It's Official No Communities of Online Learning

Yesterday in Parliament the Education Amendment Bill (No 2) went through it's 3rd reading and was passed into law. This officially means there will be no CoOLs (Communities of Online Learning) in New Zealand.

Hon. Nikki Kaye argued to keep in place some provisions for online learning, and made an amendment to include a Review of Online Learning (which was not passed). Her argument was that you can't take this away without putting something in it's place. We supported this argument as we were working towards being a CoOL and relying on it to support the development of online learning moving forward. Yet the government counters that there never were CoOLs anyway, so why would you need to replace them, and that online learning has been happening successfully in schools for many years so therefore the status quo remains.


The VLN has been operating in schools for 25 years this year (10 for the VLN Primary). But for the last decade the VLN communities have been seeking a way to be sustainably and fairly resourced in schools, to grow innovative ways of learning online and to develop this really successful collaborative model further to be accessible for all NZ children. We looked to CoOLs to be the vehicle for this.

To assume the status quo will continue is not helpful to the work the VLN communities have been doing and undermines the potential of what they can contribute to NZ education if they were fully supported. The reality is, Secondary VLN communities are completely self funded through their participating schools. This is additional funding schools have to find to access this learning. This has been a challenge in enabling equitable access for secondary schools, in the disparity and inequity of funding given to Te Kura who provide similar services, and to the viability of regional clusters. Over the last decade several clusters have disappeared (CantaNet, AorakiNet, WestNet, TaraNet, CoroNet, BayLink).

The VLN Primary would not exist without partnership with the Ministry of Education. Our small schools can't afford to completely self fund this collaborative initiative. Over the last decade we have proved that there are important benefits for our children in collaborating to extend their learning opportunities. Yet, every year we have to go back to the Minister with cap in hand, to make a case for continued funding. Surely after a decade we need to get this right, get the funding right, get the framework right.

Some consolation, and its encouraging to hear Minister Hipkins say, that there is some work that needs to be done in this area, and with our recent consultation with the Tomorrow's Schools Review Taskforce, I am cautiously optimistic we will be able to move forward with online learning in a future focused schooling system. We will wait, and advocate, and be persistent about following through on any opportunities for our schools. I hope we can get there sometime in the next decade.

Finally to note, a huge thanks to Hon. Nikki Kaye who has been a champion of future focused learning and the VLN Primary over the years. Without her support the VLN Primary would not be where it is today.

You can read the whole of Hansard and video here. There is lots of discussion about VLN, Virtual Learning and Communities of Online Learning throughout.

VLN Primary Submission to Repeal of Communities of Online Learning
Future Schooling, Communities of Online Learning and Rural Education.
VLN Primary submission to Tomorrow's Schools

How Accessible is the Internet for our Rural Children?

We had our first staff meeting for this group of Principal's to make plans for the year ahead in our collaborative cluster of schools. 

So we got to talking about access to technology that is so important to providing the base from which we learn together. What do our children have available to them at school and at home in the form of computing devices and internet connectivity?

We estimated that in our schools the range of childrens' access to internet at home was 50% in one school through to 80% in another and several points in between for the rest. So still a clear digital divide for a lot of our learners. But the digital divide does not stop there. Although we can say our students have the internet at home, it is often still not accessible to them, or for very limited periods of time. ISP costs mean that data is carefully rationed and often only used by parents on their phones.

Although it is said that there is internet at home, children may only get to access the internet when they come to school. Given this scenario, it would be interesting to see the real data about how accessible the internet is to our children. I should include this as part of my research questions. I am sure it would be nowhere near Statistics NZ's number of internet enabled households. 

Principals from the Rural & Remote Project first staff meeting 2017

More than a dozen years since Project Probe was initiated specifically to serve these communities we still have broadband that is too expensive. This is very disheartening on the back of announcements that fibre will be coming to more of rural NZ. Good for those areas, it is good news for them, although the wait time is still up to 2024! However some of those areas (like my own) already have access to a reasonable copper network & VDSL. Our rural areas have no networks and have to rely on expensive & unreliable satellite service.

The next UFB rollout is aimed at provincial NZ where there are towns - I didn't see Whangamomona on the list (Whataroa, Tapora, Makahu or Oban). What about the rest of the rural NZ, what can be done to make Internet more affordable and accessible to our children there?