National standards continue to threaten New Zealand’s education system

By: Hannah Cook
Produced and edited by: Molly Nocheck

It was over two years ago that New Zealand’s National Party implemented National Standards in the nation’s primary education system. The policy, seemingly out of nowhere, blatantly sidelined New Zealand’s schools and their popular, unbiased curriculum. It led to the deterioration of the population’s morale; students, parents, faculty and teachers struggled with the idea that children were going to be labeled and placed within the hindering walls of an abstract title.

The battle between The Ministry of Education’s national standards and the education system exhausts and frustrates critiques to this day. Political ideology has outweighed educational ideology, manifesting a general sense of uneasiness in New Zealand. And although the side of the education system has waived its white flag--allowing National Standards into its schools because it is the law now--its anti-attitude still glimmers in the unceasing concern for the children and the future of the nation as a whole.

New Zealand’s National Standards policy is unique. Having noticed the faulty trends of standardized testing in other countries like the U.S., the government and Ministry aimed to come up with a plan to avoid testing all together. While the intentions were good, the result has become a confusing mess of inconsistent teacher judgment and a complete disregard of all the factors that affect learning.

“Without a national test, what we get is teachers making judgments by pulling together evidence, sure, but how they actually assess that evidence and what they make of it is highly individualistic and idiosyncratic,” says Michael Johnston, a professor at Victoria University and a member of the New Zealand Assessment Academy.

Essentially, the current National Standards system creates useless data, according the Johnston and other opposers. The disparity among teachers and schools is too great to come up with a set standard. The Ministry doesn’t see it that way though. Instead, it deflates the value put on teachers.

“We have gone from a situation of a fairly high degree of trust and valuing of teachers in schools and the education system to a situation of suspicions and political and media focus,” said Terry Crooks, a member of the New Zealand Assessment Academy.

Gavin Beere, a principal at Hillpark School in Auckland, agrees, “There’s a message that our teachers are lazy, that they’re incompetent.”

The National Standards, focusing solely on numeracy and literacy, also detriments the broad spectrum of learning a child should have. According to Phil Harding, a principal at Paparoa Street School in Christchurch, the fear is that teachers, as they are being pressured to produce positive results for their students in such a narrowed group of courses, will lose site of the visions founded in the original curriculum of 2007—a curriculum that had the support of all people involved in the education system.

Children of Paparoa Street School.
Credit: http://www.paparoastreet.school.nz. Academic Fair Use

But the inconsistency doesn’t stop at the teachers. The students also face a wide range of influences that may make or break them in this National Standards system, the most significant being socioeconomic issues, particularly seen within the Maori peoples of the Pacific Island.

“We’ve got children turning up having not eaten, having seen their mothers beaten half to death the night before. Drugs are very prevalent,” says Dellis Hunt, a concerned mother of two and a previous member of Parents Against Labeling (PAL). “There’s a lot more to it than what they’re looking at.” The treatment of Hunt’s 13-year-old daughter at school due to her status of being “below the standards” is what got Hunt involved in PAL and other lobbying against National Standards. “It was awful. My little girl was treated differently within a year of starting school ... I actually chose not to get the reports. I didn’t want them. I didn’t see the value in them and I felt they would damage my daughter by labeling her as not being achieving,” she says.

Those issues of inconsistency have yet to cease. Meanwhile other problems continue to rise. Most recently, it is the publication of league tables, revealing to the public eye nearly every single school’s 2011 National Standards results. “I don’t think it was very helpful,” Johnston says. “It just sets up a whole lot of false comparisons between schools of different kinds.”

In the eyes of those who oppose the National Standards, the next step for New Zealand’s education system is to alter them so that they simply make more sense. Johnston and Crooks, who are both working to reassess the standards, believe that focusing on progress rather than status is more effective at producing actually usable data.

“Setting a National Standard and saying ‘this is an appropriate target for all kids in this year of schooling.’--it’s ridiculous,” Crooks says, “the best thing you can do for children is to assess where they actually are and set a target for how much you can progress them over the next year or three years or five years.”

Photo credit: http://www.paparoastreet.school.nz. Academic Fair Use

The system would not only bolster student morale, but it will also place less accountability on the unreliably varying characteristics of teachers. Johnston and his colleagues have been granted $5 million to rework the system, which should be ready by next year. “As far as I know there’s no other system like it in the world, so if it works we should be in a good position to introduce to other countries and see if they like the idea as well,” Johnston says. “But we’ll make it work here first.”

In the meantime, New Zealand’s education system continues to lock horns with National Standards and The Ministry. The people are losing faith and trust in their government, and the children are most at stake. Along with many others, Beere can’t help but feel a little hopeless. “I would say morale has never been lower in my career than it is now.”

Fracking in New Zealand-Is it worth it?

By: Hannah Cook
Produced & edited by Kaylyn Hlavaty
 
Michael Self has been concerned about the health effects of hydraulic fracturing ever since his mother unexpectedly died of a brain tumor a few years ago. His mother’s illness was one of many curious health problems plaguing the community surrounding the Kapuni oil field, one of the largest and oldest, owned by Shell, BP and Todd Energy.

“Suddenly, everyone started dying,” said Self. “I promised [at my mother’s] funeral that I’d raise the issue.”

Travel about 25 kilometers north and you’ll find Sarah Roberts facing similar disturbances. The schoolteacher owns farmland in Stratford that has fallen into the hands of Tag Oil, a Canadian company who has taken New Zealand on as a new client, so to speak. She looks out her window with disdain as she watches a frightening metal monster spitting out smoke and fire in the distance, its subtle fury ill-fit for the beautiful rolling hills New Zealand is so known for. She calls it an “abuse of our land.” 

Protestors in Cape Town, photo courtesy of Getty Images.

Academi

Hydraulic fracturing isn’t necessarily recent to New Zealand, having been used mildly over the last 20 years. In fact, it’s not new to any part of the world. The process, slanged “fracking,” occurs when a well is drilled through first vertically, then horizontally for thousands of feet. A mixture of water, sand, and hundreds of chemicals is shot through the well, causing little fractures underground that release loads of natural gases. It has become one of the oil companies’ favorite extraction activities, as they relish in the profits.

But to people like Self and Roberts, fracking just isn’t worth it.

First and foremost, opponents to fracking worry about the quality of water, especially in a country like New Zealand, whose economy depends largely on agriculture and dairy production. Historically speaking, there have been incidents of fracking contaminating water supplies. For instance, the water waste extracted after the natural gases are captured is essentially dumped into a pit, usually lined, but sometimes not. That water, ridden with carcinogens, can seep into the waterways of surrounding houses, making their tap water unfit for human consumption.

Gareth Hughes, a spokesperson of The Green Party of New Zealand’s Parliament, has seen such practices and outcomes happen in New Zealand. 

“What we know is we’ve had toxic chemicals that they’ve just dumped down the streams,” he says. Roberts also commented on fracking’s affect on water supply, saying, “I can see a place where I would have to say we could run out of clean water before we run out of oil.”

Those chemicals have also been known to bleed into the soil—the soil that grows the grass, and the grass that feeds New Zealand’s dairy cows. 

“We have this food chain of oil moving into our milk,” Self says, “no one seems to be checking our milk.”

What Hughes deems as “shotty practices” are at the root of the anti-fracking movement. A strangely compliant relationship has been building between the oil companies and the Taranaki Regional Council, who are meant to be the regulators; however, it could be argued that the TRC is in cahoots with the oil companies. 

“I don’t think they can be in the business of promoting oil and in the business of regulating them,” Roberts says, “I feel there should be a separation.”

Tim Fulton, a senior writer at the Farmers Weekly Newspaper of New Zealand, has covered three oil and gas stories just in the past two months. What he has discovered is what puzzles most New Zealanders: the oil companies seem to possess a certain right to land that the people do not. 

Sarah Roberts and David Morrison, photo courtesy of Pip Guthrie.

Academic Fair Use.

“One of the overriding concerns that some of the critics have here is that you let the oil companies in and you just don’t know how they will act,” Fulton says.

Essentially, the oil companies are setting their own standards for the execution of fracking. The Taranaki community fears that that self-regulation, teamed with little government oversight, will relinquish any true benefits of the practice. 

“Until the industry can prove that it is safe, we shouldn’t allow it,” Gareth says. “I’d rather the government be putting its attention and focus into clean energy so we can actually have a sustainable development for the long term, ‘cause once the stuff’s gone, it’s gone forever and we’ve missed the opportunity.”

But fracking is a controversial issue for a reason—there are two sides to the story. The debate is as foggy as the dense air escaping from a drill well.

Chris Baker, the CEO of the natural resource advocacy corporation, Straterra, believes that the fracking debate lacks a certain level of intellectual maturity. 

“Let’s have a look at evidence behind what’s being done and then decide whether it’s a problem or not,” he says. He points to the Gasland documentary, directed by independent filmmaker Josh Fox, as a source of “misinformation” guiding the public’s viewpoints. “Some of [the issues Gasland raised] were valid in the context of what happened historically in the states, but the implication was created that those concerns continue in New Zealand. The regulations or practice provide no support for that position,” he says.

Chris also says that if managed properly, the impacts of fracking are acceptable; it’s all about risk management. And while they don’t fully support New Zealand’s green image, they do support economic growth. 

“We have to encourage economic activity and for that you need oil and gas,” he says, “they want their kids to grow up and have jobs, and that ain’t gonna happen if you don’t have any new business or move to a non fossil fuel economy.”

But Self worries about his kids, too, just in a different sense. “I worry for my children and my grandchildren, if they wish to work on the land,” he says.

Roberts, too, lacks faith in the system and how it will affect the safety of her community. “It feels like everyone’s got their fingers crossed.”