Do you want to be educated? Educate yourselves first

Before the election National pledged to increase education spending every year, above what was already committed. At the same time it criticised Labour's pledge card.

Now, the Government may effectively cut education spending. It also wants to ensure that people borrowing for studies were likely to find work that would give them enough income to repay their loans.

To do that the Government has to ensure two things: that work is there to be found and that it pays enough.

Instead, what it is doing is to limit the numbers of students who take out a loan so that fewer of those who earn crap incomes don’t have to spend it on student loans to pay back living costs. It is also cutting eligibility for students over 55 as they are not likely to get jobs as a result of their study that will repay those student loans. This move may contravene the Bill of Rights but the Government has shown it is quite happy to pass laws that are in contravention to the Bill of Rights.

Even if some do get jobs, the Government is telling people to do more with less and praising those who do so by lying about the amount they do have.

Just recently the Government used the Napier Kindergarten Association as an example of being able to “do more with less”. by quoting budget figures before funding cuts were implemented. Meaning they are only doing “more with less” by increasing fees.

Fees, in some cases, that are paid by students who have to put their kids in childcare so they can study.

The amount saved every year by restricting access to student loans will be up to $60m a year.

I think the Government would like more couples to go on the student allowance, particularly if they have an earning partner. Most couples -say, with two preschool children - on the student allowance earning $406.00 a week actually get more than they would if they earned $700.00 - due to the sharp abatement rates. Meaning many of those earning over $407.00 a week are paying more tax( some on secondary tax) but getting less net income - but feel they are getting more net income as they are working more.

With the over 55’s, 70 per cent of money borrowed is not paid back – so that means much of the living costs loaned to over 55’s is treated as a student allowance and as less is to be loaned to these students money will be saved.

How much will be saved by reversing the tax cuts? I`ll give you a clue, if we just reversed tax cuts for those over $70k we’d save $1.625 bn. We could ensure the retention of the $20 tax subsidy for all KiwiSaver members, increase access to education, make ECE free, and still have money left over.

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Another Labour education spokesperson

David Shearer is Labour’s fourth education spokesperson this Parliamentary term, after being parachuted into Parliament by Phil Goff to win a by-election. Shearer used to advise Goff on Foreign Affairs. They are good mates, and went to school together.

However many in Labour are not happy about the way Goff made the appointment after the Darren Hughes sex allegations. Hughes was Labour’s education spokesperson after a reshuffle saw Grant Robertson promoted from his education spokesperson role, to Health. Both Hughes and Robertson (as well as Iain Lees- Galloway and Chris Hipkins) are former student executives, although Shearer isn’t.

Shearer’s CV [PDF] notes his career has been dedicated to increasing inequality and fairness, and he has spoken out publicly in the media on issues he has felt strongly about.

It remains to be seen whether this dedication will extend to addressing inequality and inequity in education. Who knows how strongly he will feel about addressing such issues to the point he will publicly speak up.

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Good decision

Roger Douglas' Education ( Board of Trustees Freedom) Amendment Bill got voted down today .

This bill would have introduced bulk funding into schools, and it would have meant that school Boards of Trustees would pay teachers and set their salaries. It would have meant that wealthy schools in leafy suburbs who raise $80,000 in their school fairs would get all the top teachers, and the lower decile schools who struggle to raise $200 at sausage sizzles will get the teachers who miss out on higher pay jobs at these higher decile schools as is happening in Denver,Colorado.. This inequality will not lead to increased overall student achievement. Bulk funding is leading to more inequality in Colorado, and it will do the same here.

But Act (and the Maori Party, who also supported this bill) don't really care about inequality in schools. The Maori Party only care about Kura and Act only care about people getting individual choice to structure their own affairs - and if that widens the gap between rich schools and poor schools, Act thinks that is just tough.

The bill is unfair, unnecessary and leads to greater inequality.Bulk funding didn't work in the '90's and it won't work now. And if freedom leads to more inequality its hardly positive freedom. That's why this bill was thrown out - and rightly so. Kelvin Davis made a good speech on the bill. You can see that here.

Now, the next thing that needs to happen is for another Douglas bill on education that will lead to inequality to be voted down in the next reading. Equality of outcome is important. How can that increase if equality of opportunity is reduced?

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Massey University students given 30 minutes warning to enrol for summer school

*** Breaking news***
At 4.25pm today, Massey University domestic students were given 30 minutes notice to enrol for summer semester papers. That is because at the end of the semester two enrolment period, the University has exceeded its TEC funding cap for the 2010 year, and because of continued enrolment pressures no further domestic student enrolments can be accepted.

(Actually that's not exactly correct, students weren't even advised, just Massey staff, by email).

Students already enroled in summer school offerings will still be allowed to study. But if not enough students have enroled for their papers, because they thought they had til November to enrol, some papers will be canned and Colleges may redirect students to a suitable alternative. That`ll be hard if the paper is a core paper needed to pass a degree.

New students intending to study at Massey next year must enrol by December 8. Current domestic students have until January 19, which is a lot earlier than the 28 February it used to be.

So, if you were hoping to enrol for summer school at Massey, you can't. And if are a student at school and intend to study at Massey next year, you`ll have to enrol before exams. If you lose your job and subsequently decide to go studying at Massey, you better hope you lose your job well before December 8.

UpdateThe DomPost has a front page story on this, now - and TVNZ has also picked this up.

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Jerks

A Christian school - Middleton Grange - Board of Trustees has sacked a school sports coach because he is gay - because of a belief that homosexuality is a sin. This is the sort of school I would never send my kids to - and had I been on the Board of Trustees for that school I would have resigned.

Rightly so, the school board has been told to attend a human rights awareness course, and has done so. They even had to give the man a payout. Ironically, the team was a girls team. The media reported that parents and teachers did not support the boards decision, but given that the fairly new principal and some parents are on the board, at least some parents supported the decision.

You gotta wonder what is wrong with Christian schools in Canterbury.They even have their own Christian schools network.It's time for them to start networking and discuss what Jesus would do in certain situations.

update Had to laugh when I read the Job description for the Board of Trustees which included "to be well acquainted with the National Education Guidelines and other applicable legislation, so that may ensure Middleton Grange compliance."

Other applicable legislation includes the Human Rights Act.

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Uni magazine’s inaccuracies confirmed by the Minister

Yesterday morning,, I rang up minister Steven Joyce’s office regarding yesterday’s inaccurate story in Salient regarding entitlement to student assistance, before I wrote this blog post. They weren`t aware of the story but said they’d get back to me. They didn’t but they did get back to NZPA confirming inaccuracies in the article, after the NZPA parroted a story picked up by the NZ Herald.

Joyce’s office made these points

* Generally, most conjoint degrees take less than 5 EFTS (effective full time student) to complete. An additional year for honours would take the student to 6 EFTS. However, if a masters study took them over the 7 EFTS limit, they would be given an additional one EFTS to finish their degree;
* Most students who complete a medical degree at Otago University will do 1 EFTS Health Sciences First year and then 5 EFTS for the remainder of the medical degree -- a total of 6 EFTS.
 A student who completes their degree and honours degree before going over their 7 EFTS limit will have one additional year of entitlement for masters study that takes them over the 7 EFTS limit.

The past few Salient editors have used a few EFTS - they have honours degrees. Obviously the current one doesn’t know much about EFTS.

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Students are likely to have to fund their own Masters study?

Victoria University's Salient has popped up a story about eligibility to the student loans scheme for post graduate students.

Some future doctors and those seeking a higher education will be forced to fund some of their own studies after changes made to the Student Loan Scheme earlier this year.

In an exclusive statement to Salient, Tertiary Education Minister Steven Joyce admitted that the changes made to the Loan Scheme in Budget 2010 will mean that some students will not have access to student loans to cover their final years of study.

This is nothing new. There are limits on how long students can get a student loan and for the average student with a three year degree (and honours) this policy won't affect them. But the Salient article says the opposite.

The loan scheme restructure means students who complete a double degree and honours will likely need to fund any Masters study out of their own pocket, but may then be able to access funding for Doctorate study.

That is simply incorrect.

Most students will be unlikely to have to fund their own masters even if they did two degrees - anyway, most students would do a double major,which takes around the same time as a single major.

Most degrees take fewer than 5 EFTS (effective full time student) to complete. A student who studies full time for about 52 weeks a year is a 0.8 EFTS. An undergraduate can get the student loan for 7 EFTS, with a further 1 EFTS allowed for postgraduate study and 3 EFTS for doctoral study if these EFTS are unused.That's more than eight years of study. The same rules apply for the student allowance. So the average full time student studying to honours level will only run out of EFTS if he or she fails and then resits a good deal of papers - in a second degree.

Where the policy could affect students is post graduate study after degrees that take around seven years - such as medical studies. But it is blatantly incorrect to state that students who complete a double degree and honours will likely need to fund Masters out of their own pockets - with the implication that most students who have done honours will have to fork out for Masters.

You only have to look at the Cabinet papers to find that out. Obviously Salient didn't bother to do that.

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How not to report in plain English

The Plain English awards are on at the moment. Each year, organisations and members of the public are invited to submit documents and websites that they think are outstanding examples of plain English — or of gobbledygook.

Entries closed yesterday. It’s a shame really, as I could have entered the Ministry of Education’s website which advises how to report to school students in plain language on the National Standards.

2. Plain language reporting
It’s a good idea to have any explanatory sheets read by a parent to check they are clear and easy to understand. any explanatory sheets read by a parent to check they are clear and easy to understand.

And this - after the site was amended. It’s not the only error on the page, either. It’s probably a good idea for the Ministry of Education to have its websites read by someone to check for repetition.

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National standards and school principals

Well, I`m back blogging and I hope to be doing a post on National Standards this week. Yet I couldn't help noticing that Education Minister Anne Tolley thinks that teachers are public servants, and that parents want National Standards. As a parent and a trustee of a school board, I have an opinion on this.

Firstly, Tolley is incorrect. Teachers are not public servants - they are employed by Boards of Trustees. While it is helpful for parents to have reports that clearly show how their kids are doing in reading , writing and maths, in terms of National Standards, what if they don't have a clue of what that national standard is? And what if they want to be told on these reports how their kids are getting on in other areas of the curriculum, such as art? Will that also be reported on?

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Six years to complete a degree or student loans stop

Post has been updated - see comment below
Steven Joyce wants students to finish their degrees quicker. If they don’t finish them in six or seven years, well, they can fund the degree themselves as they won’t be able to get a student loan. And fair enough too, for full time students. He appears to be blaming students for dragging the chain because student loans are interest free.

It’s unclear whether “student loan” means for course costs ( I assume so) as well as living costs, and if so, that has the potential to cause problems, particularly for extramural students who work while studying – and may, for example, do a few papers a year and finish the last year off full time. If a student takes two or three papers a year, completing 16 papers in say six years, and decides to do the last eight papers as a full time student, will they be able to get a student loan if the limit is six years; will they be able to get a student loan for course costs in the last year if they complete the final eight papers over two years? And that's for a three year degree. Some degrees - for example Social Work - are four year degrees.Medical degrees are abut six years in length.

What happens if a student - particularly an extramural student - wants to have a break in studying for a year because their job is going well or they want to have a year off to concentrate on, say, raising a newborn child? Additionally, each extramural student costs less money and time than internal students, as they don’t go to lecturers or tutorials, and use campus facilities a lot less, yet their fees are also set to increase.

It took me six years to do my degree (including honours) but that was only because I did the last three years full time, passed all my papers, worked part time and in the last year survived on about five hour's sleep a night, on average. Neither did I have any years in between where I took no papers at all. Hardly any extramural students (of which I was one) study full time for three years running. Sure, students who work full time may not take up loans for living costs, but they have to pay for course costs and books (and in my case airfares, transport and accommodation costs to contact and block courses) somehow.

If I was a lifetime student, I’d just do another degree and do it within six years. Then do another one. If I studied at my current rate, I'd have three honours degrees in the time that Steven Joyce took to do his degree in zoology, a degree he has said he has never used. And that's with a three year gap in between.

UPDATE Just had a chat to the Minister's office - apparently the proposal is for effective full time students (EFTS). An EFTS is eligible for a student allowance, and does at least six papers a year. Meaning that this part of the policy will not affect extramural students who gradually complete their degrees, unless they are an EFTS for at least six years, and the policy won't affect post graduate study at all. Good.

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British kids can use expletives in school exams

You have to wonder WTF is going on in exams these days. British high school students are being awarded marks for writing obscene phrases on their English tests because it shows at least some ability to convey a message.

A chief examiner responsible for training other markers said the phrase "f... off" deserved some marks. The British government's examinations regulator refused to condemn the approach.

We think it's important that candidates are able to use appropriate language in a variety of situations

Yes, very appropriate. What next! Expletives in French language classes - and in text message language, too, I suppose.

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Maori education

The Green Party is concerned that Maori are missing out on formal tertiary education, and will be further restricted by Auckland University's announcement that is restricting entry into undergrad programmes. Meteria Turei says Maori women will be most disdvantaged.
But do you know what proportion of university students are Maori? I`ll give you a clue - it is a single digit figure that has remained the same since 2002.

Maori are already missing out.

They are only missing out on formal tertiary education because they are not achieving during secondary school. Instead they are attending TOPs courses and going back on the benefit or another low paid job. Isn`t it about time the Greens and the Maori party addressed this? Not a great deal return to formal tertiary education after raising families.

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