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John Laurenson
 
Photo by K Casey

Headmaster's Message

John Laurenson —

Dear Parent and Caregivers

This is my last major newsletter for 2016. May I take a moment to thank you for your continued support and to pass on a few end-of-year thoughts. I am writing them earlier than usual, because I am about to enter hospital (for a new hip and new knee) on 22 November and therefore will be out of direct contact for a few days.

During the time I am reduced to a slow hobble, Tim Grocott will be in charge of the school.

At this time of the year, it is appropriate to encourage students to focus on their examinations, and in particular for students sitting NZQA and CIE examinations. This year it is no different. Hard work will pay dividends that will last a life-time. However, and it is a big however, there are other educational things that are important as well, and I would like to spend a small amount of time with you, at the tail end of the year, reflecting on these things.

“Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths

Enwrought with golden and silver light

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half light

I would spread the cloths under your feet

But I, being poor, have only my dreams

I have spread my dreams under your feet

Tread softly for you tread on my dreams”

The author of this powerful poem is W B Yeats. It resonates at the most human level with me, because it has great beauty.

Almost 47 years ago a teacher introduced me to Yeats and through her work with me, and the endless discussion that followed, new horizons opened, and I grew as a person. I do recall examinations where I used Yeats to elaborate on an idea. However I do not recall my teacher ever suggesting that the reason we studied Yeats was so that I could be assessed.

I wonder what she would make of the people who run our country today: those who determine the path a student must follow, a path that leads through National Standards to NCEA, and then to work; a pathway that is fraught because it features endless administration, rather than the unfettered opportunity for teachers to provide insight and excitement for their students.

So much of the current government thinking is focused on the dissection of stuff into quantifiable elements. These elements are assessed and then qualifications are awarded, or not!

I am not going to claim that such a pathway is wrong. Neither am I going to claim that a school must avoid it, and I am certainly not arguing that assessment is unnecessary. What I am going to opine is that, in a major sense, the current educational pathway set by successive governments has forced many schools to diminish the time spent on learning opportunities that develop character. That is to the everlasting detriment of society in general.

In our recent Senior Prize Giving, a large amount of time was spent bringing all Year 13’s over the stage as “Shirley Men” The reason? Simply that this school recognizes that the development of character is just as important for ensuring success in life as NCEA Level One through to Level Three. Shirley is unwavering in its belief that for a student to succeed in life, he/she must have a strong character, one that permits dreams to be realised, success to be achieved, and failure to be dealt with positively and translated into an important lesson for the future.

Consider for a moment Vote Education; I suggest it would be a worthwhile to actually check out what is spent (unarguably a colossal sum) and then what that colossal sum is spent on. What you will see is that a large percentage of the sum spent on Education actually makes no difference whatsoever to the development of young people. One of my biggest issues with NCEA is the enormous dollar cost of its administration, and the enormous human cost to New Zealand’s teachers.

NZQA has as its focus, compliance, verification, proof, recording, assessment and moderation and the associated administration has forced teachers to treat that administration as their core purpose. Fewer teachers now involve themselves in developing the passion and the joie de vivre in their students that engages them and ensures they take responsibility for their own learning and continue to explore beyond where their teacher finished off. In short, fewer teachers are concerned with developing character in their students.

It seems to me that NZQA has pushed so many New Zealand teachers into a role where all they do is put material in front of students and then they assess that material when the student is done with it. The material is often linguistically dense and impenetrable, the product of academically-driven people who try to achieve scientific precision in something that by its nature defies precision. Such a person does not spend much, if any, time thinking about how their work might actually inspire a child. They leave that to someone else. What they conveniently forget however is that the system with its endless administrative demands, ensures that the teacher loses the passion, the energy and the will to engage young people.

As I travel around this country and visit schools, I see the result.

Many schools have become glorified assembly-line factories, places where students turn up in the morning, where they are housed for the day and where the students have “elements” placed in front of them, so each “element” can be assessed. At the end of the day the students go home.

In such places time and therefore passion and excitement is in short supply. Seldom, if ever, do students encounter great teachers who open doorways and invite their students to enter a world where passion and excitement is in abundant supply. In such places, typically, students are encouraged to read about something then write about what they have read before they are assessed, have the assessment checked, then moderated, then debated, before having it recorded and subjected to central scrutiny, before in the end, hopefully, being awarded a couple of credits.

If that is all that a school can offer, it becomes truly a sad featureless desert!

Now as I suggested before this letter is not a criticism of NZQA or NCEA which has a lot going for it, especially since it is enormously flexible. My suggestion is that NZQA’s system is administratively expensive to run and in its endless demands on a teacher’s time. My belief is that when we are told by Government about its commitment to Education as proven by increases in the Education Budget, we are really being told about an increase in the number of dollars needed to support a bureaucracy of Byzantine proportions!

I would rather have Vote Education spent on having more teachers and a re-focus of NZQA towards recognising that schools are places where time must be spent on developing character as well as academic and practical skills. All of these things together are necessary to ensure that a student is best prepared to meet the needs of life in the 21st Century.

I started this with a poem from Yeats, and will finish with another, though this time one that comes from this side of the world. Albert Wendt is a Samoan who writes with all the lyrical grace that is so richly abundant in Samoa.

“This school, chromium hide deflecting

summer, collects the waking children

as if preparing for some ritual sacrifice

The wind whispers through barbwire fences

The children do not hear it......................

“The wind, the storm and the hawk

have no voices here; visions, no blessing.

There are only exams to sit;

the real questions are left unanswered.”

Shirley continues to aim for balance, a school where examinations are taken seriously, but also one where there is the time to engage in real life experiences that build relationships, empathy and creativity. I think most schools in New Zealand recognise that this is important, but sadly those at the centre continue to support a system that is no longer fit for purpose. Those who have the temerity to suggest otherwise are treated exactly the same as the little boy, who was honest enough to state that The Emperor was in fact naked!

May I wish you well for the coming festive season. Ann and I will not be travelling out of Christchurch this year. Under the eagle eye of my wife, I have gardening, sons and grandchildren to catch up with, so if you need to contact me for any reason, please do not hesitate to give me a call.

There will be plenty of challenges for us in 2017, but truthfully we are well placed to meet these. Between you and me, as always, I am looking forward to them.

Regards and best wishes

John