New Staffing Levels will impact Student Achievement

The rhetoric that quality is better than quantity, like any political sound bite, makes sense when first heard - but only when taken out of context of the full picture. We are a school that has a passionate, committed staff of quality teachers. They collaborate together to ensure that we leave no stone unturned in making our children’s learning journeys as successful as possible. Part of making sure that happens means that class size does matter. Already from the new Ministry formula that they will apply for allocating school staffing next year our school could lose at least .3 of a full time teacher out of an allocation of approximately 9.63. To put that figure in context, that is what helps funds our specialist learning support in 2012 every morning for reading and maths. Our Minister of Education keeps saying - its schools that decide about class sizes, however, you can only cut up a pie into so many pieces depending on the size of the pie you’ve been given! Next years pie is determined from figures taken by the Ministry at 1 March and 1 July of the current year. If we lose the staffing that funds our student support then our choices are either bigger classes, no student support, try to fund it from within the actual operating grant (which takes away from other curriculum support) or fundraise for it (that is ask parents for more!) Is this giving our children the best chance of progressing in their learning - no matter what their achievement level? What do you think? Below is a brilliant sketch from "Saturday Night Armistice" uploaded in June 2010 - which gives a satirical look at, what has now, become very topical for the New Zealand situation.

A Celebration and a Concern

Tonight our schools amazing new entrant teachers and I hosted our new entrant family night. I wished I had snapped a photo - we had around 40 new and existing parents/couples turn up to hear a bit about our school, their child's transition into school and how we cater for each child's uniqueness once they are there. I started the night (once we had got everyone a seat!) with what turned into a very passionate (I thought) introduction about our amazing school and the environment we work hard to provide to each and every child. I talked about team work, I talked about collaboration, I talked about staff supporting each other, I talked about our school working together like a village raising a child, I talked about all our teachers working to meet the learning needs of every child - no matter what their age - at what ever level they are working at.
We then showcased the teaching and learning environment of our school with our video clip (compiled by Mark) for one of our parent workshops in Term 1. It introduced some of the ideas behind our teaching and learning philosophy- from classroom setup to programme delivery to learning tools used.

A question and answer session then followed with the opportunity for anything 'on top' to come out and be discussed around the environment that Jan, Amy and our school will provide for our children. Parents then had the opportunity to visit the two rooms with the teacher concerned and see some examples of work and the environment provided. Awesome - the night had a real positive feel to it.
Then... I couldn't help but reflect on the announcement made today by our Minister of Education about the new staffing levels and the beginning of the introduction of performance based pay - both which seem to work against everything we are trying to do and what I talked about. Who adds the value - is it the amazing new entrant teachers who ignites the learning spark inside our kids in that precious first year of school? Or, is it the next teacher who builds on that wonderful foundation - or the next teacher who strengthens it and broadly enriches it across the curriculum - who adds the most value? Which individual gets the reward?
But the positive vibe of the evening reminded me again of the importance of a strong and connected community between home and school. A community that stands together to support and resource the collaborative environment that makes such an effective teaching team for our children. Now, more than ever, we must walk together to encourage and support our children, so they get the richest learning opportunities possible. For indeed - when the village works together, anything is possible!

Tomorrow today...

 In the last week the 10 schools in our ICT cluster had the opportunity of hosting Stuart Hale. Over the two days Stuart shared his thinking on where mobile technology is heading, how it is impacting on education and why we can't afford to sit still. Our cluster lead teacher support person, Mark Herring, did an outstanding job of collating his major points from the different sessions.

• For the discussion shared at the morning principal and lead teacher sessions click here

• For some key links and resources from the 'everyone' afternoon session click here 

• For some reflection from the Board of Trustees and Principals evening session click here

For me, couple of key points stood out from an overall school perspective:

1. 'Wireless connectivity' - we need to ensure that the infrastructure behind whatever mobile devices is robust and able to handle multiple connections without any drop in performance. The government has poured a huge amount of money into improving schools data network and into providing internet fibre connection 'to the gate'.  We are doing that support a disservice if we don't ensure that our bit - the wireless network that supports these devices - is of the same 21st century quality.  
2. 'Cognitive blisters' - Learning new concepts can sometimes be hard or quite frustrating, like with learning to play a guitar. This can quickly put you of as the gain doesn't always seem to be worth the pain! Like the guitar metaphor, the initial learning phase has a lot to do with getting blisters on your fingers until they toughen up. The point was made that mobile technology can help students overcome those 'cognitive blisters' and find success where before they only experienced failure and disappointment. 

As I unpack more of the learning from the two days by myself and with staff I am sure that further reflection will emerge which I will try to add on to this post.  What thoughts and reflections do you have on this exponential journey of discovery that mobile devices is bringing to our world?