Claire Amos

Source One of the toughest things about being a champion for educational change is that you need to take people with you. In fact sometimes its even tough to take yourself with you. Many times on this blog (and basically any chance I get to speak to groups) I have spoken about the need for educational change (see a particularly ranty presentation here ). I know I am not a lone voice, in fact I get the sense that there is a veritable tsunami building up behind what initially felt like ripples and then waves of educators talking about this very issue. People like Sir Ken Robinson popularised the notion that schools need to change with his TED talk How Schools are Killing Creativity and Changing Educational Paradigms . This was echoed and reinforced by the work of Sugata Mitra with his hole in the wall work and his TED talk Build a School in the Cloud  and I know we all cheered for that Logan LaPlante for whom Hackschooling made happy . Locally we have a growing number of educa...

At HPSS we have been pondering this question for a while. There are a number of reasons we have been tackling this question.  Firstly, because Maurie keeps asking us. ( See his post on our NCEA journey here. )  Secondly, because there is an increasing sense that students are being over assessed and are being forced to focus on formalised high stakes assessment for three (or possibly even four) years running.  Thirdly, there is the issue that Level One NCEA Certificate is of little value. Once upon a time School Certificate did serve as an exit certificate for some, but today little if any students are likely to end their schooling journey at Level One.  There's also the fact that you don't even need to do Level One to get Level One! As long as students get Level Two they actually achieve Level One by default at the same time - magic! To add to this there is also the very real issue of student stress and anxiety bought on by over assessment...