Educating the Dragon: budget

Showing posts with label budget. Show all posts

Poor financial literacy is costing us big

Thousands of kiwis are struggling with personal finances and its costing the country dearly.

WestPac and Massey University have begun two new initiatives supported by the government.

The New Zealand Centre for Personal Financial Education has designed a certificate programme Finance Educators
The Centre will also undertake a 20-year study to identify why so many Kiwis struggle with their finances.

The new programme and longitudinal study will help improve the quality and access of education on personal finance and identify knowledge gaps and how they can be addressed.

Breakfast v Pies... part 3

Providing a proper breakfast for students of decile 1-4 schools is an expensive business. However, our most vunerable children need a good start to their academic day if they are to stand a chance of succeeding.

$11 million does sound like a lot of money and it appears that KidsCan CEO agrees.

"We believe that we can provide food for all New Zealand children in decile 1 to decile 4 primary and intermediate schools for an additional $2.5 million annually on top of what we already receive from sponsors and the Ministry of Social Development," she said.

Although Anne Tolley is pointing to schools who are already using their higher operational budgets to provide meals there is still much to do.
I take Annette King’s point about large companies to contributing more. All of us need to get behind such an initiative. Perhaps a matched funding arrangement will encourage companies and individuals to support this deprived generation.

If KidsCan says they they can then my vote is with them. They already have a proven track record in this area and if something is working well lets not reinvent the wheel. Besides, if they can’t then a name change may be in order.. Perhaps Lofty could suggest “KidserIthinkSo”.

Other reading:
Breakfast v Pie... part 2
Healthy Kids, Healthy Education

Staff PD is now cost effective

CORE Education are responding to a need schools have for accessible professional learning and development (PLD).
Far too often the shrinking time and budget puts pay to professional development but CORE Achieve seeks to address this problem with their innovative, flexible courses.

The internet provides a range of delivery methods, both synchronously and synchronously, which CORE have tapped into.

The courses are modulor and can be delivered to individuals or a whole staff via the online environment.

“Achieve allows individual teachers to study their choice of topic at a time and place suitable to them, with the focus being on participation, collaboration and interaction rather than just delivery.”

Don't forget to register.

Things to do:
Discover CORE’s approach to PLD
Find out more about cost effective PLD
Register with CORE Achieve.

Today is a ANOTHER day for ECE news.

First there is the opinion that John Key out of touch with parents when it comes to Early Childhood eduation. Then we have Dunedin literally haunted by the spectre of budget cuts past.

OTAGO Daily times:

“The impact was evident in an advertisement Dunedin's Little Wonders centre placed in the Otago Daily Times on Saturday. It was seeking an "untrained early childhood teacher", which raised the ire of New Zealand Teachers Council director Dr Peter Lind, who was "concerned" about the wording of the advertisement.
He questioned if people would be happy to see a medical practice advertise for an untrained doctor.”

It is my opinion that stating ‘untrained’ in the advert is merely antagonistic and is not at all appropriate. But to equate that with advertising for an ‘untrained doctor’ is a bit of a push. I’m sorry but nobody died due to a poor choice in maths game.
It is interesting to note the number of adverts for Scale A classroom teachers stating ‘New Zealand registered teacher’. Do we raise an eyebrow at that? Is that discriminatory? Is that not a clever wording for ‘we’re not taking untrained teachers’? Is not practically racist?
I would question what parents are looking for in an ECE centre. I wonder how many genuinely choose one centre over the other based upon the number of qualified staff and how many simply factor the ‘feel’ of the centre.
NOTE: I have no idea how many, or which, staff were qualified at my son’s centre – but then maybe I’m a terrible father.

Healthy Kids Healthy Education

Thousands of young people are failing at school because of undiagnosed health problems, a research project shows.

The statistics that came from this study are alarming:

315 in the original cohort needed a medical referral
85 individuals needed eye treatment
53 who needed glasses
147 needed dental work
12 needed ear treatment.

Apparently, health care free and access to GP’s is good. It is just that parents are not taking their kids.
There are several questions that need posing:

What is it that is the barrier to parents not taking their kids for a check up?
How effective is the school nurse/ dental programme at identifying need?

This is fast becoming an argument for schools to broaden their scope of care and become the ‘one-stop-shop’ for children’s needs.
Education + Health + ??

So what will address this discrepancy, allowing our children to maximize their potential…

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Private funding for schools

New primary and secondary schools to be built in Hobsonville will be the first in New Zealand constructed with private money.

Not actual building being proposed... unfortunately.

It appears that the move toward privately funded schools is fraught with difficulties. It is far from agreed and if the arguments laid out by the above mentioned article are anything to go by finding a private partner is going to be tricky:

The land and school will be owned by the government.
The board of Trustees will remain wholly in charge.

The private-sector partner will carry the risk around time-consuming and expensive problems like leaky buildings.

So, let me get this straight. I as a private investor I will foot the bill for the construction of a building I will not own, with tenants I am obliged to house, with little or no say in how the buildings are to be used, oh and if the those building come under disrepair it is I who have to find the money to fix or replace even though it is not I who have warn them out... Is there an upside here I can’t see?
Apparently...

“If suitable bids are not received the government can revert to traditional funding. It can also terminate the agreement if key performance indicators are not met.”

... which is somewhat of a relief to parents, students and staff as I would suggest the chances of finding someone willing is slim at best.
The government must be fairly confident with the outcome, howeve, as it's sitting in the PM’s backyard with an election on the horizon.

Please excuse me if I go a check my other pants for that spare 40-mil I had kicking around the other day.

Mummy? ... Mummy?... Mummmmmmy!!!!!

Apparently, it takes Children's Commissioner John Angus a full investigation to determine that under one’s are best cared for at home. I could have saved a lot of time and money and just given him my Gran’s telephone number, she’d have told him.
Also the report stated that the ratio of staff member to child should be lowered. Again another thing my Gran may mention, only two arms per staff member and so much sobbing/ crying/ comforting to be done.
Sure, wouldn’t it be nice if all mum’s could stay at home, look after bubs full time and not have another care in the world. For that matter, wouldn’t it be nice if Dad could do that instead, oh, I mean ‘as well’.
There are about 32,000 children under the age of two in formal early childhood education.
Reality is that many parents need to go back to work, some even prefer to go back to work. Parents who return to work full-time and good parents are two groups that are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Options need to given. Government does not need to provide full-funding for one or the other but some funding offering some choice may be appreciated.
Angus said there was "room for government policy" to better support parents who make a choice to stay at home to care for their child.

There needs to be some fairness to the system. Its no good a mother on one toddler having to go back to work where another of 3 or 4 teenagers can afford to stay home.

“...stop paying parents while thier kids are at school 30 hours per week, they can work .”

Robymac from the the TVNZ item

PPTA: No secondhand car purchase.

The PPTA are close to reaching a settlement with the Ministry of Education. Is this really still dragging on? I am clearly not one to speak to delicate negotiations, I am more of the "How much do you want for your car? How MUCH? I'll give you half that. Three Quarters? Done!".

"With the situation the country is in at present, it would be good to achieve a settlement and return to some sense of normality" PPTA president Robin Duff said.

You think?
The time for fighting is over and the time has now come to lay side petty, see the big picture... be the better person and agree to a settlement before the whole economic situation changes and negotiations begin for a new pay deal for 2012.
I just hope that the ratification process is merely a formality and we can all return to the business of educating the next generation.

Financial illiteracy

''The system is very devolved. It is up to teachers and principals in local schools to decide what is taught. We have very well written financial literacy materials but we don't know how much they are used,''

Financial literacy is perhaps one of the areas of a child’s education which really should be ‘out-sourced’. The last generation were not taught financial literacy well, for a variety of reasons, and to say that parents alone should be solely responsible would lead to a spiralling downwards of understanding of money.
As the article identifies there are many worthy programmes out there that schools and educators could, and should adopt.
That is not to say that parents should not take a lead in this area. It is just that there needs to be a more solid foundation to financial understanding than ‘treating your kid on every visit to the Warehouse’.

PPTA: Applaud or *tusk now

The PPTA has said it will keep up its fight for improved conditions and higher pay, and that more strikes are likely.
It appears that the PPTA is last to ‘fall’. I’m sure that the union is feeling the warming flow of mana knowing that they are the ‘last one standing’.
In such economic times though, there must be a thin line unions walk between looking like their standing up for members and looking way too greedy.
Secondary teachers must be applauding their union for the backbone it is showing but public perception is the key here and when extra-curricular activities and educational opportunities for young people are cancelled then *tusks from parents ripple through the wider community.
Enough is enough though. Let’s refocus now on educating our young people, enriching lives and brightening the future of New Zealand through top quality educational expertise.

ECE options zero: Suck it up

Many childhood centres are already proposing fee hikes with the Early Childhood Education revenue cuts, announced in last year’s Government Budget becoming effective at the beginning of next week.
Many have risen there prices already, grabbing a few grand with the overlap. But that is far from lasting them any time at all.
But then what choice is there for us as parents. We’re in full time employment, can;t afford to give it up, our kid is settled and most if not all centres in our area are also raising costs. There is no other option than to ‘suck it up’.

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