Monday 13 May 2019

Getting a "Threefer"

Continuing the theme from my last post about "Sharpening the Focus", in this post I'm expanding the idea of getting significant acceleration of learner achievement outcomes in three core subjects simultaneously.


The Manaiakalani Programme and its Outreach have been very successful by national and international standards, in that we have safely transitioned fragile schools and learning communities from an analogue to fully digital platform in a 3 year cycle. We have done this with very significant acceleration in one of three core subjects, without any of the three core subjects declining. This is highly unusual and is cause for celebration. In fact, the evidence of this success, is precisely why the Ministry of Education now wish to partner with us to take this Outreach kaupapa to more needy communities in Aotearoa.What we have not yet achieved, and must be achieved, is to have all three core subjects accelerate significantly and simultaneously. The life of a learner at primary school is 8 years long. If each subject improvement requires a three year cycle, this is longer than the life of the learner in that environment, and we will still have learners enrolling at secondary school unable to successfully access the whole of the curriculum.
In the screencast below, I have investigated all the Manaiakalani Schools via their respective Woolf Fisher Research Centre Reports to identify cohorts that have '3 subject acceleration' and have asked some key questions and proposed some emerging hypotheses at the end of this.
I my next post, I hope to share the hypotheses of teachers and leaders as to what we ought to do about this.