Boys better at maths, girls better at reading

Bay News- October 1 2008

Boys better at mathematics, girls better at reading

The recent publication of the analysis of the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), shows that things have not really changed much over the years, girls are better than boys at reading, but they cannot match up to their male peers in maths.

The analysis carried out by the Ministry of Education demonstrated that girls outperformed boys at reading by 37 points, achieving a mean score of 539 compared to 502. But boys did better at maths, gaining a mean score that was 11 points higher than girls. These patterns were repeated for both maths and reading across the Organization for economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries in the tests, which were taken by 15 year olds.

And the difference continues right through adulthood, with women outperforming men on adult literacy tests, but men doing better in numeracy.

In the recent Adult Literacy and Life (ALL) survey, women achieved a higher score in literacy than men, but the mean numeracy score was better for males than females. However, the gap was much narrower amongst adults than teenagers.

When the PISA results were first released, they showed that New Zealand students scored highly overall in mathematics, reading and science, recording the fifth-highest score of participating countries in reading, the seventh-highest in science and 11th highest in mathematics.

Interestingly, the two countries that are investing a huge amount of energy in regular national testing programmes, England and the United States, continue to rank 25 and 36 respectively in the maths tests, and England 19th in the Literacy scores (no score for USA).

The focus in New Zealand education on formative assessment (using a range of types of tests throughout units of work to inform where a student lacks understanding), rather than summative testing (end point tests which show how much a student knows), is showing that the obsession with state run tests at many stages in a child’s education, does not bear fruit. Teachers need to be able to use small, regular and variable assessments to inform them of a student’s learning and their own teaching practice.

While in New Zealand we still have a way to go to bring all of our students to an acceptable level of literacy and numeracy, we are on the right track and doing a lot better than many of the countries we have had long associations with. We must be wary that we never have testing by edict ( a government’s bright idea to lift achievement by setting arbitrary standards), but maintain the focus on formative assessment that continually informs a student’s understanding of literacy and numeracy. We are on the right path, we just need to keep up the momentum and fine-tune the process as we go.

NCEA in the spotlight again

for Bay News 17 September 2008.


The New Zealand Post Primary Teachers’ Association has raised two very important issues for its annual conference in October, the first a review of “Tomorrow’s Schools”, and the second, a review of the number of credits required for Level I NCEA and the quality of the mathematics standards available at that level.

New Zealand has developed a unique system of managing its schools though each school having its own board of governors. It allows for more direct community involvement in the school and greater autonomy for the way the school can be run through the partnership of the Principal and the Board of Trustees.

My recent experience of attending a Principals’ Leadership programme at Harvard University, gave me the opportunity to meet with many American principals, and listen to and compare different ways of governing schools. On the whole, the American principals were envious of the autonomy that we have in our schools to manage our budgets and decide within the school how finances should be prioritised, appoint principals, senior staff and teachers, and set our own school goals and develop our curriculum from national guidelines. In other words, we can run our schools to meet the needs of our students.

In America, the district superintendent has a huge say in how the school will spend its budget, set its goals and meet its targets, appoints the principals and staff. And sets the consequences if targets are not met. The high stakes “No Child Left Behind” policy of George Bush puts added pressure on the schools to meet targets set by the district, rather than the school. The principals (administrators) seem removed from looking at the individual achievement of students and personalised learning, and are more focussed on lifting the results of their “building” (school).

While there are schools that struggle to find the right mix for their boards of trustees, on the whole, we have a system that works. It allows schools to focus on the needs of its students first, and look towards national targets as a means to measure progress as those needs are met. My own experience with the boards of trustees that I have worked with at Mount Maunganui College has been extremely positive. They have been committed to supporting the principal and staff in providing the best education we can for our students.

The second focus is worth a close look. We need to consider what is the right balance for students in terms of national examination requirements, and what is a reasonable national standard for our students in numeracy and literacy. On September 5, the Los Angeles Times reported that only 48% of the high schools met the federal standard, and then only because the state used easier standards for high schools than for elementary and middle schools so targets could be reached. Setting targets in the NCLB (No Child left Behind) programme become meaningless when standards are dropped simply to meet targets.

NCEA must be protected from similar criticism and standards must be such that they meet the needs of students moving into employment that requires good skills in numeracy and literacy. With three years of national examinations, we are out of step with the rest of the world. Perhaps it is time to consider whether or not we should drop level 1 NCEA and raise the bar on leaving qualifications for our students. We must also ensure that the required credit balance is right for each NCEA level so we continue to personalise learning and not see education as a means of simply achieving targets as has happened in America and England. If this happens, teachers will teach to examinations and critical thinking and the acquisition of relevant knowledge and skills will of less importance.

1-4 September-Back to Life in NZ

Dallas was off to work this morning and I set about sorting out things at home. Six weeks of mail arrived about 8.30am and it took me the rest of the morning sorting through it all. Later I spent time cleaning up around the section and starting to sort out what needs to be done if the weather eventually clears up.

Tuesday and it was time to visit the bank, hairdresser, supermarket and Farmlands.

Wednesday morning I met with the college's project manager to catch up on progress with new building projects at the college. Having sorted all of this I visited the college and caught up with Tina, Russell, Ady and Reece-great to catch up with them all and see that they are all in good spirit after such a wet and stormy winter. Tina has done a great job running the college while I have been away and she has had to manage a number of tricky situations (standard fare for the job, but none the less can be stressful and need careful management). I will catch p with them again next Tuesday when I go in for a meeting with the builders and architect building the new block.

Meanwhile, with a little spare time, dallas is able to come home each night to culinary delights lovingly prepared!

Disappointing news Thursday morning when Tina rang to tell me that the senior management offices had been broken into and that they all had their laptops stolen. This is really frustrating and upsetting for them, as true to form, most of their work was stored on their laptop and not on the school's network. We discussed a few other issues that Tina is dealing with, but she has got it all sorted.

The pleasures of this time away from school-had lunch in town today with Dallas and Maria. How come there are so many other people doing the same thing? They should be working. Nick's favoured comment when driving in KL during the middle of the day and dealing with the traffic jams, "why aren't all of these people at work? I am sure that they all follow me from their offices onto the motorways and city roads". Paranoia creeping in.

This afternoon I started to put together my sabbatical report and update my blog and have a read of Maurie's. I now have this amazing screen saver of holiday pics from France, Italy , Singapore and Malaysia.

Sunday 31 August

Dylan

Caitlin

Daniel

Eden

Finlay

Darcy

Liam

Marcel

What a great feeling it is to be home again and to finally catch up with our children grandchildren, friends and colleagues. This has been a trip of a lifetime-everything about it has been great-the educational learning, the time with Dallas, the companionship of Maurie and Leigh, meeting friends and family overseas, all of the great places w have visited, and all with the accompaniment of great, warm(hot) weather.

Cameron met us at the airport with Finlay this morning as we decided to take advantage of them being in Auckland to take our overweight bags back to Tauranga since Air NZ is getting fussy about a few kilos overweight on its local flights. Funny how it is neve a problem until you get home.

It was great to see Cameron and Finlay at the airport-Finlay has grown noticeably while I have been away and he is now walking quite confidently.

Said goodbye to Leigh and Maurie. I was going to say that it is amazing how Maurie and I have been travelling together for almost 7 weeks and got on so well, but not amazing, just a really good person to travel with-witty, thoughtful and a lot of fun. He has been a great traveling companion, and together with leigh, Dallas and i have had a great time in their company traveling to Liverpool, Italy and Singapore.

We caught the plane back to Tauranga. I was quickly brought back to the reality of school by the air stewardess who recognized me and told me how much she and her daughter had enjoyed the open evening at school and her daughter was looking forward to starting next year.

Fran picked us up from the Tauranga airport, again lovely to see another of the family. We had to detour back to her place to pick up the house keys she had forgotten and the finally back home to be met by Simon and Rana and the boys. Man, it is so good to see them all again-we have such a neat family.

Time to catch up and listen to the boys and their stories-Liam enjoying school, Marcel's soccer team is cleaning up the opposition, Darcy is still being Darcy, Simon is about to move into the new offices his firm has just completed, Fran enjoying being next year's Year 9 dean and enrolling for 09 going well, Dylan's looking for a job, Kate's dropped Music for Japanese etc etc...love to hear all this stuff.

Later in the afternoon Maria, Cameron, Eden and Finlay arrived from Auckland and stayed on for dinner. Then, an early night.

29-30 August-Malaysia to Singapore

Local shopping centre near N and H's

Fine Food food hall

Food hall

View from N and H's apartment

This morning we said farewell to Nick and Heather before they left for work and continued to finish packing before heading to the LK Airport. Staying with Nick and Heather was a great wind down after weeks of hectic travelling. We had time to do a few things each day, but then rest by the pool and relax. We had good company, good food and wine, a place to stay and as much of the touristy things to do as we wanted-not so much at this stage.

The flight from malaysia back to Singapore was uneventful, a few last minute shopping items picked up at duty free, and a taxi back to Park Royal hotel in Singapore.

Dallas wanted one last dash at the super malls so we went to SunTec to buy a few more things for the grandchildren and a few cheap shirts for Simon, Matt and Cameron. While we were there w met up with Maurie and Leigh and then returned to our hotel.

In the evening w started with a cool ale by the swimming pool at the hotel and then ventured out into the Arab Quarters for dinner where we had a halal meal at a Moroccan restaurant. Nice food, but being halal, no beer or wine.

Feeling a bit parched we headed back to our hotel where their was a dance evening in full swing in the bar -very serious, mainly Asian dancers working hard at their dance steps and rhythm. We order drinks from a snarly barman who Dallas had a bit of a disagreement with because he at first would not sell wine by the glass. Once it was pointed out to him that it was on the price list, he reluctantly served her. But at $15 a beer we shot through pretty quick, and I wasn't really up to taking to the dance floor in my sandals and shorts!

This morning we made a leisurely start and had breakfast about 9.00am. Later we made a trip to Little India where we were dropped off at Mastaffa's Huge store which had piles of everything-clothes, cosmetics, shoes, jewellery-everything in huge quantities and piles high, but very cheap. Probably we would have been more interested if we had found this place earlier, but after buying a few shirts for the boys, we had had enough. iwas tempted to buy Simon's boys a full suit, pants, jacket, waistcoat, shirt-for $39. Would have made a neat photo with the boys dresses up in one of these.

After this we returned to the hotel and booked out around midday. Dallas decided to stay and read in the foyer of the hotel while Muarie, Leigh and I explored a few of the local shops. Leigh acquired a very nice Rolex-type watch!

We sent a text to Dallas and she joined us at a local food hall for lunch-great food, and a local old man was very proud of his lime and sugar cane juices. Very congenial fellow who wanted to chat a lot with us.

After lunch we returned to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon by the pool. Around about 4.30pm it began to pour with rain, which probably signaled time for us to shower and get ready to leave for the airport.

While we had about four hours to fill in at the airport, time seemed to go quickly looking aound duty free shops and having a few drinks at a bar. Somehow it is always my turn to shout when we get caught with high prices- four drinks- $60! Later while we had a small dinner Maurie generously shouted the drinks, $5 a beer. All I can say is that I have kept a tally in my head and await the next meeting we are at.

The flight left for NZ at 9.15pm-nearly home.