29 October 2012

Media Release:

Longstone should tender her resignation

Education Secretary Lesley Longstone’s claim, in the Ministry of Education’s annual report, that New Zealand does not have a world class education system is a nasty untruth.

Our education system is world class but government policies prevent children from working class families from succeeding as they should.

We know from decades of world class research across all education system in all countries that the single most important determinant of student success is the socio-economic circumstances of the family.

All New Zealanders know this but Longstone is in denial. Instead she does her best to blame schools and teachers for student underachievement.

It is NOT the fault of our education system when –

• children come to school too hungry to learn

• Children change schools frequently to escape the worst effects of poverty (400 children change schools in South Auckland every Monday morning)

• The government refuses to extend funding for programmes shown to improve Maori and Pacifika achievement

• The government refuses to provide the resources to significantly reduce class sizes in low-income communities where research shows developing strong teacher student learning relationships is more critical to student success than elsewhere

The scourge of student failure is linked directly to government economic and social policies – not the education system.

Schools in low income communities work exceptionally hard to raise student achievement. Instead of praise Longstone pours scorn on their efforts.

She was brought in from the poorly performing UK education system to implement its failed policies here. The UK public education system has become fragmented and incoherent – a drive overseen by Longstone herself who was a champion of the UK version of charter schools (called “free schools” in the UK)

In her time here she has been a fish out of water and has overseen Education Ministry failure at every turn – the class sizes debacle which resulted in a major government policy backdown, the fiasco over school reorganisation proposals in quake-ravaged Christchurch and the on-going failure of the new Novopay system for teachers are the most obvious examples.

If she believed in accountability as our public schools do then she would resign.
ends

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