Claire Amos

This Thursday the 16th March both Primary and Secondary teachers will be striking. There is no question, teachers deserve more money. Put bluntly, there is a teacher shortage, teaching has become increasingly complex and to top it off they are also the profession most at risk of contracting COVID-19 with teachers having the highest rates of infection of any occupational group.  And I say all of this as a career educator 25 years in who is still very much in love with the profession. I also say all of this as someone who recognises the challenges that governments face when everyone seems to be asking for more. I recognise that the NZ Government and Ministry of Education has a limited budget and when all of the sectors go to their Ministers cap in hand we can not expect more money to be allocated to one sector at the expense of another.  Earlier today I read two posts by Paula Wine that got me thinking. You can read her excellent insights here and here . In the first post she p...

The last three school years have been like no other. 2022 has been particularly hard as teachers trudge their way out of two and half plus years of attempting to keep students engaged and learning through waves of COVID-19, rolling lockdowns, evolving hybrid teaching and learning practices, whilst also battling their own bouts of COVID-19, widespread winter illnesses and a rollercoaster of stress, anxiety, existential despair. It is no wonder we have a workforce who is fast running out of steam (and some even running out of the sector). Add to this the veritable tsunami of change on the educational horizon and you soon get the sense that we may very quickly be dealing with an educational zombie apocalypse.   The future of the teaching workforce? I have already written about my concerns regarding the waves of educational change that is about to wash through the educational landscape and until recently was convinced it was simply a matter of prioritising the NZC refresh before we...

  Day Three at SPANZ and one thing is becoming patently clear - it's time to get loud (or in my case, louder 😂) because, at the risk of sounding like a certain questionable church leader, enough is enough. As a country we are staring down the barrel of a whole litany of education initiatives that have the very real potential to do more damage than good. Particularly in the secondary space.  Issue #1 - An unnecessary NCEA Change Package We have an NCEA Change package that has the potential to streamline and homogenise senior programmes by providing so little choice in each learning area by reducing each subject to four, seemingly sequential, standards that if delivered as they are currently designed will see students completing a raft of portfolios and assessments in Term Three and Four. My issue is that the current system isn't actually broken, in fact we are seeing many schools already addressing over assessment by stepping away from Level One or moving to semesters to manag...

The "learning pack" sent to one family this week Link to the related article on RNZ  August 2021 marks 18 months since the arrival of COVID-19 in New Zealand and since then the country and regions has experienced a number of lockdowns. New Zealand's response has in many ways been phenomenal - articulate and calm leadership informed by science and research and supported by a compliant and committed "team of five million".   So why then do we let a digital divide persist? In a country with a government and leadership that prides itself on kindness and care I am confused and frustrated that we let a gaping digital divide mean that learning and connectedness during lockdown continues to be a school, decile and postcode lottery. Last year about 23,000 digital devices were purchased or leased by the government to supply to families that did not have one, the minister stating at the time that more than 100,000 children (about 80,000 households) did not have access to a...