Hekia will say that bigger classes means better results---Rubbish!

The reporting in the Herald this morning that bigger classes in bigger schools can mean better results re National Standards. It then went on to say that the school in East Auckland had markedly better results than schools in other areas.

Just watch Ms Parata and her cohorts twaddle and twiddle from great heights, using such result to justify and ram through some of their obvious agenda---pushing National Standards and bigger classes. It will be sickening to watch and I suspect the assault will start in the next 48 hours.

COME ON -------Get real Ms Parata. After you have rung Johnny and slurped your coffee in excitement—take a look at the facts. Try and get the point I made in my last blog about Cultural Capital! You will probably say, ‘but many of these children are of Asian descent and they have managed to achieve high standards. That is the point my dear---- they come with the tools to learn, the role models and the means.

It is ridiculous comparing a school like that identified in the report and then use that as justification for your crazy agenda. Take a school in the area where I work, put in the resources in the form of good reading recovery projects, work with the families and try to balance out the effects of the socio-economic issues and apply this consistently and you will get results, but take your foot off the pedal for even a few months and the gains will recede.

When will politicians and those who claim that ‘but I made it---I picked myself up and look at me now’---when will these people take a close look at what life is really like for so many of our kids?

I believe that many National Party politicians genuinely want better lives for all of our citizens, but they do not have an accurate understanding of what life is like at the ‘front line’  for our kids. In that case, go and talk regularly to the teachers, teacher aides, counsellors, youth workers and social workers in parts of our large cities---it is a very different world to what you live in. Above all—open your eyes and hear their stories.

I can hear the howls of the people who think I have insulted them. Never mind--- they won’t read this!