I had an enjoyable evening at the Victoria Uni Debating Society event last night, as part of the negative team on whether NZ should have a system of education vouchers.  I thought all the participants spoke well, and made interesting and entertaining contributions. I was not on the winning side, but as that was decided on a show of hands and I think most of the audience came in with fairly well set views on the topic, I am not too upset

One of the aspects of the debate that did concern me was the extent to which people do not seem to want to know or accept how incredibly innovative our education system actually is. I have visited a number of schools over recent months, and spoken with educators around the country, and our state schools are truly at the cutting edge  of pedagogy, curriculum and assessment. 

To me it is on these issues-the nature of what actually happens in our classrooms- that we should be focusing, rather than a tired debate from last century about the privatisation of education.

Here are the notes I prepared for the debate, though such is the nature of these things that it changed a bit in delivery, it does not include my rebuttal and the frantic waving of the timekeeper truncated things at the end.  Here is also a link to a video of my speech,  though I understand the battery on the camera died so you lose the last few minutes.