Moot Speech
Ka tangi te titi
Ka tangi te kaka
Ka tangi oki a hau
Tihei mauri ora
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
A very warm welcome to Professor Hargreaves who has travelled half a world to join us today! You are well known and highly respected by our profession and I know you will WOW us with your educational wisdom and insight.
And to you the principals from every corner of New Zealand, Haere Mai, Haere Mai, Haere Mai! It is so exciting to have you here. You bring enthusiasm, energy, local knowledge, decades of experience and above all utter commitment to the kids in your schools. That’s a powerful mix! And what a potent contribution you will all make to our debate today. Tena koutou, Tena koutou, Tena tatou katoa.
The question we have chosen for this year’s Moot runs right to the core of our professional existence. ‘What is the purpose of Education?’ It is a philosophical question. It is a political question. It is an educational question.
It is a question that begs an answer to further questions like ‘What sort of citizens do New Zealanders aspire to be?’, ‘What values do we cherish?’ and ‘How do we express ourselves as a democratic nation in a global environment?’
To influence a statement of purpose for education in New Zealand doesn’t happen very often. In fact it hasn’t happened in New Zealand since the 1930s when the Prime Minister of the time, Peter Fraser, made his enduring statement for education. He said:
The government's objective, broadly expressed, is that all persons, whatever their level of ability, whether they live in town or country, have a right as citizens to a free education of the kind for which they are best fitted and to the fullest extent of their powers
It’s inspiring! It’s uplifting! Actually, it’s a statement that’s very hard to argue against, especially if you believe in equity, fairness, justice, democracy, inclusiveness and personalising education as Peter Fraser clearly did. The statement was never enshrined in the Education Act but those same values are echoed in the National Education Guidelines (NEGS) today. For example, the first goal of the NEGs is for students to reach:
The highest standards of achievement, through programmes which enable all students to realise their full potential as individuals, and to develop the values needed to become full members of New Zealand’s society.
We appreciate that the skills children need to master the challenges of an ever-changing world today will be different from the 1930s and we may want our statement of purpose to reflect that.
In the 1930s, for example, five-year olds were not making animated videos, eight year olds were not making short movies and kids were not independently researching topics on Google. Children would not have been empowered to manage and create their own learning or explore their own questions and employ critical thinking, problem solving and creativity skills as a matter of course. Today, they are doing all of those things.
Something we do know is that today’s employers are looking for these skills too. They are looking for team players who know how to make a contribution, collaborators, thinkers, analysers, and above all good, honest and caring citizens.
Our kids are growing up in a global community, a multi-cultural world. Just take a look at Auckland and the glorious richness of cultural diversity in that city. Half the Auckland population was born outside of New Zealand. There are more than a hundred ‘first’ languages spoken by children in some Auckland schools. The children are from every Asian country including large numbers from India; they are from every Pacific nation and in fact Auckland has a higher Polynesian population than any other city in the world. There are refugees from a variety of different countries and immigrants from African, North and South American and European countries. It’s exhausting just listing them all! It’s one of the most multi-cultural cities in the world. In many Auckland schools, Pākeha are a minority. In some cases they are a minority of less than 3%. We love diversity. We welcome it. And if our kids are to make the most of living in such a culturally rich world, they need to embrace tolerance and be culturally astute.
The environment has also taken on a different emphasis since the 1930s. Today we face the challenges of global warming and the dire consequences that accompany that. For us, the realities are in our faces every day. The melting of the Antarctic and rising sea levels; The erosion of our foreshores; The swamping of neighbouring Pacific Islands; These are constant threats. Changes in weather patterns are bringing devastating cyclones to nearby Pacific Islands. We teach our kids to be good global citizens, to care about those hit by these shattering events of nature and help them out. We teach our kids why we have to do a better job of looking after our planet, reduce pollution, protect our beautiful bush and waterways and be good conservationists.
We have a growing number of kids in New Zealand who are afflicted by special learning and behavioural difficulties. We want these kids integrated into our schools and as far as possible, immersed in everything the school offers. In this way their differences become normalised, their learning progress is appreciated, their contributions valued and they can look forward to taking their place in society as valued citizens. At the same time all of our kids benefit through having a much deeper understanding of a variety of disabilities and they learn the importance of tolerance and compassion.
We all know kids arrive at school with a wide range of strengths…. and weaknesses, which are the result of different personalities, different intelligences and understandings, different home backgrounds and experiences, and a host of immeasurable factors that make our kids who they are.
A more recent phenomenon that has accelerated with growing societal inequity is child poverty. We now have an unacceptably high level of kids who are not accessing continual quality public education because their families are transient. They keep moving looking for work and for cheaper housing and living costs. Schools recognise the difficulties these families face and the negative effects it has on their children’s learning. Poverty also means that many thousands of children arrive at school every day without an adequate breakfast or prepared lunch. Increasingly schools are taking on the responsibility of feeding these children and in many cases also clothing them through a variety of charities and government sponsored agencies.
That is the context within which we are leading schools in New Zealand today.
We are lucky to have one of the most outstanding public education systems in the world. Only last week an OECD report ranked our teachers in the top four countries for professionalism. What set us aside from the rest was that our professionalism was just as exceptional in the lower decile schools as in the higher ones.
We have a curriculum that is second to none. It is responsive and flexible enough for us to be innovative and offer our kids the personalised learning they need. We can offer an education which recognises the huge range of children’s strengths and successes and builds on those. Our curriculum can actively combine exciting life experiences with academic rigour and creatively personalise the education of every student. BUT a curriculum of this ambitious nature cannot be confined to the classroom alone and focus solely on literacy and numeracy. The distinction of core curricular and extracurricular components is invalid in my opinion. In order to develop students across a spectrum of intelligences we cannot merely focus on literacy and numeracy, we must do a whole lot of other interesting things too... Experiences on the sports fields, in outdoor education, using technology, participating in service projects, in the art room, and in musical and dramatic performances can all be integrated into learning across the curriculum. The strength of the NZ school system is that our active, challenging curriculum provides students with the opportunity to develop and strengthen all their intelligences. This results in well balanced, perceptive individuals who have the confidence to take risks, to think beyondthe obvious and to take action to improve the lives of themselves and others. We expect our students to be fully and constructively involved in a range of activities on offer in our schools. Our ‘purpose of education statement’ should reflect the importance of these relevant and motivating experiences that our kids are engaging with every day.. The message we want to constantly convey to every NZ student is ‘Grasp every opportunity available in your school!’ The worst thing that can happen is for students to leave our schools saying, ’ regret that I never tried out that sport or I wish I had got involved in that project!!”.We don’t want that to be the case!
We have outstanding teacher and principal led initiatives that are making a positive difference for kids learning every day. We have the energy and enthusiasm to keep looking for new and better ways to deliver learning to our kids. A good example is our Māori Achievement Collaborations or MACs which you will hear more about later on. After just two years they are already having a positive impact on the achievement levels of Māori kids.
Ours is a high quality public education system that has endured - just as Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s statement for education has endured.
As we open up the debate on the purpose for education today, I urge you to think about our current context as I have outlined. If we are expecting education to address these issues, and I certainly think we are, then our statement of purpose for education will inevitably involve knowledge and skills; it will involve a range of values and competencies reflecting our growing cultural diversity; our environmental concerns; the need for equity, fairness and justice; inclusiveness and the desire to see our children grow into responsible, compassionate and contributing global citizens.
This then is our challenge and our vision… to continually support our students to lift their success higher and higher and to be positive and enthusiastic in addressing all of the issues I have just covered. Good luck to us all!