Squad of experts to help out schools

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The Government says 50 education experts aiming to help 87,000 failing children across more than 2000 schools is a good start to lifting student achievement.

Education Minister Anne Tolley announced yesterday what she called "a major new approach to lifting achievement" in schools.

Work would start immediately in primary and intermediate schools, which have already put in place a new curriculum, national standards and a new action plan for managing bad behaviour, and be working fully by June next year. Secondary school changes would begin in 2012.

There would be at least 50 "practitioners" assigned to schools to help allocate support better, Mrs Tolley said. The Government had also ordered all contracts for the professional development of teachers and principals to be reopened to tender. And it has allocated $9million in each of the next four years to fund more "interventions", such as specialist literacy teachers.

The new approach is expected to cost between $10m and $12m each year, but there is no fresh funding, so cuts at the Education Ministry appear inevitable.

Prime Minister John Key said yesterday that the "practitioners" would spend about half a day a month at each school.

"Well, that's quite a long time if you're going to work with someone on a programme – they're not delivering the services, they're just lining them up with the provider that might do that. They're not the person sitting down with the child."

The practitioners were "a starting point". "Not every school is going to step up on day one, but it's a good place to start and let's see how it goes."

There are 2029 primary schools in New Zealand, with 434,857 pupils enrolled. On average, each practitioner would have 40 schools assigned to them.

Mrs Tolley said the changes were "much wider" than just helping the one in five children who were failing. "It is, potentially, all schools who will need some access to some of these new resources."

The practitioners would use national standards achievement data to make sure support arrived early and that it was well-targeted. They would mostly help to find resources and cut out red tape, and could help boards of trustees improve spending.

New Zealand Educational Institute president Frances Nelson said schools had been asking for the extra support for a long time. But the union feared the practitioners would become a "national standards Swat team" focused solely on compliance checks.