Posts by A S
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if they're not relative to other countries
You're the one who keeps talking about league tables. My points related purely to the situation here. So many 15 year olds operating at less than level 3 isn't good enough. Expecting that we should want more kids operating at above Level 3 isn't exactly reaching for the stars, unless you have particularly low expectations of our education system.
Can we condone having over 30% of 15 year olds operating at level 2 or below? I'd have said that such a result is pretty appalling however you cut it.
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Och take a look at the last PISA results for just reading literacy and see where we place on the league table of nations. Because it is all about league tables now...isn't it?
Had a look at PISA, they are about where I remember them. Around 50% with literacy at less than level 3. Stellar performance. Not. Also in keeping with the IALS study, which carries those figures into the working age population. Again, not particularly great.
Tim, what you describe in how you teach, is pretty much what all parents would love to hear.
As you point out, passing the Bill won't change much really, and will simply mean that the Act reflects what is already done (which makes a nice change for legislation).
Aside from the fashion in which it is being put through, it really isn't all that significant a change, and as I said earlier, the changes as they stand don't seem to warrant the gnashing of teeth of some of the posters.
Of course not. I think what people are objecting to is the element of bait-and-switch involved in National's policy.
Again, have you read the Bill? I didn't see any mention of any VRWC being given control of testing. Did I miss something, or is everyone getting worked up about someone's conspiracy theory?
On another level, National's apparent desire to control what goes on in the classroom while deliberately excluding teachers and the Ministry of Education from discussion seems to speak volumes about their distrust, fear, and, perhaps, contempt for both teachers and Ministry expertise.
Given that the Ministry of Education wrote much of the background info to the Bill, I don't think you could say they've been excluded.
Teachers don't generally get consulted on changes. They, like the rest of the public sector have the usual choice of getting on with it and making the best of what they've been given, or looking for another job. How many Nurses get consulted about changes to the health system? How many police get consulted about police staffing levels, or ways to tackle crime? Not many. This isn't a new thing either, it has been the norm for my lifetime.
Again, the way it was done wasn't great. But the actual changes proposed don't seem to warrant much of a reaction.
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If only that were true..
Those NZ studies estimating that around half our working age population isn't functionally literate are all lies then?
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Has anyone actually read the bill in question? I sat down now and read through it, and had to wonder WTF all the generalisations about the doomed education system are about.
Minimum standards in literacy and numeracy. Does anyone seriously object to ensuring that kids can at the very least read, write, and understand the basics of maths? This isn't SATs for primary kids. As far as I can see from what is proposed in the Bill it is asking if kids are on track to achieving a basic level of literacy and numeracy that will allow them to function in society.
Given our appalling literacy and numeracy record, this isn't really a bad thing. If our school system cannot ensure that the majority of children we are required to submit to their care can at the very least read and write, something is seriously screwy. There will always be issues for some (which is why they have special ed - their flaws are a whole other kettle of fish), but for the majority requiring a minimum ability to read and write is something all of us should be demanding.
On truancy, the education dept estimate a maximum of 87 prosecutions a year compared with 32,000 truant kids. Doesn't look like a big change really.... Certainly not the evil tory education dawn raids on the wider populace I got the impression of when I was reading through some of the previous posts.
I have concerns about the way in which the bill has gone through, but the subject matter of the Bill isn't as insidious as people seem to be suggesting.
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It's raining - bloody government!
(Italian proverb)
Heh. For a second, I had visions of a downpour of men in grey suits :-)
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Have you considered the slim chance that we might do that already? You know with the annual budget cycle, laws, policy development and whatnot?
Annual budget cycle. Yeah, right. Some quality thinking goes into the budget bid process. Generally, the effort goes into reverse engineering some plausible sounding rationale into the idea that someone has come up with.
Laws. Legislation has sweet FA to do with the staffing levels of the public sector. The only legislation that does is the annual appropriation bill, and that is only at a superficial level ($x million for tasks a, b, and c) numbers of staff is not specified. Actual staffing levels are determined by the public sector itself.
Policy development. LOL. I'm struggling to remember the last time I struck a significant policy process that held benefit to the public as its core tenet. Benefit to the agency developing the policy, yes, but benefit to the target population is all too often just a happy coincidence.
Not to mention govt spending and performance is regularly monitored by the O of the Auditor-G? And the fact that Labour has been in for 9 years does not mean govt departments have been immune to restructuring and down-sizing? On that the parties are fairly similar so...
OAG do a good job, but the level of materiality at which they work means that things under so many $million (I can't remember what level specifically) don't really get looked at. OAG don't have the staff or resources to look at everything, and no agency is particularly interested in ensuring that OAG has the resources to scrutinise them too closely. Funny that.
Govt down sizing. I'm struggling to think of an example of down-sizing in the last 9 years.
The main parties are remarkably similar, which is why I struggle with the repeated statements that somehow the end is nigh. In my view nothing significant will change, but any actual look at how to make the public service better serve the public is a good thing.
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John, not strictly necessary doesn't mean absolutely unnecessary. And as for $50k+, tell that to my civil servant brother who's getting $30k-ish.
$30k-ish implies actual service delivery, as opposed to back office boffin, so I suspect your brother is probably fairly safe.
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I guess his reliance on 36 of them wont be needed anymore.
I'm intrigued. 36 of who?
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Roughly 80% of the working population of Wellington works in the public service in one form or another. The 'crats may be centred on Wellington, but they're definitely not found only there. When Key starts rattling on about "the health bureaucracy" he's talking about DHBs over the entire country. WINZ is another nationwide centre of public servants. There are others. Thousands wouldn't be out of the realms of possibility.
I'm fairly well aware of the composition of the Wgtn workforce, as I get to see it on daily basis on the way to work. I do think there is a little too much hysteria about this particular issue. If I recall, JK made a commitment to cap numbers, not to sack people willy nilly.
You have a point about this not being the ideal time to sack large numbers of people economically, but in reality, it mass lay-offs isn't going to happen.
Thousands won't be sacked, because quite simply an administration that presides over a running down of public services won't last more than a term.
In my experience most politicians have a fairly healthy sense of self-preservation that will tend to see them shy away from doing things that will see them turfed from the treasury benches.
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Craig, dropping thousands of civil servants onto the dole queue...
I think thousands is overstating things fairly massively. There aren't that many in Welly (where the question mark about public sector productivity hangs).
Maybe asking the question about how the public service can best serve the public is something that we should all do regularly, regardless of political leaning.
Employing public servants for the sake of employing public servants, and building personal empires (which isn't actually all that uncommon) seems a bit pointless.