8th, eh? Really? Not if the politicians have anything to do with it...

The news item in the following link shows New Zealand's educational system to be world class. This is despite the politicians' best efforts to persuade the New Zealand voting public that it isn't (especially the governing National Party).

http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/8023277/New-Zealand-ranked-8th-in-education-outcomes

It will be interesting to see how the politicians react to this one, to see what spin they put on it.

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Pop Quiz: (multi-choice)

What approach will the politicians take?

a) They will decry it as an invalid investigation based on some vague criteria that they think they can justify.

b) They will put down the company that organised the research as not being involved at the necessary (?) level of education delivery (and that it is biased because they are probably trying to sell something).

c) They will claim the credit for it (nothing to do with the educational professionals). They will attribute the success to the National Standards.

d) They will blame the teachers (again) for not having us up in 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th 3rd, 2nd or 1st position.

e) They will ignore it, say nothing and expect that the voting public will forget all about it by the next election so they can say (again) what a dreadful educational system we have and if we will only vote them in again to receive their exorbitant salaries they will
i) fix it
ii) find someone else to blame for it
iii) add something else to the system that has no educational value and pronounce it the saving grace of the future generation

f) They will contract a consultant to rejig the statistics to prove the opposite so they can continue to blame the teachers and, despite them having no teacher / educational training whatsoever, continue to tell the educational professionals how they should be doing their job.

g) All of the above - but it will be announced by different politicians at different times and our illustrious prime minister will laugh away all the contradictions from his own party spokesmen as a misunderstanding and pronounce they are fixing the system so we don't need to worry. He will then blame the teachers and demand his education minister fix everything on his behalf so he can claim the credit.

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Alternatively, if we close our eyes, wish REALLY hard and profess our belief that fairies are real, the politicians just might admit they have got it all wrong and the system is in fact working well - and the teachers are doing a reasonably good job after all...

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And since we are gently rattling the cage of the powers that be at the moment, I have been reading a great idea to fix the Novopay debacle (it was the worst word I could come up with without resorting to swearing in a public blog).

The solution?

Put all the politicians and Ministry of Education employees on the Novopay payroll.

Watch how fast it gets fixed then!