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Primary School Diaries
by Kelvin Smythe
The five booklets complete the series.
For more information click link
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Tag Archives: Tomorrow’s Schools
Not ‘Getting it’ – and ‘Getting it’
When Tomorrow’s Schools was introduced, I immediately recognised we would be incapable of thinking ourselves out of the education failure we had allowed ourselves to be thought into (led by Treasury and a mesmerised David Lange) and predicted the next … Continue reading
Tomorrow’s Schools’ wheel-a-go-round
The lack of attention to: Leadership: you can have good leadership (no recent example in education comes to mind) and bad leadership (Hekia Parata) and no leadership (Chris Hipkins) – which constitutes an abdication to bad leadership The way the … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Chris Hipkins, Education policy, Politics, Schooling, Tomorrow's Schools
1 Comment
Here I stand Part 4: The education phenomenon that has had an even more baleful effect on education than the review office
The review office is the major structural reason why primary education is in decline, but there is a phenomenon that has had an even more baleful effect (unsurprisingly, it is directly connected to the review office in function and ideology). … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Curriculum, Education policy, principals, Schooling, Tomorrow's Schools
2 Comments
Here I stand Part 3: By a series of circumstances, the truth of education in a democracy was struck
The File and this writing is predicated on the main aim for school education in a democracy being to prepare children for life in a democracy and to support and protect it. What else could the main aim for school … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Curriculum, Education, Education policy, National standards, Politics, principals, Schooling, Teachers, Tomorrow's Schools
1 Comment
Here I stood Part 2: What goes around with quantitative reading professors comes around
Introduction In the NZ Herald today (26.04.2018), Natalie Akoorie has written an article on a just released review office report damning reading recovery. This report was then discussed by the review office and responded to by one of the Massey … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Curriculum, Education, Education policy, ERO, Ministry of Education, National standards, Politics, Reading, Teachers, Tomorrow's Schools
1 Comment
Here I stand Part 1: Teacher knowledge must be up there with all knowledge
Primary school education is about the curriculum, the real curriculum, developed in New Zealand in the 1940s, based on the interaction of the affective and cognitive, and evolved from teacher knowledge in shared process (see variously below, especially Part 3), … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Education policy, Media, Politics, Schooling, Teachers, Tomorrow's Schools
7 Comments
I am not sitting on my hands: the cabinet paper is not enough
On balance, the paper by the minister of education to the cabinet removing national standards is useful, but not sufficiently so to make definitive philosophical change in the way National always does, and Labour has done twice, once with Peter … Continue reading
A quiet pre-Christmas warning: We are in trouble
In 1988 I wrote a three-part series in which I predicted why primary school education was heading for trouble (which is about to be re-published); to live that warning, in 1990, I resigned at 51 years as senior inspector of … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy
Tagged Community of Learning, Curriculum, Education, Education policy, ERO, Hattie, Hekia, National standards, Neoliberalism, NZEI, Politics, principals, Schooling, Teachers, Tomorrow's Schools
4 Comments
Laura Walters and Simon Collins: wayward and biased reporting
Laura Walters should give up altogether, her writing spirals unobstructed by any semblance of originality below that which an intelligent 15 year-old could produce – there is a breathless, girl’s adventure quality to her writing, a hugely misplaced confidence, demonstrating … Continue reading
Posted in Media
Tagged Education policy, ERO, Media, National standards, NCEA, Politics, Schooling, Teachers, Tomorrow's Schools
1 Comment
The morning after and personal reflections on resistance (if you will forgive me)
The main instrument governments have used to dismantle public education is the education review office; it is the organisational apotheosis of the coercive neoliberal education ends. If public education is to be freed, given renewed health to pursue democratic and holistic … Continue reading
Posted in Education Policy, Education Review Office
Tagged Education policy, ERO, principals, Tomorrow's Schools
9 Comments
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