In New Zealand, at the moment, our Ministry of Education seems to make stuff up in the morning and announce it later that day on TV news.
Earlier this year, Erica Stanford (our Minister of Education) announced via the media that AI was being used in marking students' scripts for literacy and numeracy credits in NCEA. Who knew? It was never discussed. Apparently, we are world leaders in this, according to Erica. Did I miss something in the fine print? If I did, so did all of my colleagues at school. This has now been accepted as fact.
Recently, we found out via an official notice and the media at the time that the government was eliminating NCEA. Did I miss the consultation on this as well? Nope.
Seems Erica will listen to a few Principals when they agree with her, but ignore all the noise from an opposing viewpoint.
Now school boards of trustees are no longer legally required to consider the Treaty of Waitangi ("give effect to Te Tiriti o Waitangi" in Ministry speak). Where did this come from? It has a strong whiff of David Seymour and his ACT party about it. NZ voters did us no favours lumping us with his smarminess.
Luckily, school boards have a lot more sense than Erica and they are rejecting this instruction in droves. I am proud that Hastings Boys' High School is amongst the schools that are posting letters on social media indicating they'll ignore this nonsense.
Two weeks ago, I attended a Kafkaesque curriculum information session during a Teacher Only Day. We (a hundred or so English teachers) were told by ministry promulgators that 'we don't know what the curriculum will look like [in the senior school], but you should prepare for it anyway'. I laughed. They were serious. The day was given to us by the government to consider the curriculum.
We live in strange times when quasi government officials join us in the fog, government ministers use Trump's chaos theory to rule us, policy is announced via the media, teachers and nurses and doctors and firefighters have to strike to have any kind of voice, and National supporters wonder what all the fuss is about.
Could we please have some consistency (improve NCEA/don't junk it), normal routines (meaningful consultancy) and order (not chaos) restored to NZ educational practices.
That isn't too much to ask for, is it?
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