Derek Wenmoth: New Zealand Education Specialist on Hagley College in Christchurch trialling online learning

A Christchurch school is trialling letting students work from home two days a week, to address falling attendance rates. 

Hagley College hopes to target students who struggle with attendance due to mental health concerns or sickness. 

The hybrid learning model will be offered to 20 NCEA Level 2 students. Students will attend 16 hours of in-person maths, science and English classes a week, and the rest via scheduled video calls. 

New Zealand Education Specialist Derek Wenmoth helped Hagley College to design the trial. Wenmoth tells Heather du Plessis-Allan other countries have programmes specifically targeting students struggling with issues like anxiety, and that New Zealand is behind on the uptake. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'd ever do to see.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
US nine two nine two is the text understandard text
fees applying You're welcome to weigh in. Yes, I am
expecting a text from Jason Pine at some stage now
Hagley College and christ Church have a listened to this
slag going to let students work from home two days
a week. This is just a trial at the moment.
It's only going to be limited to twenty NCEEA pupils
and it's aimed at students who have mental or physical

(00:22):
health difficulties or who have extracurricular activities that clash with school.
Derek Wenmouth is a New Zealand education specialist who actually
helped Hagley College design the trial. Hey Derek, hey there,
how are you very well?

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Thank you?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
What kind of difficulty are we talking about here that
are keeping the kids out of school?

Speaker 1 (00:39):
As I understand it, it's largely students who have some
level of anxiety about getting to school, or have some
level of mental health issues or physical reasons at attending
school every day of the week just isn't really ideal
for them.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Anxieties. Is that quite a big problem.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
It's an increasing problem as I understand, in schools and
New Zealand has been a little behind on the uptake
a number of other countries, especially the UK, where I
was involved in a number of years ago. Now they've
had programs specifically targeting students like this for a while.
In New Zealand. The corresponds or to Kura tends to

(01:22):
pick up a lot of these students at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, how do we know that? I mean, the thing is,
when you're that age, it's really hard to keep yourself
disciplined and on track and doing your work. So how
do we know that they're not just going to drift
off and get distracted.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Well, that's a good question. It's the same question you
could ask inside a classroom. It's one of those things
that really comes down to really good instructional design and
processes that that students find engaging, focusing on things that
are perhaps personalized to that learner's interests and choices. It
won't make all of that go away, but it's definitely

(02:00):
what you have to work on.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
But I mean, Derek, at least in a classroom the
teacher would be walking up and down and would say
put your phone away or whatever. If you're at home,
you can be hitting the Xbox, hitting the computer, listening
to music. There's a thousand different things you could do
when nobody's there drilling you.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
That's true, But i'd put it to you that's happening
in classrooms up and down the country right now, is it? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (02:22):
What kids just playing on their phones?

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, it's absolutely We've got The big issue here is
around instructural design. I don't think it's an epidemic problem,
I have to say, but certainly you know, over the
schools quite regularly and there wouldn't perhaps be a visit. Well,
I don't see that happening to some degree or another.
So simply having what I'm trying to say, simply having
a teacher in a classroom doesn't actually change things. It

(02:48):
comes down to the same educational principles of being really
explicit in your instructional design and having programs that are
highly engaging and motivating for these students.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
How will it give it it's trial, How will you
know if it's worked.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Oh, I'm not one hundred percent sure on what their
measures are putting in place. We did talk earlier about
having a whole range of measures in place that they'll
be monitoring right through the trial. And at the end
involving as I understand it, you know, the observable things
in terms of participation and time online, all these sorts

(03:24):
of things, interviews with parents, with students and so forth.
So I'd look forward to seeing what comes out of
it there, Derek.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
Look, I might be a little old school, and you
can tell me if I am. But what worries me
here is that we're not preparing kids for the real world.
And in the real world, you've got to go to
work five days a week. I mean, there are maybe
some nice white collar jobs where you get to skive
off if you're working for the public service or something,
and stay at home Mondays and Fridays. But for the
vast majority of us, every single day, with or without

(03:52):
your anxiety, with all without all of the things you
want to do, you've got to just put your clothes
on and go to work. So are we not sitting
them up a file?

Speaker 1 (04:03):
I think that's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I
would see it the same way. You're right, there's a
whole lot of things about the real world, the real
world that you and I perhaps prepared ourselves for at school.
As an entirely different world now, and it's part of
the challenge that we have in education is to be
looking and monitoring all the time at where those changes are.

(04:26):
I mean the organizations that are moving into high I'm
not sure it's true toguise them as you have. There
are now quite a change of occupations that allow people
to work more flexibly and in their own way, just
as there are others that say, well, you actually can't
do the job at all unless you are on site.

(04:49):
So I think part of the challenge we've got in
part of what Hagley's doing is endeavoring to respond to
that is saying, so, what are the options we need
to be exploring here that may actually challenge some of
the traditional power domestic things we have.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
Derek, listen, thank you. I really appreciate you talking us through.
That's Derek Wenmouth, New Zealand education specialist. For more from
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