The teacher stands in front of the class but the lesson plan he can't recall (Rage Against The Machine)

We could sense it was coming, but we didn't think it was going to be the blunt kind of announcement that came last week.

The rest of the world doesn't care much about education in New Zealand, but a big change has just been announced here, along with some revelations about the use of AI to mark student work. 

For the last twenty-ish years we've been preparing senior classes for their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) - a standards-based assessment system. 

It was announced on Monday that it will be scrapped.

Over the next few years, it will be replaced by new qualifications. Not overtly standards based, but 'subject based' (whatever the heckfire that means), marks out of 100, best four subjects counted.

That precisely describes what I did at school from 1973 to 1974 (it took me two years to get School Certificate by 'passing' four subjects with marks over 50%).

My immediate thoughts:

• How will my current students sitting NCEA react to this scrapping of their qualifications (Year 9 to 13 students will leave without the new qualification)? Will they abandon their efforts given the criticisms by politicians (David Seymour doesn't let facts stand in the way of his opinions - NCEA has Excellence standards that are damn hard to get).
• For twenty-ish years I taught English for School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate, and University Bursary students. For twenty-ish years I taught English for Level 1, 2, 3 NCEA.
• I don't have another twenty-ish years left in me. I do have a few though and I'd like to think they had some purpose other than preparing students for an 'untrustworthy' qualification.
• This is a real reverting to the pre NCEA years and all of the gains from a standards-based approach, UCL approach will be lost for a while (these things are cyclic).
• Twenty-ish years of textbooks written for NCEA are now useless.
• Will a change of government mean they scrap all these proposals and revert to a standards-based qualification again? Potentially, it's a clear point of difference in an election.
• Did we know about A1 taking over teaching marking? Like all of my colleagues, I missed that memo. Apparently, the Common Assessment Activities (CAA) in numeracy and literacy are marked by A1 now - it takes 6 weeks for students to get their results. Six weeks!! Will teachers' job be safe from A1 in the future? I think I know the answer.

The more I thought about all this, the angrier I became, which is disappointing. I can only control my reaction. I have zero control over political decisions. I told myself off. 

Instead, I need to think about the possibilities, the benefits, the areas where I can contribute. That may take me a while, but it needs to happen.

I will be very interested in how all this shakes out.

BTW the students' response to all this was - meh.

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out (Robert J. Collier)

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Currently, two of my senior English classes are writing a connections report on four texts. They have to find two connecting threads that run through the four texts. The time frame for the work is 6 weeks. We are now in week 4.

It's a big piece of work. To help them do this, I created a few charts for them to complete. The first chart highlights some key areas that COULD lead to those two connections and the second fleshes out the two connecting threads they've chosen for their report.

Both classes are working through those charts and if they spend some time on them each period (small efforts), they will give themselves a real shot at an Excellence grade.

Of course, some students want to leap ahead without doing the groundwork (the small efforts).

To my mind this is a real case of the tortoise and the hare. My money is on those doing the repeated small efforts, day in and day out.

Same thing goes for adults, by the way.

Just look around you, you can set your spirit free. Look all you people, you can change your destiny (The Weather Girls)

Open days. 

I've been involved in a few over the years. They come in all shapes and sizes - open classrooms during the day, multiple event days, an evening event (the current situation), and old boys' days (my first one of these in 1983 was a concert where we did a few Monty Python routines of all things).

Do they work? Do they generate new enrolments? 

Google's AI tells me that while the open house marketing ploy by realtors is not the most effective way to sell a home in today's market, school open days 'can be highly beneficial, offering parents and students a valuable opportunity to experience a school's environment, ask questions, and assess its suitability. While a school's marketing materials and a slick presentation will be on display, attending an open day provides a more tangible sense of the school's culture, facilities, and the interactions between staff and students'.

It's impossible to know what effect yesterday's open night had on all the prospective students and parents (in total about 300) but they must have been hugely impressed by the kapa haka performance alone. It was spine-tinglingly awesome!

Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are and doing things as they ought to be done (Josh Billings)

      Simpler times in 2011 - Ali bin Abi Taleb school -
       Abdulla, Salem, me, Abdelazim (HOD), Shaban

Some of my favourite memories of my time advising at Ali bin Abi Taleb school in Al Foah (Al Ain, UAE) are around moderation sessions with the teachers.

I wrote about them at the time in a couple of 2010/2011 posts - 'all things in moderation, including moderation'. and 'got my mojo workin'.

In that 2011 post I said: 

Nu Zild educators could learn heaps from the rigorous moderation procedures we use here BEFORE the teachers mark their tests. They then have a benchmark to mark against. It so much harder to moderate after the fact.

And less is more, as this extract indicates (and Mark Twain's quote summarises):

Moderation is considered a key part of a person's personal development in Taoist philosophy and religion. There is nothing that cannot be moderated including ones actions, ones desires and even thoughts. It is believed that by doing so one achieves a more natural state, faces less resistance in life and recognises one's limits. Taken to the extreme, moderation is complex and can be difficult to not only accept, but also understand and implement. It can also be recursive in that one should moderate how much they moderate (i.e. to not be too worried about moderating everything or not to try too hard in finding a middle ground).

I'm reminded of all this after following the 2025 moderation processes at my current school. Doing moderation cover pages (if I had a degree to navigate these docs I would still get lost every time), distributing papers around my equally busy colleagues to moderate, putting the results on Kamar, attaching moderation notes, writing assessment comments and so on. 

All. Mind. Numbing.

Beam me back to Ali bin Abi Taleb 2011! Pleeeeeease!

I'll try to sail the sea, ride wild and free (Quicksilver Messenger Service)

Photo by Resume Genius on Unsplash

It's worth repeating this pearl of wisdom from James Clear:

"Strangely, life gets harder when you try to make it easy.

• Exercising might be hard, but never moving makes life harder.
• Mastering your craft is hard, but having no skills is harder.
• Uncomfortable conversations are hard, but avoiding every conflict is harder.

Easy has a cost." 

Paradoxically, the easy life comes at a cost. 

I am very fond of that saying, "There's always a price to pay".

Stumbling is not falling (Malcolm X)

Photo by Alexis Mora on Unsplash

The concept of resubmissions for Not Achieved grades is a great one within NCEA. I like the idea of a NY grade - Not Yet.

Over the years I have had to deliver the news of NY's to many students and, in my experience some didn't take it too well, some don't care, and some pin their ears back and go for it.

Those last ones see a Not Yet for what it is - a chance to improve their failed work. It is a stumble. 

I had to give out some NY's to a few of my students this week and to them I say: 

Harden up. Get over it. Move on. Show some grit. Make it better!

Courage is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm (Winston Churchill)

Photo by Eugene Lim on Unsplash

Recently, I was reminded of failures' benefits while re-watching Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi. 

Yoda says to Luke: Pass on what you have learned. Strength, mastery. But weakness, folly, failure also. Yes, failure most of all. The greatest teacher, failure is.

Having just marked all my seniors' work, I'll have to pass on that message to a few of my students next week.