Seek The Truth
Archive for February, 2004
Lessons from business
8 years ago
In November 2003, the New Zealand business magazine Unlimited in partnership with Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, announced the Top 50 fastest growing New Zealand businesses. In interviewing each company, the magazine tried to determine three critical areas; main success factors to date, biggest problems and determinants of future success. The results should be of interest to schools and educators who value excellence and continuous improvement, as the business results are directly reflective and relevant to schools.
The five critical factors for “success so far” to the top 50 businesses were:
-Customer focus
-Innovation
-Staff skills
-Competitive advantage
-New markets
For schools, concentration on core purpose and pupil focus is a critical factor. Successful schools focus on their core purpose and don’t stray into peripheral areas. Successful schools are also innovative, are risk takers and push boundaries. They set goals, experiment and try new developments in curriculum and pedagogy. Staff skills are recognised as critical components. Quite simply, poor schools too often have poor staff. Successful schools will strive hard to select and retain successful teachers. Professional development, opportunities to gain extra qualifications and to undertake school based research will be highlighted. Competitive advantage in a school setting can take many forms; resources, plant and infrastructure may well give one school an advantage over another. New markets may be illustrated by those schools who pursue ‘niche’ excellence eg: Sports Academies, performing arts or foreign fee paying students or who attract pupils from neighbouring schools.
The second area Unlimited surveyed was the ‘biggest problems’ faced by the fastest growing fifty companies. These were:
-Managing cashflow
-Access to investment capital
-Maintaining infrastructure while growing
-Finding skilled staff
-Difficult economic environment
The vast majority of school funding in New Zealand is provided by the government on the basis of school type, size and socio-economic decile. However, nearly all schools also depend on locally raised funds to supplement their total income. This is usually in the form of school donations, applications for grants, fundraising and more recently through foreign fee paying students. While the financial factors are not as directly relevant as for businesses few schools could survive or provide additional resources and infrastructure if they were reliant on government grants alone. Schools with ‘better’ plant and resources are perceived to have marketing advantages over schools who are not. Similarly, finding skilled staff is as critical for schools as for business. New Zealand has gone through a shortage of teachers, previously at primary level and currently at secondary level. Anecdotal evidence suggests the issue is now one of quality and skills, rather than quantity.
The third area of inquiry was that of ‘determinants of future success’. The five critical factors were:
-Securing skilled staff
-Keeping up innovations
-Marketing effectively
-Maintaining infrastructure
-Finding new markets
Again, these are all critical and relevant to schools. The importance of skilled staff is highlighted throughout the three areas of discussion. Maintaining innovations, infrastructure, marketing and finding new markets may all be summarised quite succinctly; organisations which don’t change, wither and die. Bowling clubs, churches and social groups such as Scouts, Guides and Sunday Schools are evidence of this. Indeed, so are some communities, especially those in rural areas. Like a business, any school which rests on its laurels will fail. Successful schools will have a commitment to excellence, to continuous improvement, to innovation, to improving resources and infrastructure. They will market themselves to their community in a variety of ways and they will re-invent new markets for themselves if the necessity arises. A good example of this is a secondary school in a declining North Island rural town with a falling roll who now has 200 foreign fee paying students or the major turnaround and success story of Southland Polytechnic who with community partnership innovated a zero fees regime.
The lesson from this business study are just as relevant to schools as they are to business. Focus, innovation, skilled staff, financing, infrastructure and marketing are as critical to successful schools as they are to successful businesses. School leaders who ignore these parallels, do so at their peril.
Reference: “Fast 50″ Unlimited magazine – November 2003
No Hitting
8 years ago
There is only one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. – Victor Hugo
(quoted on the homepage of the Sensible Sentencing Trust website)
In 2004 it is likely that the New Zealand Government may change the law to ban the use of physical force on children, by parents. This will generate much debate about parental rights and state inference versus the need to protect children from parental abuse. At present Section 59 of the Crimes Act allows parents the legal right to use ‘reasonable force’ to discipline their children. We need to carefully and honestly consider the facts that have brought about this forthcoming debate; New Zealand leads the world in child abuse statistics.
Periodically, as a nation we are shocked by media saturation of another child murder. But the Corel Ellens and Lillybings are quite quickly forgotten as is our disgust as a nation and our pledges to do better. Our young and defenceless are being murdered at an alarming rate, not by strangers, but by parents and step parents. A Unicef study (2002) shows New Zealand children are more likely to be killed as a result of abuse than those in any other country in the western world, (Sunday Star Times, 5th January 2004). We are one of only four countries where child death rates from abuse have got worse since the 1970′s.
The shameful facts that we need to be honest about are that:
- Serious physical abuse of children in New Zealand is on the rise.
- Crimes of violence in general are on the rise.
- Children are dramatically more likely to be physically or sexually abused by someone they know or trust, rather than by a stranger.
- Children are dramatically more likely to be murdered by someone they know or trust, rather than by a stranger.
Quite simply, the murder and abuse of our children can no longer go on. It is a national shame and the remedy must take precedence over political correctness, parental rights, religious or ethnic sensitivity.
We can no longer go on hitting our children. This is an idea whose time has come!
The answer doesn’t just rely on a change in legislation. The answer lies in a change of attitude in us all. We need to adopt a culture of zero tolerance to violence. We need to stop hitting our own children. We need to stop looking away when family members hit their children. We need to do something when we see neighbours hitting their children. We simply can not continue to be tolerant of violence and not wanting to be involved when we witness it. As parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbours we need to look at ourselves and change our own attitudes. We need to model non-violent behaviour to our children.
In 2004, our parent education theme at Matipo School is going to be ‘No Hitting’. We all know what it is like when we’re under stress but we need to put hitting out of our punishment menu. Count to ten, time out, go to your room, removal of privileges or freedom, extra chores are all normal alternatives. There are community based programmes such as ‘Tough Love’ and P5 Positive Parenting courses available. The James Family, Salvation Army and Waitakere Family Services are available for assistance.
The Canadian researcher Dr Michael Bernard has written extensively on parenting and has identified seven parenting practices:
- Developing positive parent – child relationships by sharing time, interests and setting consistent boundaries and consequences and having fun together.
- Communicate high realistic expectations for achievement and behaviour.
- Creating opportunities for children to be given responsibilities and to be involved in decision making.
- Providing places and activities that accommodate the interests of children.
- Use appropriate motivational methods to encourage children.
- Demonstrate interest and involvement in their lives, their interests, their friends and school.
- Demonstrate and teach them positive attitudes and values.
Basically, we need to love and care for our children. We also have to care about the children of others. We all need to take personal responsibility for the level of violence in our community and the level of violence towards our children. The protection of our children is everyone’s responsibility and the first step to the removal of our national shame is for each of us to change our own attitude towards the physical punishment of children.
NO HITTING!
