Session 11 – International Panel - Andrew Blair, Kate Griffin (ICP President), Peter Gall (SPANZ President), and Lim Boon Cheng (Academy of Principals - Singapore)

Education reform

Blair: if urgent and important – do it. If it is urgent – delegate. If neither – dump it. Appetite for national things – consistency and curriculum.  National curriculum vs national syllabi is the question. Out of that will come national performance data vs school performance data – impact on disadvantage. Need to balance the national curriculum with reporting on students – must get a national curriculum that looks forward rather than backward.

Griffin: her school – west London; 1700; multi-ethnic, not white. Have had a restrictive national curriculum for some years, kids have suffered. Have the most tested kids in the world. The UK kids are the most unhappy in the OECD. Move to greater flexibility in 14-19 curriculum – new diplomas at that level – lots of VET to bring them up to parity of esteem with regular subjects. Hate the league tables – warn Australia about them. Get raw league tables first; then value added – should be better; then add the context so get contextual value added data – but still not sophisticated enough to give true picture. If child from China and child from England have same score at age 11, the China kid is expected to get 30 points more at age 16. American research shows that ethnic background has no more effect. So fight against league tables.

ICT – huge investment in “Building Schools for the Future” – modernize schools. Huge pressure to go down the managed services route – loss of autonomy for schools.

Lim Boon Cheng: her school is a Futures school. 240 7-year-olds. Pervasive seamless integration of ICT into the curriculum – multimedia. Started with 5 schools – 2 primary and 3 secondary – her school was built as a Future school from the ground up. Wireless – 1:1 computer ratio with tablet computers – want their kids to learn to write. Building a virtual learning environment – all hours; talk with their friends; gallery for student work. Use software that allows them to express their feelings and themselves. Anchor their learning in telling stories, as their knowledge base is not great enough yet to create new knowledge. Great progress in first 9 months.

Has been talking with her students each day before the conference sessions – about the topics of this conference. Used Skype to make contact.

Will have 7 and 8 year olds next year and then up to 12 year olds. Do not take all applicants for places.

Gall: trying to move subject silos to working in an integrated way. The values and key competencies become the main focus of the curriculum. New national curriculum (http://www.tki.org.nz/) is a major focus. Leadership strategy program is also a major initiative. Pilot for aspirant principals. Recruitment of principals is a concern. Average age = 55 and average retirement age = 58. http://www.leadspace.govt.nz/klp/

Has quite a deal of autonomy as an NZ Principal. Get a small subsidy for overseas recruiting of Principals and teachers.  Government announced SchoolsPlus – engaging students to age 18 – no details to the policy.

Blair: NZ has explicitly stated that there will not be national testing. Is it under pressure in this election campaign?

Gall: not really. PM Helen Clarke is well behind in the polls. So there could be a change of government. The other side did talk about national testing, but now they are talking about schools having to use a range of tools to assess their kids. But not the Australian or UK models.