Time to reconsider middle schools focus

Media Release
28 June 2007

Time to reconsider middle schools focus

PPTA is launching a website to outline its concerns about the education of children in middle schools.

The Association is worried by the apparent focus of the Ministry of Education on building new middle schools – with middle schools already planned in Flatbush and plans also afoot in the Hutt Valley.

The website, rethinkingmiddleschools.org.nz, outlines PPTA’s concerns about middle schools – among them that the middle school structure disrupts learning at a critical point in students’ lives and that middle schools do not provide students with sufficient access to the specialist preparation that senior subject study requires.

PPTA president Robin Duff said research showed that students making the transition from middle to secondary schooling were "struggling to adapt at such a late stage" (K Hawk & J Hill, 2000) and that both parents and students are misled by middle schools promises that their programmes adequately prepare year 9 and 10 students for year 11 study at secondary school.

Evidence from the US also showed middle schools had a higher turnover of teaching staff. Middle schools were not an attractive option for trained and qualified specialists, because they lacked promotional opportunities and the chance to teach senior students.

Mr Duff said best practice in many secondary schools is now to lay the groundwork for NCEA in years 9 and 10. Students who attended middle schools would enter secondary school in the first year of NCEA assessment, and could be disadvantaged.

“All changes of school structure set back learning to some extent but to subject students to a completely new social and learning environment at year 11 runs the risk of hampering student preparation for the NCEA,” Mr Duff said.

The government’s focus on middle schools comes at a time when other countries are closing them because of the expensive duplication of facilities.

“I hope I am proved wrong but it seems a certainty that the government is determined to impose a middle school on the parents of secondary students in Upper Hutt just as happened to parents at Flat Bush in Auckland.”

ENDS

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