Plan For Opening School for Term 4

 Like a lot of people, I imagine, I've done some grieving about our Covid situation. However, since the movement from 4 to 3 and the further relaxing of the restrictions I've comforted myself with the view that even if we'd stayed in Level 4 or not relaxed the Level 3 conditions we'd still be in almost exactly the same position.

What I've been grieving about the most is the return to school. I felt we had done a good job on maintaining learning during lockdown. Our focus on wellbeing and connection first seemed to maintain a good enough level of engagement. I was truly feeling that with a return to school in Term 4, with exams delayed and Learning Recognition Credits, that we would be able to support our students to have qualification success.

Right now, I don't think schools should be fully opening up on October 18th because too many of our population, especially the most vulnerable, are not vaccinated. I fear schools will become super spreader environments.

So what can we do? We need a plan that supports graduating students to gain their qualification while maintaining a school environment that is safe for students and teachers.

I have a plan that I believe would work for our school, and with a little mindshift, it should work elsewhere. It requires a couple of starting points in the way we think about qualifications for 2021.

• we need to focus on only those students who are graduating this year
• we need to temporarily (if you must) suspend the acceptance of calendar year qualifications
• any student in Year 12 who is returning next year does not need to gain Level 2 in 2021. They will pick it up in 2022 as they begin their journey towards Level 3. If a school has NCEA Level 2 credits as a prerequisite for Level 3 they need to throw that out and have teacher judgement on a student's ability to cope with Level 3 as the only prerequisite.

School Opening Plan Term 4

Schools open on October 18th only for students who are graduating at the end of the year (all Year 13s and some Year 12s). We have already surveyed our students in Year 12 as to who will be or may be leaving (very small group).

Schools create a timetable for those students and the affected staff only.

• I suggest Monday Subject 1 all day, Tuesday Subject 2 all day etc. The advantages of such a timetable are:
• sustained time for students and teachers to identify where learners are at and to create next steps forward
• easier student/teacher bubble management to keep people safer. Teachers coming in for one or two full days, rather than chopping and changing blocks and periods throughout the week seems safer to me.

Classes for Years 9 -12 (we don't do NCEA Level 1) would continue on-line as they have been operating for most of Term 3.

Of course, all appropriate health and safety measures which are required for Alert Level 3 (apart from bubble size and composition) would be in place.

Keen to hear what you think.

Learning Matters

Last week the government announced another $4 million will be spent on combating truancy amid claims that each day 30,000 young people are absent from school.

It is welcome news that more money is being allocated to this area. Youth Court Judge Andrew Becroft has been pointing out to government for many years that the majority of youth crime, which often moves on to become adult crime, begins with young people who are truant from school.

Opotiki College’s analysis of its students and the level of qualifications leavers have shows a clear co-relation between attendance and qualifications. The simple fact is that if a student attends school each day and remains at secondary school for four years they will receive national qualifications. In Opotiki College’s case in 2009 just 2 students left without qualifications after four full years of secondary education.

The opposite is equally true. 100% of students who leave before three years of secondary education have no qualifications. 50% of leavers who leave after just three years of secondary education, in Opotiki College’s case leave with no qualifications.

Almost all students who leave before these necessary four years have a pattern of poor attendance throughout their time at secondary school. The pattern begins with lateness to school, followed by missing the odd class and then moving on to missing full days.

In many cases by working closely with whanau who are keen to have their child do the very best the pattern is able to be broken and the student return to full attendance and get back on the pathway to qualifications. In a few cases the parents are either disinterested or even support the non-attendance. It is these students who don’t see out the four years and who leave without formal qualifications. They are , therefore, destined to a life time of irregular employment and low income.

It is unfortunate that the vast majority of those who we see with irregular attendance patterns began them very early in their schooling. In fact, Ministry of Education statistics show that the worst year for truancy is in a child’s first year at primary school. The pattern is difficult to break as it peaks again in years 7 and 8 and then again in years 12 and 13.

Obviously, then, something has to be done. I am not sure if throwing more money at schools to keep doing the same thing will be useful. As a school we are not certain that we can do much more for the 10-15 hard core truants we deal with as their pattern has been well and truly embedded.

Somehow, families of these children need to come to an understanding that it is their expectations of their child, their support of their child and their actions in making sure their child gets to school every day of their schooling from Year 1 that will break this negative, damaging and quality of life affecting pattern of poor attendance at school.

Schools can’t do this work. The community, its support agencies and the wider and individual families need to promote the belief that missing school without an acceptable reason is unacceptable. We need to do this for the sake of our young people’s learning and learning matters.

Latest Learning Matters

If we accept that age old saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child it makes sense that schools and families have to forge a close relationship if we wish all of our young people to realise their potential.

The Ministry of Education requires schools to develop close relationships with whanau and when ERO visits a school it meets with community members to assess how strong that relationship is.

Traditionally parents have quite a strong and regular relationship when their child is at primary school, but for a range of reasons this relationship weakens and becomes much less regular at secondary school. This may be because a secondary school is a much larger institution so may not seem as welcoming or even that parents themselves didn’t enjoy their secondary school experience so feel a little daunted.

In many secondary schools the relationship concentrates on supporting the school with fund raising. At Opotiki College we do very little school-wide fundraising and prefer to have our parents form a relationship with us in other ways.

As with most schools we have a number of parent teacher report evenings at which we get between 25-35% of our families present. We do, however, run Bilingual whanau hui every term which are well-attended and other evening sessions to explain subject choices, enrolment and qualifications. The attendance at these is still at about the 25-35% level.

Our parents have other opportunities by attending sports events and kapa haka practices and noho.

It is important that parents and whanau find a way to make a link with their local school. Last week we tried something different at Opotiki College. We had a mix and mingle evening for the parents of our Year 9 students. It was quite informal with a shared supper and introductions followed by parents meeting and chatting with the teachers from their child’s class. 50% of our families were present and there was a neat buzz as teachers and parents got to know each other.

I explained to the parents that it was not important if they could not assist their child with some of their homework but that it was important that they were active in taking an interest in their child at school and being present for them wherever possible. Those parents who turned up last week had taken the very first important step in being present for their child and showing their strong interest.

We now expect stronger turnouts from these parents at future report evenings as we have broken the ice with them.

One interesting question asked at the evening was about decile rankings and what it meant for schools. The Ministry of Education assesses each school’s community as to its socio-economic status and then groups the schools into ten (decile) groups with decile 1 being in the lowest 10% socio economic group and decile 10 in the highest. It doesn’t mean the decile 1 schools are in poorer condition, or get less money or get poorer teachers.

Many schools are burdened by such a label and as a result have lower expectations and settle for less. Consequently lower decile schools tend to have lower achievement levels. Opotiki College refuses to be limited by such a label and operates under a belief that our students can and will do as well as students anywhere in the country. We prove this with our results year after year.

Students, schools and communities cannot be limited by labels such as decile rankings. The way forward is by learning and learning matters.

NCEA 2009

Once again we have punched well above our weight for a decile 1 school. With 66% of our Year 11s gaining NCEA Level 1, 81% of our Year 12s gaining Level 2 (with all but 4 of the rest gaining Level 1) and 64% of our Year 13s(!) gaining Level 3 (with all of the rest gaining Level 2) we have done wonderfully well.


The keys, I am certain, are strong leadership across the whole school, an emphasis on strong and positive relationships with our students, and a 'dog-with-a-bone' belief that everyone of our students can succeed.


When you consider that 60-67% of our students arrive at the start of Year 9 in the bottom quartile of nationally-normed literacy and numeracy tests I don't believe there would be many, if any, schools in New Zealand which 'add value' as much as we do.


Let's see what ERO's view is when they arrive in Term III!

Kapa Haka Success

On Saturday Opotiki College Kapa Haka group Kura Ki Uta performed at the Mataatua Secondary School competitions. Our performance was very strong and moving, but we were quite nervous about how they would score.

When the results were announced we were third in whaikorero, first in kakahu, first in Te Manukura Wahine (go Hana!), second in Te Manukura Tane (go Raha!), third in Waiata Tira, second in original composition, third in Te Reo, first in discipline, first in whakaeke, first in moteatea, second in poi, second in waiata-a-ringa, second in haka and third in whakawatea.

Te Whanau-a-Apanui were third overall, Whakatane High School were second AND WE WON!!!!!!!!

This was a huge achievement and follows our awesome 3rd place in the NZ co-ed schools rugby tournament last weekend.

Well done KKU!

Curriculum Planning

Go the relevant page of my wiki on Development Plans for Opotiki College (see sidebar or clicking on the post title will take you directly to the page) to see my latest plans for our Junior Curriculum at Opotiki College. I have attempted to take the best out of our Pilot Home Roomed Class idea, our three day wananga experience, the work of our Aspiring Leaders Group, my sabbatical, research I have been reading, and the posts on Bruce Hammond's Blog and match this with school structures and staff capacity and come up with something that moves us along and is doable.

You will see it is centred around the formation of learning teams for each junior form class which all concentrate on one common theme per term and there is a lot of collaborative planning, discussion of strategies and the sharing of assessment data along with the formation of clear learning goals and targets for each class based on establishing the 'where at' position for the whole class and individuals.

I would appreciate feedback both on the blog and especially on the wiki.

Learning Matters

30 July 2009

Over the holidays I had the opportunity to attend the International Confederation of Principals Conference in Singapore. It proved to be the most inspiring and thought-provoking conference that I believe I have ever attended with 1500 school principals from around the world in attendance.

The highlight of the first day was the 60 minute opening address by the Prime Minister who outlined the Singaporean education journey and its strategy for the future. His catch cry is “Teach less, learn more.” He was outstanding and exhibited the type of leadership from the top for education which this country lacks.

They have had a clear strategy which has included big pay rises for teachers in return for performance-based pay and class sizes of 40 students. They have now moved to reduce that to 30. They have also ensured a strong base of support to schools from the central agency. Schools are also very well resourced. There was no talk at all of recession which seems to be the focus of any conversation in NZ from the government. Educational spending is rising by 5.5% this year!

There was followed an excellent keynote from Sir Dexter Hutt (a knighthood for services to education!) who addressed the issue of 21st Century Leadership. He re-emphasised that we don't know what the best model is for a school of the 21st Century other than that it should be positioned to cope with change and that the curriculum should provide regular opportunities for students to research, work in teams and present to an audience. He also claimed that the most important qualities to develop in young people to prepare them for the future are self-confidence and self-esteem.

The opening address on the second was by Andy Hargreaves who mapped out his view of the Fourth Way that education and schooling was entering. This requires principals to have an impossible dream for their school, to actively seek public engagement, to involve students as partners in change and to deliver mindful learning and teaching. He outlined the three principles of professionalism which were high quality teachers, powerful professionalism and lively learning communities.

The next speaker was Michael Furdyk who is a co-founder of TakingITGlobal.com which is a youth generated website which allows young people to actively contribute to changing the world. He has just turned 27 and his address was inspirational. His goal is to make caring cool. His website and opportunities to contribute and design could easily be the basis for a full school curriculum.

The last day of the conference was opened by Professor Kishore Mahbubani who gave an Asian perspective of the world, both its past and future. He commented on the growth of China and India and his surprise when western commentators expressed surprise at this growth. His view is that Asia has been the dominant power in the world for almost all of the world's history and that it has only been the last 200 years that the west has had dominance. The world is merely returning to its natural state.

He identified 3 paradoxes. The first is that the globalisation of western education has contributed to the decline in western dominance in the world. The second is that this means that non-western elements now need to be included in the curriculum. The third is that at a time when the rest of the world is opening up the west is becoming more closed.

His suggestions were to continue the globalisation of western education as this has contributed to the growth and development of critical thinking and to a reduction in poverty, to introduce non-western elements into the western curriculum so that the west can begin to understand different cultures and that students can understand the inter-connectedness of the world, and that there has to be a two-way street of ideas between the west and east because both world views are valid.

His analogy is that the world used to be like 192 different boats (countries) floating on the sea and that we merely needed rules to prevent them colliding. Now we have 192 different cabins on the same boat with no captain or crew, but most are just worrying about their own cabin. His question to us is to imagine the limitations when the education system only teaches about its own cabin!

He got a standing ovation from the 1500 present.

The second speaker was Professor David Perkins whose topic was educating for the unknown. His big question was what is worth learning. He proposed a checklist of Enlightenment, Empowerment and Responsibility. If material did not empower people to take action and to contribute, if it did not enlighten people or did not enhance a person's sense of responsibility then it was most probably not worth learning.

His little poem was:

Taught a lot but matters not
Not taught but matters a lot.

He talked of a concept of 'flexpertise' which required one to have an understanding of the wide scope of disciplines, to concentrate on ways of knowing (thinking skills), to develop ethical understaandings (empathy, spirituality, equity), to develop personal and societal understandings (leadership, collaboration) and to include horizon themes (current important themes).

We need to reduce what is in the curriculum using his 3 criteria of empowerment, enlightenment and responsibility. His suggestion is to pick the richest topics first, work in some of the others, just touch on some and then drop some!

This conference was all about learning and learning matters.

On The Way Home Thoughts

Now sitting on the plane from Penang to Singapore. After a final fish spa at Batu Ferringhi and a couple more shirts for Leigh we checked out of our hotel, put ours bags in store and spent the last hour in and around the pool before using their great showers and waiting for our transfer to the airport.

He arrived on time at 2.30 and we headed to the next hotel to pick up 2 guests. We waited for them for 35 minutes as they had gone off for walk. We then had a mad dash to the airport through heavy traffic. It took us an hour when normally 40 minutes. I was a bit worried as we had already left 35 minutes late. However, we arrived at the airport an hour before departure and check in went smoothly.

I am now sitting across the aisle from a Chinese man who is doing what they seem to do best – sniffing great lumps of mucous continually. There's only about an hour to go so will try to block him out. Oops, there he goes again!!!!

While the last 5 days have been holiday I have enjoyed having a bit of time (when Lucy lets me relax!) thinking about how to tie together the best stuff from the Restorative Conference in Vancouver and the best stuff from the ICP conference in Singapore. I am close to pulling it all together for our TOD on the last day of this term.

I have been invited to run a staff workshop at Wairoa College on the Friday of the second week of term and will aim to trial some of the stuff there and use them as guinea pigs! I am thinking of entitling it Leading Restoratively as I think it is time to develop all staff as leaders in this area rather than them relying on others to lead for them. I reckon we are at that point and with the leadership of our Aspiring Leaders Group we should be able to move our people to the point that the natural response is one of respectful conversation at all times no matter the provocation.

I am firmly of the view that in an adult-student situation only one party has the ability to escalate or de-escalate the conflict and that is the adult. This was reinforced both by the Kaikoura boys in Vancouver wirth their presentation and at the IPC and the American wahine's presentation.

We are now sitting at the departure gate in Singapore for the final 10 hour haul home, which will be followed by a five hour drive to Opotiki. Yeehah!!!

Wrestling with snakes in Penang

IMG_3291
Originally uploaded by mlabraham@xtra.co.nz

Here's the evidence along with more photos from Penang. This link will take you to the full set with the last 12 being added since the last post.

Today is our last full day on holiday as we start coming home tomorrow. We started quite late as we slept in after another great feed of spring rolls and murtabak and chapatis and curry and noodles and veges at our favourite food court. We spend $11NZ a night on drinks and about $10-$15nz a night on food. Outstanding!

Today started with Lucy and I paragliding. We were talked into it by Joe, a clone of Rex, who worked hard to get our custom. It was cool, but more like 5 mins thn 15 mins. He dipped us in the water after take off and lucy got a jelly fish sting which we didn't discover until later. The instructions were unclear, the equipment looked suss but we hae a great flight and landed elegantly in the sand.

After that while Lucy and Leigh headed home I ordered our standard 20 curry puffs from our favourite stall holder and walked home via Uplands International School to take photos of where my next job will be!

Since then it has been lazing by and in the pool on the hottest day so far. Leigh and Lucy went to pick up Lucy's tailored Ball Dress which looks great.

I'm now supping on an Ecstacy Hour (more than happy hour!) beer and generally relaxing surrounded by both skimpy bikinis and women in full burqua!

Heading home tomorow.

Feasting in Penang

IMG_3268
Originally uploaded by mlabraham@xtra.co.nz

Here's Leigh and Lucy at the food court we dine at each night. Last night we had satay and sizzling prawns!

Today was a full-on day as we went on an island tour. We started by visiting a batik factory where we bought some stuff. We then climbed into the hills and visited a fruit stall where we bought some fruit and nutmeg oil.

The highlight was visiting the snake temple which I visited in 1983 and when I was too scared to hold a snake. This time Lucy and I had a boa and viper around our necks!

After there we visited a flash manufacturing jewellers which was way out of our league. We then visited a Penang chocolate outlet and bought some curry and some chilli chocolate. From there we went to a coffee outlet, sampled a range of Penang coffees and bought some espresso.

Our final stop was a pewter factory which had some neat stuff and we bought some of it!

A few hours were needed recovering by the pool.

Check out the photos.

The Food!

IMG_3197
Originally uploaded by mlabraham@xtra.co.nz

The food is the highlight of any trip to this part of the world. Here's Leigh and Lucy tucking into a curry at Little India in Singapore. The full set of photos of the trip to date are here.

We are in our first full day in Penang and there has been heavy rain. We had a neat feed of spring rolls, murtabak, chicken and rice and chicken and chapatis at the local hawker site last night.

The highlight of today was attending the fish spa where you dangle your feet and hands in the water and nimble fish come along and eat all your dead skin cells. Most of them hung around me! It was a difficult sensation to get used to, but once you did it was real cool.

I had to sprint back to the hotel as the various curries were making their way through my system. Leigh and Lucy stopped at a tailors and Lucy got measured up for a ball dress.

We're about to head down for a swim and laze by the pool since the rain has stopped.

End of Conference

I was really knackered after a full-on conference day but we jumped into a taxi and headed out to the zoo for the Night Safari. We began by watching a cheesy Creatures of The Night show with otters, a boa constrictor, hyenas and some cat-like things. We then jumped on the tram for the tour through the Himalyas, Africa and Asian Rainforests we got great close-uos of hippos, rhinos, elephants, giraffes, deers, tigers, lions and other possumy, wombatty things. Half way around we got off and walked trails to look at leopards, flying squirrels, otters and bats. Lucy now has a morbid fear of bats after getting up close to a real squawker.

We eventually got home at 11.00pm having had no tea, but too tired to care.

Today was the last day of the conference and it started very strongly. Professor Kishore Mahbubani gave an Asian perspective of the world, both its past and future. He commented on the growth of China and India in particular and his surprise when western commentators expressed surprise. His view is that Asia has been the dominant power in the world for almost all of the world's history and that it has only been the last 200 years that the west has had dominance. The world is merely returning to its natural state.

He identified 3 paradoxes. The first is that the globalisation of western education has contributed to the decline in western dominance in the world. The second is that this means that non-western elements now need to be included in the curriculum. The third is that at a time when the rest of the world is opening up the west is becoming more closed.

His suggestions were to continue the globalisation of western education as this has contributed to the growth and development of critical thinking and to a reduction in poverty, to introduce non-western elements into the western curriculum so that the west can begin to understand different cultures and that students can understand the inter-connectedness of the world, and that ther has to be a two-wat street of ideas between the west and east because both world views are valid.

His analogy is that the world use to be like 192 different boats (countries) floating on the sea and that we merely needed rules to prevent them colliding. Now we have 192 different cabins on the same boat with no captain or crew, but most are just worrying about their own cabin. His question to us is to imagine the limitations when the education system only teaches about its own cabin!

He got a standing ovation from the 1500 present.

The second speaker was Professor David Perkins whose topic was educating for the unknown. His big question was what is worth learning. He proposed a checklist of Enlightenment, Empowerment and Responsibility. If material did not empower people to take action and to contribute, if it did not enlighten people or did not enhance a person's sense of responsibility then it was most probably not worth learning.

His little poem was:

Taught a lot but matters not
Not taught but matters a lot.

He talked of a concept of 'flexpertise' which required one to have an understanding of the wide scope of disciplines, to concentrate on ways of knowing (thinking skills), to develop ethical understaandings (empathy, spirituality, equity), to develop personal and societal understandings (leadership, collaboration) and to include horizon themes (current important themes).

We need to reduce what is in the curriculum using his 3 criteria of empowerment, enlightenment and responsibility. His suggestion is to pick the richest topics first, work in some of the others, just touch on some and then drop some!

I then headed off to a workshop on designing a new curriculum which I was really looking forward to only to find out the presenter hadn't turned up and there was a presentation on the Turkish education system. I politely left.

I cruised through the exhibitors stalls and spent some time speaking to two consultants from the UK who were like agents for Guy Claxton and his Building Learning Power ideas. They had produced some great looking resources which I am going to consider purchasing. The one I liked was a unit on astronomy which used the BLP ideas, was corss-curricula in nature and included PD for teachers. It was on a DVD but costs about 500 pounds. There was also another DVD on BLP strategies (hundreds of activities apparentl) but about the same cost. I did manage to talk them into giving me their display copy of their text Building Learning Power in Action.

The astronomy thing would be great for our pilot integrated curriculum class and the text would be great to work with the whole staff on the Key Competencies.

I also missed the next workshop because I was a bit tired but also there wasn't much on offer. This conference has been very higth quality, especially with the keynote speakers but the workshops have been a little limiting. There seems to have been little choice for secondary schools in our context. I suppose I was looking for more on school leadership, though I did get plenty of that from the keynotes.

While dodging I ran into ex REAPer Mike Scadden who is now doing consultancy work on brain stuff. He talked to me about opportunities teaching overseas which piqued my interest and could be the next move for me as I can't see myself taking on the leadership of another school (unless it was brand new, and especially if it was in Opotiki!!! - anyone can dream!)

The closing ceremony was a bit low key, but the confrence has been great.

I then joined up with Leigh and Lucy and we walked off to that place I said I would never go to again – The Long Bar at Raffles Hotel (last time cost $200 for 6 drinks!). Leigh had a Singap[ore Sling, Lucy had a non-alcoholic Singapore Sling and I had a beer – only $65 this time.

We then walked off to Lau Pa Sat food hawkers and had a great feed of satay (chicken, beef and prawn)– another must in Singapore – washed down with a glass ofr sugar cane juice. We then ambled back to our hotel to pack.

Lucy and Leigh informed me that the 8GIG Ipod that Lucy had bought was for mwe and in the morning we were going to Orchard Rd to buy her a 16GIG Ipod. Aren't they generous?!

After our final sleep in our luxurious hotel (not looking forward to the bill) and final hotel breakfast we sprinted to Orchard Rd by subway, bought the Ipod and got back to check out.

I'm typing this up sitting on the SilkAir plane about 40 minutes from Penang and the next bit of our adventure.

Conference Day 2

Last night we headed off to Maggie's again for a feed of spring rolls, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, brocolli in oyster sauce and chilli prawns with a Tiger and Tsinghao beer.

The conference today was very high quality. The opening address was by Andy Hargreaves who mapped out his view of the Fourth Way that education ans schooling was entering. This requires principals to have an impossible dream for their school, to aactively seek public engagement, to involve students as partners in change and to deliver mindful learning and teaching. He outlined the three principles of professionalism of high quality teachers, powerful professionalism and lively learning communities. His 4 catalysts of coherence are sustainable leadership, schools-wide networks, responsibility before accountability and the development of targets together.

The next speaker was Michael Furdyk who has just turned 27. His address was inspirational who is a co-founder of TakingITGlobal.com which is a youth generated website which allows young people to actively contribute to changing the world. His goal is to make caring cool. His website and opportunities to contribute and design could easily be the basis for a full school curriculum. His web site www.tigweb.org and links to TakingITGlobal.com and teachers site www.TIGed.com will be compulsory visiting for those of us who intend to help redesign the Opotiki College curriculum.

I then attended a workshop entitled The Naked Principal which was run by an Irishman, Sean Cottrell, which looked at a model for a principal to gain feedback on his role from teachers, students and parents.

The next presentation was by Jane Bluestein on managing naughty kids. I did not hve high expectations of this presentation, but it was outstanding. In one hour she outlined 10 simple strategies which allow teachers to turn every interaction with difficult students in to a win-win situation, though it does require teachers to make all of the changes. Her view is that almost all poorly behaved students are 'non-traditional' learners that teachers need to teach differently. She aims to have teachers to work successfully with these students which means no punishing, no banishing, no failing and no not changing.

Her 10 steps briefly (all of which require much further investigation on her website) are:
1.Create win-win power dynamics
2.Offer choices within limits
3.Focus on positive consequences
4.Use boundaries instead of rules and punishments
5.Be consistent about follow-through
6.Focus on what they're doing right
7.Use recognition in place of praise or conditional approval
8.Increase success for all students
9.Eliminate double standards
10.Take care of yourself

I then wandered into a workshop on the NSW laptops in schools programme by mistake and got stuck there, so I had a bit of a rest.

Little India and Day One of Conference

On Sunday night we went to a local food hall for dinner where Leigh and I had a nice murtabak and Lucy became adventurous and tucked into a biryani. I think some more shopping was done and we got back home and I began watching the Wimbledon Final, got hooked and stuck with it until the end at 1.30am. What a game. It certainly showed that no matter how far you are behind you just simply have to win the next point! That simple!

On Monday morning I registered for the conference and on way back to the hotel bought a pair of Asics running shoes for $95. We then jumped on the underground and went to Little India where we visited Mustafa's and lost Lucy for 45 minutes which was a bit stressful. We calmed down by dining on somosas, dahl and a melon lassa (yoghurt drink).

That evening Leigh and I put on our glad rags and walked to the Esplanade (Singapore's version of the Sydney Opera House) for the opening concert. After a couple of glasses of wine and catching up with some kiwis we took our seats (three rows from the front) and were entertained for two hours by some awesome school orchestras, choirs, brass bands and dancers. I also got a chance to talk to Belinda who is the president of the local version of SPANZ who had hosted Terry and I last year.

We then met up with Lucy at a local Noodles Bar and dined on chilli chicken udang.

Today was the first day of the Conference which has 1500 participants. The highlight of this first day was the 60 minute opening address by the Prime Minister who outlined the Singaporean education journey and its strategy for the future. His catch cry is “Teach less, learn more.” He was outstanding and exhibited the type of leadership which is sadly lacking in our country. I plan to send the link of his address to John Key and Anne Tolley.

They have had a clear strategy which has included big pay rises for teachers in return for performance-based pay and class sizes of 40 students. They have now moved to reduce that to 30. They have aso ensured a strong base of support to schools from the central agency. Schools are also very well resourced. There was no talk at all of recession which seems to be the focus of any conversation in NZ from the government. Educational spending is rising by 5.5% this year!

There was also an excellent keynote from Sir Dexter Hutt (a knighthood for services to education!) who addressed the issue of 21st Century Leadership. He re-emphasised that we don't know what the best model is for a school of the 21st Century other than that it should be positioned to cope with change and that the curriculum should provide regular opportunities for students to research, work in teams and present to an audience. He also claimed that the most important qualities to develop in young people to prepare them for the future are self-confidence and self-esteem.

I then went to a disappointing workshop on Differentiated Instruction but I managed to design some more jigsaw puzzle pieces (the symbolism we use at Opotiki College to show the linked bits of the complex puzzle of effective schooling) to show the connections between curriculum, pedagogy and relationships.

Leigh and Lucy visited Orchard Rd and I think are a bit mall saturated but Lucy had a good go at a chicken curry. She's talking about Ipod prices!

Now we just have to plan dinner.

Day 2 in Singapore

Sunday is our second full day in Singapore. It took quite a while to get the girls moving this morning, but we finally boarded our bus to Sentosa Island which is a fun-park-like resort.

We started with a luge ride, then took the pleasant nature walk down to the beach. It was very warm so we had a swim in the ocean along with lots of young people who are here for the Asian Youth Games and the beach volleyball which is being held on Sentosa.

After lunch we visited the Undersea World which is a bit like Kelly Tarltons.

On the way home it began to rain quite heavily. We got separated in SunTec but we all eventually made it home where we are resting before thinking about dinner.

Lucy is really enjoying herself and is doing a bit of shopping!

Rotorua to Singapore

The NZQA workshop in Rotorua last Thursday was a little annoying. Some of my fears were allayed, but my concerns about the direction NCEA is moving have not been put to rest. All regular curriculum subjects will have any unit standards converted to achievement standards. There will be a greater weighting of internal standards (you will not be able to have more than three external standards in a subject). There will be 20 literacy and numeracy standards available below curriculum 6 level. Students wishing to take an alternative English or Maths pathway may be able to take a course made up of these standards, some US on Communication English and some L1 ASs. Gone are the opportunities to do USs at Level 2 or 3.

I believe the balance has gone too far towards credibility and away from accessibility. NCEA L1 is not the final qualification we are aiming for for our students and we are too angst ridden about it. We are much better served by ensuring as many students as possible gain L1 so that they are motivated to aim for L2 possibly over 2 years.

After that Leigh, Lucy and I drove to Hamilton and took Thomas out to the Curry Pot in Hamilton East for dinner. It was great to catch up with him. From there we drove to Auckland and crashed in our Airport Hotel.

Things went smoothly at the airport apart from the computer having difficulty recognising us which caused some consternation for the check-in people. The flight was straight forward, but struggled to sleep so was a bit long. Watched a couple of movies (Broken Flowers, Sunshine Cleaning and something else).

Lucy had her bag randomly xrayed at Singapore.

Our hotel is very flash (5 star I think) but they had fogotten Lucy was coming so we have had to get another bed squeezed in.

Yesterday was a very busy day. We bought a concession touring ticket which gave us 48 hours to do heaps. Yesterday we did the City Hop on Hop off bus tour, followed by the Duck tour in the bay, followed by the Heritage Hop on Hop off bus tour, followed by the River Boat tour, with time for a quick pint!

Our hotel is in the SunTec Towers area and borders the Fountain of Wealth (world's biggest fountain!) and we have never returned by the same route, often getting horribly lost in the crowds at Suntec.

We finally made it back and spent some time in and beside the pool.

At about 7.00pm we heasded off to the Singapore Flyer (35m taller than the London Eye!) where we had a great view of the dress rehearsal fireworks for National Day celebrations occuring next month.

All day soldiers in tanks, pilots in helicopters and jets, and sailors in boats have been charging around practicing for the celebrations. They do this every Saturday to make sure they get it right on the day.

After our Singapore Flyer ride we wandered over to Beach Rd and had a great feed at Maggie's Restaurant. We ate there twice last year and really enjoyed it. We had chicken and cashew, hot plate beef and ginger, spring rolls and bok choy. All washed down with a cold Tiger Beer.

Got home in time to see the last 30 minutes of the Lions South Africa test and crashed.

Head Student Lunch

I have just finished having lunch with 5 of my head students (Tara, Rita, Kayla, Chad and Quentin). We try to meet every week on a Friday, but I have had a lot of meetings and courses on a Friday so we hadn't met for awhile so I took them to Two Fish.

We had a great conversation with each explaining how they were tracking towards their qualifications and their planning for next year. We have a couple heading into Health Sciences, one into the Navy, one into engineering and one into writing. What a neat bunch with great aspirations.

The best conversation was the didcussion about our recent Three Day Wananga. I know not all of them were in favour of the programme but in responding to their questions I found myself explaining my vision for the school and schooling in general in the clearest way.

All of us, students and teachers, have been locked in by the shackles of three years of high stakes qualifications which promotes credit gathering to a higher level than learning. I really enjoyed talking about this with them. I explained that we could ignore the form of assessment and get into learning and it wouldn't matter what the assessment tool was they would still be able to prove their understanding. The tragedy is that the way we structure the learning now a chunk of kids cope successfully with the qualifications system, but another chunk don't. I believe if we packaged the learning in a model similar to the Three Day Wananga all of the time, these brightest kids would still be able to prove their learning, but just as importantly the rest of the kids would have more opportunity to do so as well.

At the moment, all it seems we can manage is tinkering around.

I had a good meeting with our Ahi Kaa team last night (piloting an integrated, home room approach). I was abit despondent before the meeting, but came away re-enthused as the group talked about how they could see it working better next year. They have committed to a project-based approach in Term IV when they have "permission" to abandon the traditional curriculum altogether.

Their thinking for next year includes trialling with two classes and having two teachers teaching the full core to each class. I like the sound of it. Now...... all I need is another dedicated room, some passionate staff wanting to work harder than every one else with no extra time and with really tight budgets. Should be easy!

Three Day Wananga

Last week we had a great learning time at our school when we held our first ever Three Day Wananga. This involved suspending our timetable for three days while students worked in multi age learning teams to complete a range of projects. We operated this within our House System to both generate more House Spirit and to make the organisation manageable.

Four weeks ago we held a Teacher Only Day to which students were invited (about 30 turned up!) when teachers decided on the learning projects they would offer. We then held House meetings and explained the projects to the kids who then selected which one they wanted to do. The House Leaders did a great job in running this process. Each House had a budget of $1000 to allocate as they saw fit.

On the Friday before staff had time together at our staff meeting and a further House meeting was held. It then kicked off over Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of the following week.

The projects included The Amazing Race, Beach Conservation, Reporting Events, Healthy Living and Fitness, T Shirt Design, Graffiti Art, Carved Mural, Mucking In On the Marae, Our Land Our Environment, Fitness Freaks, Life and Death For The Bush, Pests and Plants, Opo Col On Air, NZ's Next Top Shakespeare, Mountain Bike Track Clearing, News Broadcasts, Creating a School Sculpture, Boot Camp, Traditional Food Processes, Documentary of Katherine Mansfield, and Stories in Fabric.

We did a lot of learning process and structure wise. In the future we would have a set interval and lunch time as by making it flexible there were too many gaps in the fence for kids to move through. We would also have a tutor each morning to get an accurate attendance check. Unfortunately the Ministry of Education chose this week to do the nation-wide attendance survey! Normally our kids are not allowed off site at breaks, but with so many groups operating in and out of school this was impossible to enforce so we would have to think about that in the future. Also, because of the practical nature of many of the activities mufti was the best solution.

I have finished analysing the evaluations made by staff and have only partially completed the evaluations collected from 200 of our students (36%). The staff evaluations showed that 50% believed there was enough time given to prepare, 50% believed they were given enough guidance and support, 80% believed they were well-prepared, 86% believed there project was a valid learning experience, 97% believed their students largely responded positively, 92% believed they covered more than one Key Competency, and 81% believed they achieved their planned outcomes. I wonder if we would achieve these levels if we surveyed our traditional way of teaching and learning!

Staff have made suggestions for enhancing this programme and also made many positive comments supporting this type of learning including: high levels of student engagement, great student-student and teacher-student relationships formed, seeing students who often appear disinterested at school truly engaged in their activities, students achieved beyond expectations, it was a time of real discovery for me, senior students working as role models with juniors.

The big question is where to from here?

Learning Matters

Before the last election I expressed some concerns about National Party education policy. My concerns were focused on the policy in relation to national testing of primary and intermediate students. My observations on my sabbatical last year convinced me this was a flawed policy which had not contributed to increased achievement any where that it had been tried.

My concerns right now are quite different and announcements since the recent budget have made me feel we are in a state of siege from this government. Three different pieces of correspondence that I have received over the last 2 weeks threaten schools in general and make it particularly difficult for Opotiki College.

The first concerns the Extending High Standards Across Schools contract we have with the Ministry of Education. This is a contract we have to support 9 of our contributing primary schools to adopt restorative practices so that students feel less alienated from schooling and are able to engage more effectively with their learning. We are in our second year of a four year contract and we have recently been able to gain some traction.

In the first year we trained all principals, senior teachers and some BOT members. This year we extended our training to more teaching staff and have begun to form implementation teams within all schools.

I have just been informed that the contract is going to be terminated at the end of this year and all funding withdrawn. This puts seriously at risk the progress that we have made in our community of schools.

The next piece of correspondence informed us that Adult and Community Education is going to be slashed by 80%. Schools will only be able to offer community classes in literacy and numeracy. Gone are all the skills and interest based courses that help build our community and provide life-long learning opportunities for anyone from our community regardless of their educational background.

This is going to have a huge impact on our community.

To make matters worse our local Council proposed to abandon their 30 year contribution of $7500 to provide reception and administrative support for our Community Activities Office. After making a submission it appears that they will continue to provide support if the governement continues to provide Adult and Community Education funding.

So our local Council is doubling the impact by saying they will qwithdraw support if government provided support is withdrawn. Surely this is the time when the community needs to rally and look for ways to increase rather than reduce support!

The third, and most probably not the last piece of correspondence, informs us that staffing will be reduced by 1.5% at the end of 2010. This will mean one less teacher at Opotiki College. This may not seem much but at the moment our BOT is funding 2 extra teachers to support our curriculum. This is a high cost and cannot be sustained. The BOT will certainly not be able to support a further position.

While making these cuts the government has said it will provide $35 million for the private school sector!

The public education sector is under attack from this government and we are starting to reel. Education and learning is the key to our contry's and the Opotiki community's future: learning matters.

Final Conference Notes - Part Two

After getting off the ferry I decided to take the skytrain to the BC Stadium and visit the Sports Hall of Fame. When I got there I saw it cost $10 and didn't look that flash so I gave it a miss. I was looking for some present for Lucy who is quite hard to buy for. I then walked back along a main shopping street to my hotel stopping to check out music on the way.

I then decided to do a run around Stanley Park which I thought would be about 8k,in fact it was 10k. It's a great place to run, beside the sea all the way around and under Lion Bridge which links to Nprth Vancouver. Near the end of the run there were a few beaches which were packed solid with people. You had to watch when running because there are hundreds of rollerbladers and cyclists charging around as well.

When I got back to the main beach it was packed but no one was in the water. I couldn't figure out why so I leapt in anyway. It wasn't too cold but quite murky. After drying off I headed back to the hotel and began packing my bags. At about 7.30 I picked up a kebab and headed to the beach for tea where the boys from Kaiapoi found me. We chatted on the beach until the sun went down just before 10.00.

The next morning I joined them and Tim from Hamilton for coffee and breakfast before I had to head off to the airport. Thankfully at the airport I found a Winter Olympics bag for Lucy and when I arrived at LA I texted her and bought some LA T shirts which I thought she might like.

Unfortunately the plane from LA left late. I had a spare seat beside me and got quite a bit of sleep during the 13 hour long haul. About an hour before the end they realised I was going to struggle to make my connection to Whakatane so moved me into Premium Economy to be closer to the door. I wish they had done that earlier!

I had a mad sprint to the domestic and after some check in hassles made my plane only to arrive at Whakatane 15 minutes before Leigh!

It was good to be home!