyn Richardson believed passionately that creative thinking and intellectual growth are inextricably linked.

My own teaching in Petone

The families at Petone Central were multicultural and mainly working people. I’d been advised that the popular “language experience” method of teaching wouldn’t work here, because those children “didn’t have enough experiences”. Of course, I didn’t believe this, and set out to learn from the children what their own experiences actually were, and work from those.

On fine days we’d often ask some of the mothers to stay and help and we’d set off on foot to explore our locality, the digger working round the corner, the natural world, and the small scale industrial workplaces of many of their parents. We took a bucket of plaster to Petone beach, mixed it with seawater, and created plaques with shells, seaweed and driftwood. We ventured into the bush at Korokoro, found koura in the stream (and put them back), swung on the kiekie vines and listened to the sounds of the stream, the birds and the wind in the trees.  Free of unnecessary OSH rules, we learned to be responsible and stay safe!

We visited parents at work, who would give us off-cuts of metal, fabric and plastic to take back to school and use for maths, science, art and dramatic activities. These experiences and activities were the building blocks for extending their oral language, then reading and writing, with children confident to keep working and learning as the challenges get harder. I learned from the other teachers at this school, and from the wonderful visiting art advisers who worked in depth with us, helping us to use dance, drama, stories and art works through “integrated themes”. Learning along with the children, I was constantly surprised and delighted at what came out of activities. Results were not always predictable and would not have fitted neatly into reporting for National Standards.

Sparkle in the 1987 Curriculum Review

“The sparkle in the five year-olds’ eyes when they begin school must be sustained.”
This statement is from the 1987 Ministerial Curriculum Review of Schools. I was a teacher representative over the three-year process of consultation, research and writing. The draft and final reports were developed from over 30,000 oral and written submissions from people all around New Zealand – parents, workers, young people, employers, people in prisons, researchers, education experts and teachers.

The report identified fifteen principles as basic to the curriculum of every school in New Zealand. The last of these is that “the curriculum shall provide learning that is enjoyable for all students – effective learning is satisfying. It can be challenging and disturbing. It can also excite and stimulate. It can be fun.”

Are teachers still able to make sure this happens for their children and for themselves?

What about assessment in the 1987 Curriculum Review?

It’s interesting to see in this Ministerial Review that the only reference to assessment is in the context of evaluating as an essential link between learning and planning for further teaching. There was no need identified then to measure results for the purpose of comparing the progress of students with other students, nor for measuring the performance of teachers, nor or to compare schools with other schools.
It’s significant that a separate review was undertaken at the same time into senior secondary school qualifications necessary to provide information for tertiary learning and employment, which later led into moving on from the outdated School Certificate and introduction of NCEA. The systems of national moderation needed for those high stakes purposes are complex, expensive, and time consuming for teachers.
Thankfully, this kind of comparative assessment was not considered relevant for primary aged children. What has changed now?

How has assessment taken over teaching and learning?

Those of us who were teaching in the 1980s and 1990s remember politicians taking  up the cry for primary schools to set standards and examine learning in ways similar to what  secondary schools did for the purpose of sorting students as they entered tertiary study or future employment. This reflected one of the cycles of political anxiety about falling standards as reported in EA’s spring edition and became part of a demand for accountability for teachers. Of course teachers were already committed to professional accountability, to our students, to parents, to the community and to our colleagues. However the accountability demanded from the late 1980s was managerial accountability – with an emphasis on defined results that could be reported to authorities, to ERO and the Ministry of Education.

How have good teachers and supporting academics stood up for professional accountability?
Many thoughtful teachers and academics worked to ensure that their professional accountability was clarified and made more explicit, without jeopardising the spirit of New Zealand primary schools. It was essential for practising teachers to be confident about their professional judgements, to be clear about the different purposes of assessment for learners of different ages, ensure that their practice remained closely focussed on improving teaching, articulate this to parents and school leaders, and so be better prepared to withstand the coming push for more comparative assessment which could overpower and constrict learning.

In 1990, a Ministerial Working Party which, included Dr Terry Crooks, produced an excellent report about assessing for better learning, titled Tomorrow’s Standards. It’s worthwhile pulling this out of the back of the shelf and reading it in the light of today’s National Standards. This report recommended a system for national monitoring of educational outcomes through light sampling, (NEMP) which was intended to satisfy the community that information about standards of achievement in New Zealand schools was indeed being gathered, reported and used in practical ways by teachers as they planned for the next steps in students’ learning.  NEMP has been highly successful in gaining the confidence of teachers as well as international respect.  I was pleased to make good use of this report, and of generous advice from Terry Crooks, as I developed and led courses on assessment at Wellington College of Education, working with practising teachers studying for advanced qualifications, and later taught masters students at Victoria University. We expected these teachers to clarify the purpose of their assessment work with children, to discuss with other teachers in their own school and in nearby schools what they and others involved – children, parents, and school leaders would do with the range of information they were gathering about children’s learning, to check this against the experiences of other teachers and also against NEMP reports and other well researched New Zealand standardised tests such as NZCER’s  PATs.

From about this time, Jim Neyland, my colleague in teacher education, contributed valuable research and ideas on new pressures on teachers and resulting limitations on the joy of teaching and learning.

Jim Neyland’s Spirit of Education

“Education, at best, is enchanting.” This lovely chapter heading is from Rediscovering the Spirit of Education after Scientific Management by Jim Neyland.
He argues that education has a spirit, a large orientation that gives it purpose and motivation, without reducing it to rules, codes, outcomes or methods, and warns that the spirit of education now is being eroded into something mechanical and narrow. Education can be enchanting when it has just the right combination of wonder, assertiveness, and humility. But, he says, the flame that ought to fire education has been dampened down by a number of management systems that operate. He writes about the current obsession with assessment. His research showed that assessment, as a concept distinct from learning and teaching, was not featured in writings about education until the 1980s. Just how assessment improves learning has never been explained, he claims. He comments on the social role of the assessment enterprise, which is the antithesis of education, and the way in which it is mainly used to control those who work in education.

Where does the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum fit in?

This curriculum evolved, twenty years after the previous Curriculum Review, again through extensive consultation and trials. It builds on experience and principles from early childhood education and recognises that students progress at a different pace at different stages. The breadth of the curriculum recognises the wide range of areas of learning, with equal value given to the arts, health and physical education, science and social sciences, along with languages and mathematics. The curriculum takes as its starting point learners who are confident and creative, connected and actively involved. This reflects well the spirit of the best of primary school learning we experienced during the 1970s.

We know that young children do not always start with reading. As early childhood educators knew, and as Elwyn Richardson and many other teachers showed, children learn by doing. By working out how to put up a tent, by experimenting with water, making things with clay, by dancing and making music, they can develop these active interests and then be motivated to read and write more about them, learning as they go.  Children’s learning in all these is already being assessed and reported to parents.

However, we know that what gets measured gets valued. We are hearing from teachers now that they barely have time for the more active and creative areas of learning. Where is the energy and time left for teachers and children to simply learn together? Will teachers be able to resist the tsunami of more and more needless assessment of measurable achievements? Can we sustain the exciting breadth of imaginative experience and creative enquiry?

What kind of moderation is worth doing at primary school? 

The key is to be clear about the purpose of assessment and moderation, as purpose determines the form.  Trachers’ professional judgement must be moderated sufficiently to be reasonably consistent across different teachers and schools. When the purpose of assessment is to inform decisions about further learning rather than for comparisons between schools, surely there should be no need for more elaborate and expensive systems for national moderation?
These ways of assessing have now morphed into the OTJs, overall teacher judgements which, if not overdone, are already doing a good job of informing teachers and learners and serve as a valid basis for reporting to parents. The purpose of these OTJs was never designed for high stakes assessment which will  compare and label individual students, teachers and schools.
 
Such comparisons between students or schools would impose a precision in measuring learning which is artificial, unrealistic, and unnecessary.
New technologies for assessment, while superficially appealing, may drive unnecessary testing, at the same time as it lends a dangerously misleading aura of exactness and certainty.  What’s more, a profitable assessment industry with nationally or internationally published resources could further remove teachers’ work away from our prime purpose of enhancing each child’s unique on-going learning achievement.
Surely efforts to manipulate OTJs to serve an unintended purpose of national comparisons will distort the learning programme, teachers’ judgements, and subsequent reporting to parents? 

Teachers are now telling me they are having to spend more and more time on assessment and reporting. What started as a useful form of professional development seems to have taken on a life of its own, and in some cases, threatens to dominate the classroom programme. The minutiae of meeting specific standards
Is not consistent with the important goals that are quite broad, and which allow
For fresh kinds of knowing and creative ideas to spring up at different stages of the child’s progress.  Precious time is being taken away from the fun, enjoyment and ultimate satisfaction of spontaneous learning and teaching.
 
As many parents and teachers have said during last year’s debates, the purpose of assessing learning is not to label young children as successes or failures. Children can flourish free from the need for senior secondary school-style assessment.  Why should five-year-old children - and their parents - have to worry about meeting set arbitrary standards in reading, writing and maths in preparation for NCEA level 2? Those who work every day with children know that the best preparation for later achievement is for them to enjoy learning what interests them now, to develop an active love of learning and the confidence that they can succeed. Why should teachers and children have the irrelevant and dangerous pressure of NCEA imposed on them so early?

What assumptions underlie current demands on primary schools?

First, a lot of political and media comment assumes that New Zealand children are not achieving well enough. 
But, as the recent OECD report shows, New Zealand students are achieving near the top of the 34 countries surveyed. Why hasn’t this been publicly acknowledged and celebrated. It’s true that the OECD survey still shows inequality in achievement with 14% of students not reaching the OECD benchmark to “participate effectively and productively in life”. New Zealand teachers are well aware of this, and have no trouble at all identifying those children. They are already working hard to find ways to support them. We are all painfully conscious of the fundamental social problems that affect these children such as poverty, the growing gap between rich and poor, inequality. Teachers know well about the practical outcomes of these problems, such as the way in many childrens’ learning, and the ability of teachers to support them, is hampered as families have to move from school to school. Challenges to teachers also arise as New Zealand has a much higher percentage of new immigrants and second language learners than in the much more homogeneous societies of the few OECD countries that rate higher than we do. 

A second assumption is that the way to raise achievement is to have more and more assessment, centrally controlled.
But, there is no evidence that will work. Many of the countries which score below New Zealand have over the past decade introduced compulsory assessment and league tables. Yet the achievement of students has not increased and in some cases has fallen. How could this be? Why has this not been publicised?  New Zealand teachers and principals have clearly stated their belief that National Standards will not help struggling children nor change patterns of achievement. 

A third and related assumption is that National Standards will provide useful comparative information to enable parents, the general public, and the government, to identify “successful “ schools and make choices about where to send children, and how to target resources.  Many teachers and other commentators have pointed out that there is already a wealth of publicly available and more reliable and valid information about schools for those purposes. 

How have politicians and the media accepted this policy that is based on faulty assumptions, so contrary to the evidence?  Perhaps its appeal is as a simplistic answer in a time of economic and social uncertainty. A public climate of fear for New Zealand’s future has been built up. In response we see increasing demands for a low trust kind of managerial accountability for teachers, demonstrating that government is in control of teachers and of what goes on in schools.

Teachers have in the past been expected and trusted to be professionally and ethically accountable to their students, parents, community and to their professional colleagues, and have for twenty years now been developing clearer and more effective ways of engaging with them.  We must not undermine this trust.   

Moving on with Max

Let’s get back to Max. Max’s parents came to New Zealand with their high qualifications and specialised international IT experience and expertise as software developers. They knew that this was a good country to bring up their young family, where children are valued for their individual needs and talents, where imagination and a sense of wonder are encouraged, where critical and creative thinking are understood as essential tools for the kind of work we all hope our children will eventually be involved in, and where students in public schools achieve among the highest in the world.
So far, Max’s parents are very happy with the welcome offered by our small local school. They emphasise the sense of belonging that Max is experiencing, and as parents they are keen to become involved themselves with the school.

How can we make sure Max continues to shine with the light of enthusiasm throughout his primary school days? Can we be confident that Max’s teachers will be free and supported to give him opportunities to develop his creativity and skills for continuing learning, without having to resort to time-wasting assessment or the straitjacket of National Standards. The sparkle in the eyes must be sustained.

Department of Education. (1987) The Curriculum Review, Report of the Committee to Review the Curriculum for Schools, Wellington
Ministry of Education (1990) Tomorrow’s Standards; the Report of the Ministerial Working Party on Assessment for Better Learning. Wellington. Learning Media
Neyland, J. (2010) Rediscovering the Spirit of Education After Scientific Management. The Netherlands. Sense Publishers.
Richardson, E.S. (1964) and 2nd ed.(1972) reprinted (2001) In the Early World. Wellington. NZCER.