Mediocre Minister

by Rebecca Thomas

Why is it that whenever our Minister of Education hears something she doesn't particularly like from the people working in education, somebody ends up being blamed?

This week apparently we are not just wrong. We are “pretty disgusting”.

To be honest, during Te Wiki o te Reo Māori our Minister hasn't been far from my thoughts. I've been wandering around school in my NZEI T-shirt, inviting kōrero with my students about the kupu from At the Marae printed across it. It makes for some interesting conversations while we celebrate te reo Māori.

Meanwhile, our Minister has been having some interesting conversations of her own.

Research was released looking at what might happen to young people when NCEA is replaced. Excellent, every educator deserves to spare this thought, education is a longitudinal journey whichever part of the sector you work in.

The research raised a fairly significant alarm.

Lots of kids who currently leave school with a qualification might not under the new system. And not just any kids. The impact could fall particularly heavily on Māori and Pacific rangatahi and students attending schools in our poorer communities.

Now, when someone tells me that a change I am making might cause a whole bunch of kids to fail, I would like to think my first response would be: Shit. Tell me more.

Apparently another option is: You're defending mediocrity and that's pretty disgusting.

Okay then.

Let's follow that logic for a moment.

Some researchers looked at what our children are achieving now, looked at the proposed new qualification and asked what might happen when one is replaced by the other. Presumably they didn't do this because they had a spare Tuesday and thought ruining Erica Stanford's week sounded fun. I imagine somebody thought: We should probably check what happens to the kids. Seems reasonable. Especially because these aren't imaginary children. They are the kids sitting in our classrooms.

The really important bit parents need to understand is that many of the kids the research is worried about are currently succeeding.

They haven't failed. They aren't sitting around refusing to learn while their teachers desperately protect their right to remain mediocre. They achieved NCEA Level 2. The concern is that when we change what success looks like, some of the young people who can succeed now may no longer be able to turn their learning into a qualification.

That's quite different, isn't it?

Suddenly this isn't a story about teachers wanting low standards. And, by the way, in nearly three decades in education I have never, ever heard a teacher say: “You know what I love about this job? Keeping the standards really low for kids.” We tend to spend our time doing the exact opposite — trying to find ways to get kids further than they thought they could go.

It's actually a story about changing the rules and somebody asking who might lose.

Welcome to my classroom

This is where political statements and classrooms tend to part company; children are wonderfully inconvenient. I have children who can tell you extraordinary things but struggle to write them down. Children who understand something beautifully once they can touch it, build it, move it or see it. Children who need to hear something more than once. Children who can talk your ear off about the thing they love but freeze when you put a test in front of them. Children who have learned to believe they aren't very clever because school has spent years measuring the things they find difficult.

And every now and then we find the thing. The subject. The practical experience.

The cultural connection. The relationship. The moment when that child suddenly thinks: Oh. I can do this.

This is the truth, the why teachers get a little twitchy when somebody decides that having different pathways to success means we have low expectations. We don't. We have children. Complicated, glorious, frustrating, completely different children.

Of course we have high expectations too. We want Māori children to leave school knowing they are capable. We want kids to read and write well. We don't want to hand out qualifications that don't mean anything.

If NCEA has become a game of collecting random credits, then fix it.

Please.

How did we get from: “We think this change might leave thousands of young people without a qualification to: “Teachers are defending mediocrity”? Those two things don't naturally follow each other.

If I tell you the bridge you're building might leave some kids stranded on the other side of the river, I'm not saying the destination is too ambitious. I'm asking whether you've remembered to finish the bloody bridge. And perhaps before driving the busload of children towards it, we should check.

Because guess which kids might fall off?

The research suggests the children most exposed aren't evenly spread across Aotearoa. Māori rangatahi and Pacific tamariki are more exposed. Kids in poorer communities are more exposed. I thought this government was 'all about closing the equity gap', not making it bigger — if so then surely this report should be of interest.

Now come and stand in my classroom.

Come north.

Come into the communities Erica where teachers already spend enormous amounts of time finding ways around barriers children didn't create. Tell those kids that the concern about them is a defence of mediocrity. Because I don't see mediocre children. And I have never understood why acknowledging the challenges a child is carrying somehow means you don't expect them to reach the top. Sometimes Erica, it simply means you help them to carry the bag.

Minister, if you have upmost confidence in your policy surely that should make you more willing to interrogate uncomfortable evidence, not less. Someone has brought you research suggesting children might be harmed by something you're introducing.

You don't have to agree with it.

Challenge the methodology.

Commission different modelling.

Show us where the assumptions are wrong.

Show parents why their children will be okay.

That's leadership Erica.

But calling the people raising the alarm defenders of mediocrity? That's just spitefulness.

And by the way, while the adults make slurs and behave liked spoiled children, there are actual young people underneath all of this whose futures depend on us getting it right.

Perhaps the researchers aren't trying to frighten parents. Perhaps teachers aren't defending low standards. Perhaps the union isn't secretly plotting to keep New Zealand children average. Perhaps people looked at the changes coming towards our rangatahi and thought: Hang on. What happens to the kids who don't fit?

Protecting children from avoidable failure isn't mediocrity.

It isn't scaremongering.

It isn't disgusting.

It's what the grown-ups are supposed to do!