Sunday, July 6, 2008

Tail still wagging the dog

So Sparc are the latest govt department who are basically inventing crap ideas then implementing them, to keep themselves in a job. On the way they pay over 100,000 to 25% of their employees. Brilliant stuff. The classic for me is that several years ago Susan Devoy toured the country looking for the reasons why we didn't win enough medals at an Olympic Games. Now we find out that her important findings have resulted in Sparc funding, and another bureaucratic nightmare.

Easy to criticise but i've had a fairly simple idea for a number of years.
How about Sports Coordinators in schools. I was a SC for eight years in a secondary school and had over 70 teams with many coaches in lots of different sports. For the job I did I felt it was a bit of a waste to have a teacher do this job. There are thousands of young kiwis who love sport and seek careers in this area. Every Secondary School has a sports coordinator now, yet Primary Schools just dont have them. Give me a guy for one day a week  and I will share him with four other schools. He can take kids all day and after school too. He can identify talent, introduce kids and parents to relevant clubs, he has TIME and a skill set.

2000 primary schools. 1 day a week 400 groups of 5 schools. 400 sports coorinators 40,000 each p/a. 16 million. Chuck in 400 cars at 8k each p/a. and 2 mill to administer and all of a sudden you have spent 20 mill. Just 2 million more than Sparc spend on a shithouse website.

An easier way is to divide 20 mill through the 2000 Primary Schools and let them employ sports coaches and coordinators and give some guidelines and let them loose.

Find a good teaching resource on Sparcs teachers section of their website and you get a free lollipop.
Find greedy pricks trying to justify theft in this article and you are on the mark.

2 comments:

artichoke said...

Ahh Podgorani, I have not had the pleasure of reading such ranting,pseudo-revolutionary, reactionary, imbalanced, politically insensitive and polarised invective since my modblog days in 2004 ,,,you are on fire ...

I predict that you are just what the edu_blogosphere in the wobbly isles has been waiting for ... an NZ edu_blog that thinks for itself and cares little for the reaction of others to what it posts - such a refreshing change from the Chinese whisper variety of edublog - you know the one - "let me report about a Web2.0 application that I've found online that some one else has already posted about", or the let me show you "my walk through of how to do something that already has a how to facility and FAQ" or even those helpless self promotion blog posts mostly along the lines of "I am in XXXX where I have just presented at YYYY and hoping to be photographed in deep conversation with ZZZZ" at the edu_blogger cafe ... thanks to WWWW for arranging this

I predict a meteoric rise in your readership as you outrage yourself and your readers through the NZ_edu_blogosphere

"You go Podgorani ... you go"

Podgorani said...

cheers bro its nice to have a reader