Alice.Boultbee's blog

Are our school students learning what they need to know and be able to do? Are they being taught in ways that motivate them to learn and do the hard yards when things are challenging?  What support do teachers and school leaders need so that we can answer yes to these questions? To me, these were the underlying questions behind the government’s set of educational reviews that were completed last year: The Tomorrow’s Schools Independent Taskforce; the Curriculum, Progress and Achievement Group; and the NCEA review.

We’ve experienced significant disruptions to schools, businesses, and everyday life as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  We’ve seen people and systems adapt quickly to a highly unusual situation. Schools, whānau, and education sector organisations across Aotearoa have mobilised resources, thought creatively, worked collaboratively, and responded compassionately to make things work.  

“I wish I’d known that when I was teaching" is something I said to myself several times while I was working on the latest Insights for Teachers report. The National Monitoring Study of Student Achievement (NMSSA) released the Mathematics and Statistics Insights for Teachers report this month. The report is designed to support the teaching of mathematics and statistics in primary and intermediate classrooms.

This article started life as a literature review I completed as the final paper in the Postgraduate Diploma in Social Science Evaluation Research at Massey University. As a busy researcher and evaluator, “doing” evaluation doesn’t leave much time for “thinking” about evaluation, and even less time for “writing” about evaluation.

At this time of year I’m remembering the questions we used to have in our school about the PATs - ‘Term 4 is coming up  - what week shall we do the PATs  in?’  ‘Have we got enough Test 3s for the Year 5s?’  ‘When’s the BOT report due - we need to have it sorted by then?’.  You know those conversations I’m sure.