I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the opposition’s Education Policy announcement ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’. In a nutshell, after some rhetoric about how our system is failing students, they’ve outlined the following. What is ‘Teaching the Basics Brilliantly’ 1. An hour each on Reading, Writing and Maths each day – share best practice guidance…
Category: politics
Children are NOT Collateral Damage – Part Two!
It is six sleeps until Christmas (seven in other parts of the world), and this year there will be 148 teachers and students who will not be with their families, after Terrorists murdered them as they attended their school in Peshawar. This has not been an isolated case of children, women and teachers who…
The IES Elephant in the Room
It has been a busy week for me, with a board meeting, community consultation evening, IES combined cluster and boards of trustee meeting and a fabulous Pasifika Festival. All of these things have been part and parcel of what it is to be involved in educational leadership, and all of them require teams of people…
Labour Day – Celebrating Workers
Oestrogen May Be the Answer
I have thus far refrained from commenting on the Labour leadership race. Not because I am not interested but because I am a bit over politics. I am surprised more are not ‘over it’, after the disaster that was the so called Election, the mess that was #dirtypolitics and the lack of cohesive team work…
And so it is done…
Here I sit, at my laptop, listening to music, wondering about the world. It is a miserably wet Sunday afternoon, post election. Out the window, the heavens have let forth and it is pouring down, on and off as if it can’t decide which way to go. One moment there is sun, the next…
The Voter – Which Type are You?
I have been wondering. Politics is an interesting beast and right now in NZ, its akin to watching a ship that keeps on crashing onto the reef. In the last week or so, I have run into a wide gambit of the public who would be placed all along the political spectrum, and some who,…
Left or Right — What Kind of NZ Do You Want?
Politics. Love it or loathe it, all of us are caught up in the political fall out one way or another because as citizens of our country, what happens when those polls close will have an impact on us all. Some will be happy, some will be disappointed and some probably won’t care too…
What do I want for my child?
This election you have a choice. You can choose Neo liberal policy from the right or Child Centred policy from the left. Today I watched the Current Education Minister Hekia Parata and Education spokesperson for Labour Chris Hipkins on The Nation, go head to head. They both debated their aspirations for students in New…
Children Are Not Collateral Damage
War and conflict dominates our headlines lately. Every time we turn the television on, check our Facebook and Twitter feeds or spy a paper – digital or of the old fashioned, newsprint kind – war confronts us. For the most part, people like you and me (yes, you and me) generally zone out. Another war,…