Waihi College Happiness Survey

Happy Students = Learning Students
The following survey was something that I thought that I'd put together after closer examination of the PISA 2012 results.  There was a strong correlation to the sense of belonging and their achievement at school.  Here are the questions that the PISA assessment asked.

1. I feel like an outsider (or left out of things) at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
2. I make friends easily at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
3. I feel like I belong at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
4. I feel awkward and out of place at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
5. Other students seem to like me.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
6. I feel lonely at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
7. I feel happy at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree
8. I am satisfied at school.  Strongly Agree    Agree     Disagree   Strongly Disagree

The web link to this survey is... https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LPCXPVG

Please do take the time to supervise (minimise the "funny" stuff) your Learning Advisory students through this. 

I hope that in a couple of weeks we'll have an idea of where our current students are at. 


Here is an interesting graph from Alive in the Swamp a book by Micheal Fullan & Katelyn Donnelly...

Can you see that the "Love of School" is consistently decreasing (Canadian study) until students start to drop out? 





Here is a little video of the authors speaking on Alive in the Swamp  which was about the new way of digital technology in education (good watch for those thinking of being in the BYOD group). 

This post relates to RTC # 2. demonstrate commitment to promoting the well-being of all ākonga

PISA

PISA - Programme for International Student Assessment
PISA testing is something of a political football.  It is used as justification or provocation by various invested interest groups.  I always find it curious how easy it is for politicians to make *changes* in education - we are a pretty easy football to be kicked. 

I prefer to look at PISA as a means of improvement of our practice as teachers and the culture of learning as leaders.  It acts as a snapshot of a cohort of students (PISA aims exclusively at 15 year olds).  PISA looks at only at the 34 OECD countries.  

The nice thing about PISA is that it's not solely interested in content (although the test against curriculum).  The assessment is also about how students use that knowledge. 

The key areas that are looked at in the PISA testing is Maths, Reading, Science, Problem Solving and recently they've added Financial Literacy.  An area that is often over looked in the PISA testing is that each individual student (slightly over half a million students world wide are tested) over the two hours of testing the first part is a survey on their attitude towards school.  Fairly similar idea done in our NZ asTTle testing.  The PISA report makes note of the correlation to the student attitude and their overall success.  Here is my summary of the correlations...

1. Having parents that encourage and push is important.  How do we at Waihi College engender this?  What things can we do to improve this?
2. students that enjoy being at school do much better.  How do we create or add to this environment?  What ways do we identify those students not enjoying Waihi College?  FYI in the PISA report 91% of kiwi students reported as being happy at school - what would that be like here at Waihi College? 
3. Belonging was a key - PISA measure this by asking if they're late to school or have missed classes [the results were 1/3 are late and 1/4 missed a class].  Do we follow up our lateness or missed lessons?  Who should be doing this?  Statistically late students score 27% less and those that miss lessons score 37% lower.
4. The better the relationship with teacher the higher the scores.  
5. Boys are likely to associate difficulty in assessments on external factors and girls are more likely to associate difficulty intrinsically.   Do we create self management/responsibility in our boys?  Do we offer enough support for our girls? 



Further information on this can be found at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/keyfindings/pisa-2012-results-overview.pdf
You can actual try some of the actual 2012 PISA tests online at http://www.oecd.org/pisa/test/


This post relates to RTC #2. demonstrate commitment to promoting the well-being of all ākonga and RTC # 11. analyse and appropriately use assessment information, which has been gathered formally and informally