Poor reviews
Re: "Child farming, not true childcare" (NZ Herald, May 2), I have retired after almost 40 years running a high quality, small Early Childhood Centre and have watched a system with responsive inspectors arriving at random three to four times a year, allowing relaxed, loving teachers to focus on
the children change to a regime wherein teachers are constantly looking over their shoulders at the largely unsupportive Education Review Office.
Since 2013, I have twice had to hire a prestigious law firm to correct egregious ERO reviews. On being challenged, the reviewers were unable to substantiate their subjective findings with probative evidence. Two out of three inaccurate reviews suggest something very wrong with the system and speak of a misuse of power which does nothing to improve the quality of early childhood education.
In my most recent challenge, the reviewers were so ignorant of the skills underlying pre-school learning that the terms "visual-motor integration" and "auditory memory" were transcribed by a clearly underqualified reviewer as "visual monitor integration" and, even worse, "ordinary memory".
Three of four of my utterly dedicated teachers were left feeling demoralised, misunderstood and unappreciated and none of them is in any hurry to return to a permanent teaching position.
Valerie Morrison, Stanley Pt.
ERO's response
The key role of the Education Review Office (ERO) is the impartial and objective monitoring and evaluation of the delivery of pre-tertiary education in its institutions. Reviews in early learning services are focused on accountability (including compliance with regulatory requirements), education improvement, and knowledge generation (where education is translated into achievement).
ERO reviewers are fully qualified early childhood education teachers, with a range of experience in different settings. Our reviewers are well qualified to make judgements on the care and education of children in the early learning settings, supported by a robust system to ensure our judgements are substantiated and accurate.
In every review, a draft report is sent to allow managers and licensees to raise issues or provide comments before the final report is made public on our website. Services may also raise concerns about their reviews directly with ERO. Where ERO identifies non-compliance, many services respond quickly to address the issues.
Just fair
If NZ's wealthy and uber-wealthy are not paying their fair share of tax, surely a wealth tax that requires them to do so, is fair and just?
Being mates of Christopher Luxon or big donors to the National Party are not good reasons to let them off.
Roger Laybourn, Hamilton.
Abysmal performance
Re: Doug Steiner's recent assertions on immigration (NZ Herald, April 25), decades of anaemic economic growth combined with strong population growth fuelled by immigration explain our undeniable economic decline.
In 1950 New Zealanders enjoyed the world's fourth-highest per capita income. Of the 30 or so nations in the developed world, we now languish in the lowest quartile with Spain and Portugal. Economic success?
Denmark and Argentina (a vibrant, immigrant nation) have a $530 billion economy shared by 5 and 45 million respectively. Hence Denmark's very high per capita income. And Argentina's very low per capita income (five times lower than New Zealand).
Russia and Belarus are totally irrelevant. The GDP metric by itself is totally obsolete.
Singapore and the Nordic nations are the best comparatives. And by comparison, our performance on every economic and social metric is abysmal.
Ireland, the UK, Canada and Australia have all abandoned business migration schemes after finding little benefit for host nations.
The UK's House of Lords recently reported no systematic evidence could be found that immigration creates significant dynamic benefits for the UK's resident population.
John Gascoigne, Karapiro.
Safe passage
The airline industry is proud to characterise itself as one of the safest forms of transportation in the world. Millions of people daily without any of them getting killed in the process.
One of the biggest reasons for this safety record is an attitude that one crash is one too many. So when one does happen, there is an investigation into why and how it slipped through every safety measure in place, and how those safety measures could be tuned to avoid a repeat.
Perfection might not be achievable, but improvement is always possible.
And as air travel shows, it's an attitude that works. One crash is one crash too many. Or, in other words, aim for a target of zero.
Morgan L. Owens, Manurewa.
