Submission

Submission to ‘Making a Bigger Difference for all students’
7th June, 2004

It is with concern for rural children and their education that RWNZ comment at a national level regarding the ‘Making a bigger difference program’. As the questions tend to be urban orientated and leave out rural issues such as transport etc RWNZ has adapted the questionnaire to put the rural perspective.

Question 1 to 2 Important outcomes for children

- Holistic approach to life and living from ability to cook, do basic manual repairs to understanding of complexities of a logrithium. This would entail bringing back the home economics/manual skills orientation that has been lost.

-To explore strengths of an individual student and have the ability to refer a student for help or extension if individual needs were not met. At present ‘gifted’ children are left to be frustrated in a classroom with a high teacher: pupil ratio with the only alternative to receiving education at the level they need by being put up classes out of their social peer group.

- To be part of a community, the school is a community initiative and the community should be part of the students learning initiative.

- To enhance learning opportunities through exposure to a rural environment

- Quality teaching and teacher guidance through reduced teacher: pupil rations.

- To promote the Maori culture through learning the language in schools and thus promote mutual understanding of the culture that typifies New Zealand

Question 3a
Priority areas that should occur in schooling over the next 5 years:

- Reduced teacher:pupil ratios

- Focus on quality teaching

- Strengthening family and community involvement as part of the education process

- Improved transport of rural children

We note with the process of school reviews that there has been an undertaking to provide ‘better resourced’ schools, but not better teacher to pupil ratios or a better standard of teaching.

Other professions are performance tested, why are teachers not performance tested? RWNZ feels the teacher is the key in a childs education and has not been addressed in the education review process.
Further we would like to see a transparent performance analysis of teachers .To assist sole charge schools, RWNZ would like to see extra funding available to a school to appoint a person to assist in administration of the school in a practical way. Locum teachers available so that relief is at hand for a sole charge teacher from another parent school. Therefore the teachers can get on with the job of teaching and utilise the unique rural environment for teaching purposes.
Building relationships between urban and rural schools can be beneficial for both children and teachers.

Rural schools are the hub of the community with the demise of regional infrastructure the school is what is left; it is a meeting place and a recipient of many community fundraising efforts.

With a number of rural schools closed then there are fewer options to provide a unique rural schooling opportunity for a child. We would note that this will cause rural children to grow in an urban environment and the consequence of that is that not many return to rural areas as they loose touch with the rural environment so early. Today the rural sector suffers from a shortage of skilled labor and the demise of rural schools can only serve to exasperate this shortage. In terms of GDP the rural sector provides 65% and therefore is a significant contributor to the Countries standard of living. The difficulties of the rural sector with larger schools concentrated in the urban area’s is that:
1. Further where children will be required to travel long distances employees may decide to live in town and commute to their rural place of work, further decreasing rural viability.
2. With the demise of rural schools then the rural sector cannot offer employees a school for the education of children. Therefore, the stability and longevity that the families of employees provide will be diminished.
3. The community loose their meeting place, they may get significant proceeds from sale of community assets on the school grounds but as noted in ’Building Sustainable Schools’ Document ‘this will be minimal’.
4. Promotion of urban drift. The lack of acknowledgement of the uniqueness of a rural education has promoted urban drift

RWNZ note that the school transport system for rural has been eroded under school reviews. There have been instances of schools that have been left with larger area’s to collect children from and inadequate transport to do so. This has repercussions for the individual children utilising the service. For instance we know in Dannevirke a five and seven-year-old are required to travel from 7.45am to arrive at school just prior to 9am. On the return journey they have to change buses at Dannevirke High and wait on the footpath unsupervised for the next bus, getting home after 4pm. Therefore we do not feel that the transport system has been adequately addressed and maybe the Ministry could look at buses transporting children from the fringe areas so that children in far-flung rural areas have shorter travel times.
We also note in the Gisbourne area that organisations such as Landcorp have had to purchase their own bus in order to get their employees children to school. There seems to be an inconsistent5 approach to transport.
We note with our conversation with Hon Jim Sutton that 45 minutes was mentioned as the maximum time a child of five years of age should be on a bus and we agree with this assertion.

Question 4 Education goals for Maori
In the list of education outcomes RWNZ wished that the Maori culture and language were an integral part of the education process from early childhood to secondary school. This would further promote understanding and bring the spirit of community into school life. Many schools do this but there is a shortage of teachers in this area.


Question 5 What is working well for schools
Links to the internet has established a communication avenue for children and teachers alike in rural area’s. it brings the rural community in contact with a powerful tool
- Correspondence school which provides essential preschool tuition for rural and offers an alternative should a rural school close or travelling distance be too onerous. Rural would benefit from the Correspondence school accommodating gifted children or children with learning difficulties

What are the barriers
- The promotion of large-scale schools does not provide opportunities for the individual to excel. It is difficult to know with high pupil to teacher ratio’s how your child is actually performing and what their strengths are, as there is no individual attention.
- Lack of recognition of the importance part rural schools play in providing a unique learning environment and how this environment could be shared

- Lack of government funding of alternative learning processes such as Montessori that are proven to promote individual learning to provide a child with alternative learning means. Not just one

Question 6 Improvement
- Low teacher to pupil ratio
- Quality teaching
- Funding of alternative teaching methods such as Montessori to accommodate learning difficulties or particular needs of individuals.
- Analysis of the school review process and the learning outcomes from the process for children.

Rural schools have felt the cuts to education and community more than any other sector. The emphasise on larger schools does not mean better education for the individual and we find the literature through the Ministry of Education looks at the masses whilst not appreciating it is the individuals education that we need to be concerned with.
Rural have undergone school reviews and yet there is no release of any document that supports that larger urbanised schools will benefit the individual. We acknowledged that the schools will be better resourced but that does not translate to quality education that is beneficial to an individual child.