NZ-draft do not cite
From WAET
Derek Wenmoth
CORE Education, Christchurch, New Zealand
|
New Zealand is an island nation situated to the East of Australia in the Southern Pacific Ocean, with a population of about 4.1 million and a land area of 240,000 square kilometres, similar in area to the United Kingdom or Japan. A third of the population of New Zealand live in its largest city, Auckland, while another third are spread among a handful of smaller centres located on both the North and South Islands. The remainder lives in rural towns and isolated settlements scattered up and down the two main islands and a number of smaller, off-shore islands.
 Figure 1. Map of New Zealand |
About 80% of the population is of European descent. New Zealanders of European descent are collectively known as Pākehā – a term used by many to refer to all non-Māori New Zealanders. English and Māori are the two official languages. English is more widely spoken, though the Māori language, for so long on the decline, is now making a comeback thanks to the revival of Māoritanga (i.e., Māori culture).
 Figure 2. Māori Totem Pole |
Contemporary New Zealand has a diverse culture with influences from English, Scottish, Irish, and Māori cultures, along with those of other European cultures. More recently, immigrants from a variety of Polynesian and Asian countries have added to this cultural diversity.
 Figure 3. Mountains in New Zealand |
New Zealand is well known for its natural beauty, including glacial mountains, fast flowing rivers, native forests, and areas of seismic activity. Being an island nation there is also an extensive shoreline offering everything from rugged rocky coastline to sandy swimming beaches.
The Education System
There are approximately 2600 schools spread across New Zealand, half of which have rolls of less than 150 students, while at the other extreme only 75 have rolls greater than 1000. The schools are staffed by 45,000 teachers with an average age of 47, catering for the needs of a total of 750,000 students. Schooling in New Zealand is compulsory from ages 6-16 years.
New Zealand has an egalitarian approach to education provision, with a long history of attending to the educational needs of students in rural and remote parts of the country. The New Zealand Correspondence School has been providing a correspondence education school-aged students in rural areas for nearly 90 years, and more recently has taken on a role of providing courses for students in urban schools who are not able to access the range of courses they choose to study.
The Correspondence School currently has a roll of around 20,000 students, nearly half of whom are students already attending a local school, but who are enrolled with the Correspondence School for just one or two subjects that are not available to them at that school. Twenty per-cent are the students from rural and remote areas in New Zealand (those who cannot attend a local school for reasons of geographic isolation), and the rest are made up of students with special needs (including those with health problems, learning difficulties and those with behavioural problems that have caused them to be excluded from mainstream schools); students who are transient (parents who are missionaries, diplomats etc) and a small number of adult students who enroll with the Correspondence School in order to complete studies they missed out on while at school. While the Correspondence School has traditionally provided courses of study in print-and post medium, it has more recently been developing an eLearning capability, providing all or parts of courses online, and has been a key provider of courses using the video conferencing network that has been established in New Zealand.
In 1989 the governance of the New Zealand education system was radically reformed. From being a relatively centralised system, it became an extremely devolved one. Responsibility for the delivery of education at the local school level is now the responsibility of locally elected boards of trustees, with each school able to operate with relative autonomy in decisions to do with curriculum, and resourcing. The Ministry of Education retreated from most of its former service delivery and quality assurance roles and restricted itself to policy formation and funding, including handing over the quality assurance process to an independent agency.
Since 1989 all schools have been self-managing, with a Board of Trustees taking responsibility for the local governance of each school, and the principal and staff responsible for management issues. New Zealand schools determine their own curriculum at the local level. They plan their teaching and learning programmes to support the needs of their particular students. The government does not prescribe what should be included, but sets out its expectations in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework and the supporting National Curriculum Statements which define the learning principles and achievement aims and objectives for each of seven essential learning areas which New Zealand schools are required to implement.
 Figure 6. Primary school students working |
As a result there is a great deal of diversity in New Zealand schools, reflecting the different needs, culture and abilities that exist in each school context. Schools are responsible for developing their own curriculum plans, interpreting the guidance within the NZ Curriculum Framework to suit local contexts and needs. The Ministry of Education maintains a centralized policy and resourcing role.
Technology Usage in the School System
New Zealand is reputed to have one of the world’s highest access to telecommunications per capita, with the cost of accessing the Internet being almost as low as it is in the United States. New Zealanders are usually quick to embrace new technology - they have been buying computers, signing up to Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and going online at an internationally impressive rate. For example, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study of technology use among 15 years olds showed that young New Zealanders had among the highest access to computers at home and at school (OECD, 2005). In common with other such countries, they tended to make considerably more use of computers at home than at school.
In a recent survey of Internet usage by young New Zealanders, Nielson/Netratings (2005) reported the following:
- 64% of New Zealand children aged between 6-17 years had been using the Internet for over 2 years and 15% have been online for five years;
- Just under half of NZ children in the 6-17 age group who were online accessed the Internet daily while 29% accessed it weekly;
- Frequency of use increased with age;
- 46% indicated that friends were the most important source of information about new websites; and
- 80% of young people in New Zealand accessed the Internet from home.
The reality of the situation in New Zealand is that schools have often led the way in terms of computer use and access. The graph below taken from a recent report (Johnson, Kazakov & Švehla, 2005) shows the growth in Internet access in New Zealand schools over the past decade:
Figure 7. Internet Access in New Zealand Schools
This high level of ICT penetration in New Zealand schools has led to some very innovative uses of these technologies. Noticeably also, there is a decreasing emphasis on the teaching of skills, and an increasing emphasis on using the technology to facilitate and enable learning, and a focus on improving pedagogical practice.
Schools ICT Strategy Development
After nearly a decade of supporting the use of ICT in schools that included funding for professional development programmes for teachers, the Ministry of Education released its first ICT strategy for schools in 1988, titled “Interactive Education” (Ministry of Education, 1989), followed by an updated version of the strategy titled “Digital Horizons” in 2001 which was revised in 2003 (Ministry of Education, 2003).
 Figure 8. Cover of the Interactive Education document |  Figure 9. Cover of the Digital Horizons document |
These strategies emphasised the use of ICT in three key areas, which will be explained in turn:
- accessibility,
- capability and
- support for learning.
Accessibility
The accessibility goals are being met through the provision of key infrastructure to schools. This includes:
a. Recycled computers: in 1998-2001 computers from businesses and government departments were reconditioned and brought up to a standard set of specifications then made available to schools in order to increase the number of computers in schools. This project had a significant impact in allowing schools to quickly add more PCs to their network, however as content has become more multimedia rich and PC pricing has come down, the majority of schools are now choosing to purchase new computers, often under a leasing arrangement – so this initiative has been scaled down to some extent. However many schools still have a requirement for a generic PC that can carry out basic tasks - one large high school recently acquired 200 ex-government-owned PCs for $30 each - these were distributed around the school for text processing and browsing purposes. There is still a large demand for these recycled PCs to go into the homes of children from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
b. Video conferencing bridge: a 100 port video/audio conferencing bridge was purchased by the Ministry of Education in 2004, providing free access to video and audio conferencing to any schools in New Zealand who might choose to make use of this service to support the provision of teaching and learning programmes for their students. While initially servicing only a small number of schools, this service has seen a rapid rise in use over the past two years, with the number of schools using it on a regular basis rising from 50 in 2003 to 250 in 2007. Although this service started out providing core subjects (such as senior Economics) to small rural high schools who may not have had a qualified teacher, it is now also being expanded to large urban high schools who may wish to offer specialist subjects such as Russian. Tertiary institutions are also able to offer subjects such as Beekeeping and Hospitality Studies.
An online service known as the Virtual Learning Network (see http://www.virtuallearning.school.nz) has been operating since 2004 as a brokerage for courses using the video conferencing bridge. Schools that are a part of the VLN tend to be smaller, rural secondary schools, although the service has also attracted the participation of larger, urban schools and tertiary organizations who provide courses into these smaller schools. This service has seen a steady increase in use since it began, with the number of courses being available rising from 42 in 2004 to 140 in 2007, the number of classes running from 42 to 166, and the number of individual student enrolments from 249 to 1011 in that same period.
c. Laptops for teachers programme: This initiative gives all permanent full-time and part-time teachers in state and integrated schools the opportunity to access a leased laptop for a three-year period, with the Ministry meeting up to two-thirds of the total cost of leasing, and teachers or schools covering the remaining third. This initiative has seen significant update by teachers, and it is estimated that around 90 % of all teachers and 100% of principals now have their own laptop computer provided through this scheme. This has been an extremely popular project and has driven a wider acceptance of ICT in the classroom.
d. ICT help-desk: A national ICT Helpdesk for schools was established in 2002. It provides high quality ICT technical support and advice to all schools. Teachers can access the service using a toll-free number at any time between 8.00am and 5.00pm on weekdays. This service has been well used by all schools in New Zealand, with a commercial company in Auckland providing responses to all level one inquiries on contract to the Ministry of Education. Around 30,000 phone calls are received per year – mostly of a general hardware and software nature. A high proportion of calls are from smaller rural schools who usually have little in the way of onsite support. As New Zealand schools choose their hardware and software on an individual basis (there is no centralised direction in this regard) there is an ongoing challenge to provide the support required across the school sector.
A significant contribution to the accessibility goals was the provision of broadband connectivity to every school in the country. The broadband roll-out (called project PROBE – see http://www.minedu.govt.nz/goto/probe for more information) was a joint venture between the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Economic Development, resulting in a minimum bandwidth of 256K being provided to all 2700 schools across the country. A range of technologies have been used to achieve this, including wireless and satellite technologies for some of the more remote schools. While the project has been successful in getting this level of service to the school gate, the level of uptake (i.e., the number of schools actually connecting to the line) has been variable for a range of reasons. These include the fact that schools are still left with the responsibility for then funding the connection itself and the cost of services they then connect to (including the internet traffic costs). For many schools this additional expense is not budgeted for. Another factor that has emerged in subsequent research is the fact that the majority of schools do not have an internal network to which the broadband line can be connected, thus the benefit of connection cannot be shared by all staff and students. This issue is now being addressed through a MoE-funded schools networking initiative that seeks to see all schools become internally cabled to an agreed set of standards over the next five years.
In 2006 the Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network (KAREN – see http://www.karen.net.nz/home for more information) was launched, introducing even greater levels of bandwidth, initially linking universities and research institutes, but eventually becoming available for schools also. This network will provide much better levels of connectivity between schools wanting to share services, classes and teaching resources. The current cost of connecting to the KAREN network is prohibitive for individual schools, however in several regional areas of the country local councils, often in collaboration with businesses, are establishing Urban Fibre Networks, (Sometimes referred to as Municipalities, Universities, Schools and Hospitals networks (MUSH networks) or Local Loops) which will allow schools to connect to the advanced network for less cost.
Capability
The capability goals have been met through support for an ongoing programme of professional development for teachers, based on a cluster schools model. The Information and Communications Technologies Professional Development (ICT-PD) Cluster programme is a collaborative venture between groups or clusters of schools and the Ministry of Education to promote and promulgate effective practice for the use of ICTs in New Zealand Schools.
The Ministry provides funding and support to cluster schools to implement a self designed programme that promotes increased understanding by teachers, principals, students and school communities of the educational benefits of ICT. It is the main method of providing long-term professional development in the use of ICTs to New Zealand teachers.
Schools self-select their partner schools in the programme. Clusters then prepare and submit a proposal to the Ministry of Education for funding consideration. There is an annual request for proposals.
Any number of schools can make up a cluster. In determining the make up of a cluster schools must consider their shared vision and common goals. All schools in the cluster are expected to be actively involved in the development of the application for funding and committed to successfully achieving the outcomes of the programme.
The funding available to clusters is up to $120,000 per year for each of the three years of the programme. This funding base is likely to effectively support approximately 110 - 130 staff for the length of the contract. There have been clusters with larger numbers of staff that have run very successful programmes at that funding level. All clusters regardless of their size are expected to contribute their own funds to the programme. Continuation of funding each year is dependent on the cluster schools meeting project outcomes and requirements.
This programme has been operating since 1999, with considerable success being demonstrated in terms of the integration of ICT into teaching and learning programmes among participating schools. From the initial 23 clusters that began in 1999, the programme has now involved 225 clusters, involving just over 65% of New Zealand’s two and a half thousand schools. With just two more years of the current funding available, it is expected that more than half of the remaining schools will have the opportunity to be involved.
Support for Learning
The support for learning goals have been met through the provision of a national online portal for teachers called Te Kete Ipurangi (TKI – see http://www.tki.org.nz for more information) containing resources, support materials and community spaces aimed at supporting teachers in the classroom.
The TKI website has been live since 1999 and its use continues to grow and is consistently recognised as one of the top educational reference sites in New Zealand. The site provides access to curriculum resources, information and services in both English and Maori to support teachers and schools.
The prime audience for TKI is teachers, and new curriculum materials designed to support and improve teachers' professional practice are added regularly in all essential learning areas as well as in cross-curricular areas such as literacy and numeracy and ICT.
Teacher use of the TKI site has risen steadily since it began, with the site becoming the first port of call for many teachers and schools in their search for everything from curriculum resources to Ministry policy and curriculum support documents. In addition, several forums have been developed within the site to allow for the development of ‘communities’ of teachers who are able to engage in discussions relating to their specific area of interest (e.g., subject areas or areas of specialisation such as teaching special needs, ICT or literacy for example.)
TKI is currently being updated to improve central discoverability and provide communities with access to a wider range of web services, such as subscription, news feeds, forums, chat and `self-publishing'. The upgraded site will provide private areas, discussion groups and forums for communities of interest and groups involved in collaborative projects. A login facility will allow users to have a single point of access to the different communities they belong to.
New Zealand is a partner to the Australian Learning Objects project operated by The Le@rning Federation (TLF – see http://www.thelearningfederation.edu.au/ for more information), supporting the development and distribution of large numbers of learning objects to support ICT-based programmes in classrooms. TLF is a collaborative initiative between the governments of Australian and New Zealand. The aim of this initiative is to develop a pool of quality, digital content (learning objects and resource assets) for years 1 -11. New Zealand content developers have been successful in winning contracts to develop some of these resources, ensuring that there is a New Zealand ‘flavour’ to some of what is available.
The potential use of TLF resources at the classroom level has yet to be realized however, with schools and teachers encountering difficulties in accessing them online (most are very large and require significant bandwidth), or making them run on the level of computers in the school (with many requiring high level graphics and sound capability). In addition, the objects are generally not able to be re-purposed to suit the New Zealand curriculum context, and thus many teachers find them of limited value.
Another key initiative supporting learning with ICT is Digital Opportunities (DigiOps – see http://www.digiops.org.nz for more information) which was established in 2001 originally to assist schools in low decile and/or remote areas to utilise ICT to help overcome issues and barriers related to teaching and learning, and to enhance-learning opportunities for students. This goal has since been broadened to include supporting schools in the use of ICT to meet specific student learning needs, and encouraging innovation in the use of ICT across a variety of learning contexts.
Each of the DigiOps projects has been the focus of a research project, and findings from the first phase of the initiative have highlighted cooperative relationships between schools and ICT-related businesses, between schools and communities, and between individual schools. More than a dozen school-generated research outcome reports have been published as articles in the national computers in schools magazine, and papers presented in national and international conferences. The Ministry of Education is using the findings of such research to inform ongoing policy and funding decisions in the area of ICT in education.
eLearning Action Plan
The eLearning Action Plan (Ministry of Education, 2006), released in June 2006 takes the development of a strategic direction for schools a step further. Designed to succeed the previous strategy documents, the decision to create this document as an action plan comes as a result of seeing eLearning as an integral part of the overall schooling strategy, which includes changes in curriculum and pedagogical directions. A separate ICT strategy document suggests the ‘separateness’ of ICT and eLearning , whereas the action plan aims to assist schools to strategically plan for the assimilation of ICT across all dimensions of their operation.
 Figure 11. Cover of the eLearning Action Plan |
Networking Schools
For many of the smaller, rural secondary schools in New Zealand, the challenge of providing a sufficiently broad range of curriculum options for students at the senior level of the school cannot be met within existing, local resources. Traditionally these students have been served with courses from the Correspondence School (see http://www.correspondence.school.nz for more information), or may have made a decision to move away from their local school to attend a different school that could provide the subject specialisations they want to access.
Of the 350 secondary schools in New Zealand, 110 of them have rolls of less than 120 students at the three years of study at the senior levels. This demographic poses particular problem with respect to curriculum provision and the supply of specialist teachers. Over the past decade there has been a development of clusters among these smaller, rural secondary schools, using various forms of telecommunications technologies to enable teachers and students to interact for both professional development and the provision of senior secondary curriculum.
One of the earliest of these clusters to form began in 1994, and involves a cluster of seven area (years 7-13) schools in central part of the South Island. The CANTAtech (see http://www.cantatech.school.nz/ for more information) project drew on the experiences of similar projects in South Australia, using audio-graphics technologies to enable specialist staff in one school to teach a ‘class’ comprising students at one or more of the other schools in the cluster. Students who may otherwise have had to move to a major centre to be able to study the subjects they chose now have the opportunity to remain in their local school and complete their studies. This project required careful planning and co-operation among the cluster of schools to coordinate timetables, assessment practices and staff workloads in order to succeed.
The successes of the CANTAtech project and the valuable experiences that have been gained and documented since then have led to the development of other clusters. In 2001 a cluster of nine rural secondary schools in the lower part of the South Island, with support from the Ministry of Education and Telecom NZ, collaborated to establish a virtual private network over which they could share lessons by video conference, supported by online resources and discussion forums. The New Zealand Correspondence School was included in this cluster, providing courses in subjects where no local teacher was available. In 2003 over a quarter of all the secondary schools in New Zealand are connected in some way as part of similar clusters, with the NZ Correspondence School providing a support role, providing subjects where required, and brokering the opportunities for schools from one cluster to interact with a teacher from another cluster in some cases. In addition, Correspondence School staff provided some of the professional development required for teachers from the cluster schools.
The Virtual Learning Network
In October 2002 the Ministry of Education supported the establishment of a ‘brokerage’ service for those clusters of schools linked by video conferencing. This was done in response to the demands coming from schools for a central role in supporting schools using VC, and in anticipation of the need for schools in these clusters to be able to know what offerings were available in the wider context.
This involved:
- The creation of a draft Learning Communities Online handbook (published on Ministry’s website – see http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm?layout=document&documentid=7922&indexid=6919&indexparentid=1024 for more information)
- Provision of support and guidance for schools in video conferencing clusters
- Provision of professional development in the pedagogical use of video conferencing
- Timetabling and scheduling of video conferencing classes across the network, and
- The development of a “prototype” website to act as the portal for all of this activity.
This ‘brokerage service’ operated for two years from within the eLearning Development Centre at the Correspondence School. This was a natural “fit” at the time as The Correspondence School provided a significant number of courses on the video conferencing network to schools across New Zealand in those years.
However, towards the end of 2004 the Correspondence School, facing various economic and political pressures, decided to discontinue support for video conferencing and the operation of the VLN, and so in 2005 the VLN was transferred to operate within the Ministry of Education. Since then it has continued to expand and now incorporates activity across the early childhood, schools and tertiary sectors.
References
Johnson, M., Kazakov, D. & Švehla, M. (2005). ICT in schools report 2005: Information & communications technology in New Zealand schools 1993-2005. Wellington, New Zealand: 2020 Communications Trust. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from http://www.2020.org.nz/national/docs/ICT_2005_survey.pdf
Ministry of Education. (1989). Interactive education- an ICT strategy for schools. Christchurch, New Zealand: Author.
Ministry of Education. (2003). Digital horizons: Learning through ICT. Christchurch, New Zealand: Author. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from http://www.minedu.govt.nz/web/downloadable/dl6760_v1/digital-horizons-revision-03.pdf
Ministry of Education. (2006). Enabling the 21st century learner: An eLearning action plan for schools 2006-2010. Christchurch, New Zealand: Author. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from http://www.minedu.govt.nz/web/downloadable/dl10639_v1/itc-strategy.pdf
Nielson Net Ratings. (2005). New Zealand eGeneration study 2005: Kids and teens online. Auckland, New Zealand: Author. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from http://www.nzonair.govt.nz/images/media/about/eGen_05.pdf
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. (2005). Are students ready for a technology-rich world? What PISA studies tell us. Paris, France: Author.
Statistics New Zealand. (2004). Household access to the Internet. Wellington, New Zealand: Author. Retrieved November 22, 2006 from http://www.stats.govt.nz/analytical-reports/digital-divide/Household+Access.htm
Related Chapters
North Island
This case study focuses on a American student teacher, Jamie Eckstein, who completed her student teaching in Botany Downs Secondary College. Botany Downs is located on the North Island of New Zeland.
About the Authors
| Derek Wenmoth is the director of e-Learning at CORE Education, a not-for-profit educational research and development organsiation based in Christchurch, New Zealand. He has been a teacher and principal in several New Zealand schools, and spent eleven years in teacher education as a lecturer in educational technology. He currently enjoys working in the areas of his specialist interests of distance education and e-learning, and serves as an adviser to the New Zealand Ministry of Education in these fields. |  |
