I’m having two interesting days here in Rotorua at Core Education’s annual http://www.core-ed.net/learningatschool. It’s a big event – 1300 participants including teachers, principals, education administrators, and ever-hopeful equipment vendors.
’m here exploring where TUANZ can best put our energies in this sector. We’ve achieved our goal of a national plan to roll out ultra fast connectivity with government money in support – there are a lot of bridges still to cross but there are good people there with the right know how. What we must now focus on is ensuring that the major sectors of the economy are equipped and prepared to take full advantage of the opportunity it will offer. If we just use UFB to do the same things faster it will be a waste; the challenge is to use it as a means to transform key sectors of the economy.
Education is one of those. TUANZ has a lot of history there – for 14 years we ran a hugely successful and popular Education Conference – a travelling roadshow for teachers using IT in classrooms. It had some funding from the Ministry of Education which we used to leverage lots of vendor money in support. In 2008 the Ministry pulled the plug on seed funding it, along with several other ICT professional development initiatives - a move that looked strangely-timed at the time and even more so now.
Among chatting to key people and looking for our “slot” I’m sitting in on some sessions. My highlight yesterday without doubt was a keynote from Stuart Middleton, His theme was the problem of disengagement of students from the school system and the opportunity to re-connect. His thesis is that New Zealand, like many other countries including the UK, USA and Australia, .has failed to modernise and adapt its education system at anything like the pace of other sectors such as industry and financial services. In consequence, he says, we will not be able to sustain our standard of living.
Changing demographics are an issue. So is the changing economy – the unskilled and low skilled jobs that a generation ago acted as “blotting paper” for the failures of the education system, no longer exist. In opening the economy we eliminated such jobs, but didn’t upgrade educational practices to ensure the people affected could find another way to make a living. In fact its got worse – the proportion of students staying on to the equivalent of 6th form has declined markedly. And secondary curricula have consolidated around core subjects - the diverse specialist options like tech drawing and bookkeeping that used to have a more direct vocational basis, have just about disappeared in many schools.
He distinguished between various forms of disengagement. Physical disengagement is where the kids stop attending – he said that is especially common with Maori students. “Virtual disengagement” – where they are in the room but switched off, is more a Pacifica issue.
Middleton didn’t mention IT but the message was clear – if schools are to re-engage with students, they have to do so on students’ terms using the tools students use.
I can’t do it justice in a précis but it was a very well-reasoned and provocative presentation. If I can get permission, I’ll link a video clip of it to this post later. Every IT-aware parent should read this.