Labour’s assumption wrong

The Herald reports:

Thousands of students in Auckland suburbs including Ellerslie, Lynfield and Te Atatu will be part of a radical education reform that aims to spread the best teaching and leadership.

Education Minister Hekia Parata has announced another 129 schools across the country have signed up to the flagship Investing in Educational Success (IES) programme.

The schools have more than 45,000 students between them and will be divided into 18 groups or “communities”.

Good to see so many schools signing up.

New Zealand’s education system gives a high degree of control to each individual state and state-integrated school and its board of trustees, and studies have pointed to a lack of collaboration as a major problem.

Who would be against collaboration?

The scheme uses $359 million over four years to create “communities of schools” where principals and teachers are paid extra to collaborate and provide additional teacher-learning time for the schools involved.

There is also a teacher-led innovation fund, which provides funding and time for teachers to research with colleagues within schools.

Today’s announcement by Ms Parata brings the total number of schools involved to 222.

Hopefully over time we will be able to measure progress in schools taking part, against schools that are not.

Labour’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins said that paying bonuses to teachers and principals from schools in wealthy communities would only enforce inequality in the schooling system.

Ms Parata said almost 60 per cent of the 129 schools signed-up in the second round were decile 1 to 5.

So Labour assumed it was wealthy schools taking part, but in fact 60% are from lower decile schools.