Investing in Educational Success initiative moves forward
Hekia Parata announced:
Education Minister Hekia Parata has welcomed advice from sector leaders on the Government’s $359 million initiative to raise student achievement, saying it maintains momentum and strengthens the path forward.
Ms Parata has released a Working Group report that provides support and advice on the Investing in Educational Success initiative announced by the Prime Minister in January.
“Raising student achievement is one of our Government’s top priorities. This investment strongly supports that by building quality and consistency of teaching and leadership across the system,” Ms Parata says.
“Like us, parents will be very pleased we’re making such good progress on something that will make a real difference in our schools and classrooms.
“Unions and groups representing teachers, principals, boards of trustees, and others in the sector have worked closely with the Ministry of Education to produce a report that demonstrates very practical thinking.
“I want to acknowledge the expertise and experience Working Group members brought to the table to advance this work. I know they’re as committed as we are to raising achievement so five out of five kids succeed.”
This has been a good example of how Government can work with stakeholders. The Government announced the policy and funding, but said they’ll work with unions and others on exact details. And they have accepted some of the changes proposed by teachers and unions such as making sure teachers have both relief and inquiry time built into their week, so they can participate in the sharing of skills.
The full report is here. The key details are:
- Communities of schools would form to encourage collaboration. Participation is voluntary.
- There would be:
- Community of Schools Leadership Role (for Executive Principal)
- Community of Schools Teacher (across community) Role (for Expert Teacher)
- Community of Schools Teacher (within school) Role (for Lead Teacher)
- Principal Recruitment Allowance (for Change Principal Allowance).
- Selection to the roles would be subject to meeting agreed professional standards or criteria, which are to be developed by an expert writing group
- Release time would be provided to schools for across-community roles to fulfil their functions
- A payment should be established to support boards of trustees of the most high need schools to broaden their recruitment pool and assist them to recruit a high quality principal.
- The provision of Inquiry Time would allow other teachers across a Community of Schools to access the expertise that the new roles would make available.
- A Teacher-led Innovation Fund (TLIF) would be established with a budget of $10 million over the coming four years.
The NZEI has been participating, but has a general policy of disagreeing with anything National proposes, regardless of its merits. The PPTA, according to my sources, has been much more constructive, and are responsible for many of the changes proposed in the working group report. It’s a good example of the difference between constructive engagement and mindless opposition. At the end of the day the NZEI will have to decide whether they wish to campaign against thousands of their own members being able to get paid $10,000 to $50,000 a year more!
To be fair to NZEI they have been participating in the working group. They are just unable to publicly ever state that something National does could possibly be beneficial because they’re still sulking over national standards.
The PPTA response is worth quoting, and is here:
The government’s $359 million Investing in Educational Success (IES) program has been a positive example of sector collaboration, says PPTA president Angela Roberts.
Roberts welcomes today’s release of the working group report on the initiative which will see schools across the country collaborating rather than competing.
From PPTA’s point of view the consultation over IES was comprehensive, robust and genuine, Roberts said.
“We stepped up to the challenge and engaged as fully as it is possible to do.”
The sector had worked hard together to find pragmatic answers and there had been significant movement from the originally unacceptable cabinet paper, Roberts said.
“You know it’s collaboration when it’s hard work – and this was really hard work.”
“We feel cabinet has heard us,” she said.
In stark contrast to the NZEI position. If I was a primary teacher I’d be asking my union why they are constantly badmouthing a plan to allow the best teachers and principals to earn up to $50,000 a year more.