Alwyn Poole
Alwyn Poole founded and was the head of Mt Hobson Middle School in Auckland for 18 years. MH Academy is now an in person private school for Year 11 – 13. There is now a nationwide online provision called Mt Hobson Academy Connected for Years 1 – 13.
The NZ Herald notes that Term 3 NZ School attendance data has finally been released. It also notes that Jan Tinetti admitted deliberately sitting on it (and thus avoiding numerous OIA’s – I assume she blames the previous Minister) since December. They have become so transparent that people now see right through them.
From the Ministry of Education’s data branch (who are very good BTW) this graph is telling.
The government has been quick during the last five years to blame every woe on international trends. As the NZ Herald notes (from an ERO report).
“In Australia 73 per cent of students attended regularly in 2019 and regular attendance was above 80 per cent in the UK, Ireland, the US and Ontario in Canada where benchmarks for regular attendance ranged from 89-92 per cent and the figures dated from 2015/16 through to 2020/21.”
One graph tells a major long-term story.
Labour have worked hard to say that attendance started declining in 2015 and therefore National is to blame. That is – by and large – a myth.
Labour – under former Minister of Education Hipkins – have driven this off a cliff.
Jan Tinetti was unbelievably poor on the AM show Tuesday morning. She did a Sgt Shultz impression for some of it.
- She admitted she had the attendance Term 3 attendance data by Dec 22. There have been many OIA requests for it – all denied.
- She says she is not responsible for releasing it but then says it would have been cynical to release near Christmas.
- She doesn’t see it as cynical to have the data released later that day after releasing a new policy at 5am that morning.
- We have 120,000 chronically absent, over 10,000 enrolled nowhere, she says average full attendance up to 46% – but their main policy is 84 more truancy officers. Nothing about improving schools or improving teaching standards.
When high decile State school students (low Equity Index Number in the new parlance) are not seeing the point of going to school as they are finding more efficient ways of learning – the system is shot. This is the best illustration of how Labour are going about it.
