Guess jolly what …

So the Minister flew off to the US to get some advice about how to attract more teachers into our schools. Guess jolly what... she was told that the government should pay more. You just can’t get quality advice like that in NZ.

And like the plastic toy at McDonalds, she got this freebie – prospective teachers with a Masters degree should go straight into employment and learn as they go. I bet she flew back from Washington in First Class feeling very satisfied. The pate de fois gras and champagne and chocolate truffles may have helped the feeling along.

Surely going to the USA for advice on education is like going to Cadburys for advice on weight loss, or to the Sahara for advice on water, or even like going to a country that gives away MGC (Master of Golf Caddying) with burgers and fries. Does she not realise that the US’ education system is as broken down as its healthcare system?

So someone with a Masters of Mushroom Collecting or a Masters of Engineering (Coalmining) could appear in our school next year and, simultaneously, on an old teacher’s timetable there could appear the code TT (teacher training) thus taking the trainer away from a class?

If she’d asked me, I’d have advised... paying teachers more (I thought of it before Mrs American Expert on Education), pay teachers while they’re at Teachers College, make schools more pleasant places to work in (with modern furniture and equipment, espresso machines, air conditioning, landscaped gardens...), provide sufficient materials with which to do the job (textbooks, stationery, videos, whiteboard markers...) and provide meaningful and interesting and up-to-date in-service training.

And how about easing the teachers’ workloads by recruiting a bazillion Teacher Assistants who would do the photocopying and stapling, supervise the playgrounds and bus stops, and help in class to make sure Johnny Ratbag doesn’t try to fly out the window...

And... dump NCEA (flush it, burn it, bury it) and having every school do the International Baccalaureate). And decrease the number of kids in class. And provide full-time specialist disciplinary officers, and truant officers and special ed teachers... all she had to do was ask the teachers – the ones already in the job. And ask the ones who are quitting.

I hope she used the rest of the time more productively than being advised by an American about NZ schools. I hope she went to the Apple Store in New York. She’d have learnt a lot more about recruitment if she’d asked Steve Jobs. Couldn’t she have just sent an e-mail?
Thank goodness for fish and chips, fresh lemons, and very, very cold chardonnay.

— Peter Giddens