23 June 2006
Slash and Burn at NZQA
Talk about a hospital pass. Karen Poutasi has to implement a decision by Steve Maharey, Karen Sewell and the NZQA board
to cut NZQA spending by $9 million or 11%. An internal staff memo puts a stop to all hiring, tells staff to wind up
contractors earlier if they can, and says that long-term savings will "require more fundamental work". That's code for R
and R - restructuring and redundancies.
NZQA have been told they have to claw back their large unexpected loss from last year. And the loss is a sad tale of
incompetence. They double-counted GST. Everyone else knew foreign student numbers were dropping, but NZQA grossly
over-estimated the exam fees they would pay. And it cost them an extra $3.5 million to pay for last year's enquiries and
to set up Scholarship again so it would work.
Ms Sewell reassures staff by saying she doesn't want to over-dramatise the situation and that NZQA is not headed for
bankruptcy or crisis. Which means it is.
More Snow Than Canterbury
In their advice to Maharey about the Operational Grant Review, officials were worried about anything that "may move the
focus of the review towards adequacy of funding and away from the key priority of how funding is used to support the
Government's educational priorities". So forget any new money coming from it.
The review is a classic Maharey snow job - nice words, conflicting expectations, keep everyone on message, and a mess in
the end. Michael Cullen is taking a hard line on no new money now that he believes everyone in health in education is
ungrateful after such a big spend-up over the past six years. In the absence of a big cheque, Maharey has to manipulate
the Operations Review Group to sign up to his priorities and sell them to the education sector while he holds out the
promise of a bit more money if everyone behaves. It's cynical and it will probably work for a while - and then fall
apart.
Ratemyteachers.com getuse2it
After a few weeks, Ratemyteachers.com has 45,000 ratings of 13,000 teachers. It's here to stay. Maybe it's all gossip.
Or, if you believe in the wisdom of crowds, it will provide a balanced assessment of teacher's skills. Either way, it
fills a vacuum of public information. The media go silly about information on schools because their readers and viewers
are very interested, but information is so scarce. If teachers are worried about ratemyteacher.com they should support
efforts to make good information more available to the public.
The Internet makes information ubiquitous and cheap. Isn't that what children already know and parents are learning as
the world goes digital? Unions may be able to help a minister to hide Schoolsmart but they can't beat kids on the
Internet, and the promises of legal action against this website are an embarrassment. Why does the education sector
believe it will be exempt from the digital tide washing through our community?
So it's a choice between gossip and hype over the titbits that the public can get, or sensible debate about widely
available data and judgments. My advice to schools and the unions about information on schooling is to get running or
get run over.
ENDS