UK vs NZ School Life: Early Observations

After one week of teaching in the NZ school system, I've noted a few of the obvious differences to my UK experience!

NZ Students bring their own exercise books.

Yep, that’s right. None of this ‘your book must be A4 and orange and have your target sticker and current grade clearly visible’ business. Students are given a list of items in advance of the school year starting and arrive with books for each subject. This would have really saved a lot on the budget!

Me no more

Marking is…..different in NZ.

Having set a class their first homework I collected in the books like the good teacher I was trained to be and left them neatly in the department office. Upon returning to mark them, I was met with intrigued department members asking ‘are you really going to look at all of them?!’ and ‘are you going to mark them?!?’. This was followed by the newly qualified teaching sharing that she’d randomly picked one student to show her their homework, and used this to give feedback to the class, to which the Head of Department indicated was a really nice idea. So instead I flicked through the homework (still of all the students – UK ways can’t leave me that easily) and handed them back without formal marking! It felt odd.

Though on a serious note, it was interesting. Interesting because despite having teachers in previous years who did not mark their homework, or look at it, almost all of the students did the homework, and did all of it. I even had 2 come and see me beforehand to check in on a question. I like the independence I’m seeing, and it seems that giving students the autonomy has, so far, led these students to take some ownership of their own learning. From a quick flick through, I actually got a really good insight as to how much they understood. The process seems to make sense. When students have access to answers, can mark, correct and learn for themselves, surely the less the teacher does for them the better? More to follow as the term progresses.

Respect is harder to gain in the UK.

Teaching for the first couple of months at a new school in the UK, it took true hard graft, constant niceties and relentless effort to gain the respect of a large proportion of my students. There were very few who respected the teacher who stood in front of them just because they were their teacher. Admittedly, since then I have gained a wealth of experience and confidence in my own abilities as a teacher, but when I stood in front of five new classes in NZ last week I lost count of the amount of thank-yous I received as students left the room. There was immediate respect because I was a teacher. Yes, there were some who were chatty and showed a little less good behaviour than others, but even these respected your role straight away when you prompted them to pay better attention. And also yes, I received thank-yous in the UK, but really not until the end of the year or from those exemplary few of students who you form closer bonds with over time. I’m not sure why there seems to be this difference. Perhaps its cultural. NZ people do seem super friendly. Maybe time will help in working this one out!

BYOD

My NZ school (and most others here as far as I can tell) have a compulsory Bring Your Own Device policy. This means all students must bring their own laptop to school. Each class has a Google Classroom, and I am having a really good go at using it as much as possible. I suppose it links to the students bringing their own books, as there is no expectation to have any work in books each lesson. Practice work can be uploaded to Google Classroom and students can work from here (no printing – more budget saves) or it’s perfectly acceptable for students to work from Education Perfect (like MyMaths – essentially online self-marking work). It’s also got some nice touches I have been using such as my intro lesson for year 9. We learnt a cool trick to work out the 11 times table beyond 11x9 and completed some races in a Brain Vs Calculator style. I had created a Google Sheet and given all students access so that whilst they were playing, they could upload times and winners live during the lesson. I was more excited watching the spreadsheet fill up than the students (they’re more tech than me), but it was great to see them involved and we can use their data when we come back to study Statistics later in the term.

Meetings still exist in NZ

It might seem like everything about NZ is positive compared to the UK, but there are certainly things I miss about UK school already. Though one thing I hoped would change is meetings. But, alas, they still exist. Rightly so, but there seem to be just as many in NZ as at home.

Department is less Departmenty

I am impressed by the department I have joined, though I miss my old one too. If you read this, you guys were great. I felt like part of a team taking on each day and enjoyed the wider family too. Perhaps it just needs more time here, but there is a greater feeling that each individual teacher comes, does their day, and leaves, often not interacting with other department members. Maybe it’s this greater work-life-balance thing? Who knows!

I realise I cannot compare two entire countries based on experiencing very few schools within those countries. These are just observations from my little experience and may be different elsewhere. Though for context, no school I’ve experienced has been a private school. All schools in my experience take students from the immediate surrounding area and have been very culturally mixed schools. My NZ school contains students which are no ‘better off’ socioeconomically that my most recent UK school.

In other news, the work-life balance is so far much better. More as a result of a promise made to ourselves than any of the above differences. It's been a case of carving out plenty of time for gym, good bike rides (though Auckland v.hilly) and weekend wanders to Waiheke, Rangitoto and Piha amongst others. Yes, the job is important to me but just not the one priority. It feels good this way. See pics below if you can bear it (UK friends <3).