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+--- Thread: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' (/showthread.php?tid=3047)
Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Lilith7 - 10-04-2024
According to principal Pat Newman - who doesn't mince his words...
Would it really be so very difficult for our politicians to put aside their political differences & work together for the sake of our kids & their future? So very impossible to actually consult teachers & find out what IS really needed? What would really work properly, both now & in the future?
https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2024/04/principal-slams-government-s-new-truancy-plan-as-useless-calls-for-cross-party-action.html
"A Whangārei principal is slamming David Seymour's newly announced attendance action plan saying it is " about as useful as tits on a bull".
On Tuesday, the Government revealed details of how it plans to meet its target of 80 percent of students being present for more than 90 percent of the school term.
Seymour is the lead minister in charge of the target and said the "truancy crisis" must be fixed. On Tuesday Seymour announced several new measures to improve attendance including mandatory daily reporting of attendance data, a traffic light system, making attendance a strategic priority for school boards and using improved data and analysis to distinguish the drivers of non-attendance to target interventions.
But the plan isn't being welcomed by Hora Hora School principal Pat Newman, who has more than 50 years of experience in education.
Newman said the action plan is not going to achieve anything.
"I don't know if you could call it a plan... This thing is about as useful as tits on a bull," Newman told Newshub Late on Tuesday.
"It's not going to do anything, and it shows this guy who thinks he knows everything knows bugger all nothing."
Newman said publishing attendance results is all well and good, but he questions who is actually going to read them.
"The [parents] we are trying to target don't actually go look at school newspapers or websites or anywhere else."
The principal also lambasted the health advice changes questioning whether it would mean sick children would start showing up to school.
"Does that mean we are going to have classrooms full of kids with gooby noses? We know if children have a cold they infect other children and we know they infect teachers. I mean it's crazy." Newman accused Seymour of blaming educators for the issue when really successive governments, including the current one, are at fault. "He's blaming the boards and principals and schools for the problem we have, yet he's the one that says, 'Listen we are going to cut lunches'. How the hell is that going to get people into school? He says, 'We are going to cut back the public transport subsidies'. How the hell is that going to get people into schools?
"He talks about minimising disruptions to kids, do you know the biggest disruption to kids over my 51 years of being a principal has been that every two to three years we have a new political master who thinks they know it all and comes in and changes everything we've been trying to bed down.
"Then they wonder why the kids aren't there, they wonder why no one wants to go into teaching, they wonder why our kids are failing. It's not the schools, it's not the teachers, it's the bloody politicians who will not sit down and work out a plan with the sector so that we have a direction for 10 or 20 years and instead we get a change every two to three years.
"What planet is the guy on? Newman questioned. "That's not in the future – that's what we are dealing with now. That's what we need the help for not tinkering around with systems and ideas that he thinks he can impose and it will all work and we will jump up and down saying, 'Oh yes all-knowing Minister'.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - king1 - 10-04-2024
good on him... I do wonder though, if he would have been so forthcoming with his opinion had he not been so close to retirement?
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Oh_hunnihunni - 10-04-2024
Money grubbing. Stop paying for school lunches. Bring back fares for school kids. Fine parents for truants. Stop early childhood subsidies for under twos.
It is all about the money.
As a friend of mine pointed out at lunch today - accommodation allowance and winter energy payments have to be on their list.
Still, the flu vax is still free, so I got mine. No lollipop though.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Lilith7 - 10-04-2024
(10-04-2024, 01:31 PM)king1 Wrote: good on him... I do wonder though, if he would have been so forthcoming with his opinion had he not been so close to retirement?
Probably not, given the current govt. FGS surely it isn't too difficiit to consult teachers & work from their advice.
Unless of course, you're keen to make money from those charter schools...
(10-04-2024, 02:28 PM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: Money grubbing. Stop paying for school lunches. Bring back fares for school kids. Fine parents for truants. Stop early childhood subsidies for under twos.
It is all about the money.
As a friend of mine pointed out at lunch today - accommodation allowance and winter energy payments have to be on their list.
Still, the flu vax is still free, so I got mine. No lollipop though.
Absolutely - those things help make the lives of those on low incomes slightly better, & they cost $, so two reason to remove them.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - C_T_Russell - 10-04-2024
Kids need an education, it's important in the world we live that's full of Conspiracy theories and flat earthers.
This policy is important.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - harm_less - 10-04-2024
(10-04-2024, 06:32 PM)C_T_Russell Wrote: Kids need an education, it's important in the world we live that's full of Conspiracy theories and flat earthers.So the irony of your comment is lost on you I guess
This policy is important.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Praktica - 10-04-2024
(10-04-2024, 06:39 PM)harm_less Wrote:(10-04-2024, 06:32 PM)C_T_Russell Wrote: Kids need an education, it's important in the world we live that's full of Conspiracy theories and flat earthers.So the irony of your comment is lost on you I guess
This policy is important.
I think for CT irony is a golf club...
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Oh_hunnihunni - 10-04-2024
Kids actually manage surprisingly well with minimal formal education these days, so long as they have their curiosity encouraged, their health and welfare looked after, and are supported to become positive, rational adults.
Our schooling system was invented by labour bosses interested in keeping kids off the streets and out of trouble, so their parents could work in the factories.
Things haven't really changed that much, except now we have the internet. And free public libraries...
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - zqwerty - 10-04-2024
National's stated policy should be - austerity for the rest of you but not for us.
[austerity - difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure.
"the country was subjected to acute economic austerity"]
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Lilith7 - 11-04-2024
(10-04-2024, 11:05 PM)zqwerty Wrote: National's stated policy should be - austerity for the rest of you but not for us.
[austerity - difficult economic conditions created by government measures to reduce public expenditure.
"the country was subjected to acute economic austerity"]
And it does seem to be fairly blatant; they're none too subtle, this lot.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Oh_hunnihunni - 11-04-2024
I look forward to the day when governments put people ahead of profit, ahead of economy, ahead of career politics. Ahead of status and unlimited growth. To when leaders actually lead. But I won't be holding my breath.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - zqwerty - 11-04-2024
"I look forward to the day when governments put people ahead of profit, ahead of economy, ahead of career politics. Ahead of status and unlimited growth. To when leaders actually lead. But I won't be holding my breath."
A forlorn hope I'm afraid.
RE: Nats truancy policy 'as useful as tits ona bull' - Lilith7 - 11-04-2024
(11-04-2024, 12:30 PM)Oh_hunnihunni Wrote: I look forward to the day when governments put people ahead of profit, ahead of economy, ahead of career politics. Ahead of status and unlimited growth. To when leaders actually lead. But I won't be holding my breath.
I've read about that. Something along those lines happend in the UK after WW2, when they were still heavily in debt, paying for the war but decided it was more important to set up the National Health Service regardless. Labour govt at the time; several decades later, successive Tory govts have gutted what was once, going by what I've read, an excellent system.
What you describe IS their job after all, & it really doesn't seem too much to expect that that lot in the Beehive put the welfare of ALL their voters foremost rather than just that of their donors, as seems to be happening lately.
We're very slow learners, we humans...