Bearing Point Innovation Award

Ministry of Education wins Bearing Point Innovation Award

12 October 2004

The Ministry of Education won the award for Innovation in Services to Maori and was highly commended in two other categories at the Bearing Point Innovation Awards presented in Wellington last night.

The Te Mana programme that won the award for Innovation in Services to Maori is a key part of the Whakaaro Matauranga “think learning” programme within the Ministry of Education aimed at raising Maori participation and achievement in education.

“The Bearing Point Innovation award is a great endorsement of Te Mana, the programme developed in response to the recommendations from a series of hui between iwi, the Ministry of Education, and Te Puni Kokiri,” said Howard Fancy, Secretary for Education.

“Te Mana inspires and motivates young people by using every day experiences of people who have succeeded in education, often using rangatahi (young people) themselves to write and design the resources. Every element is developed to reach people in ways relevant to their lifestyles and interests.”

“Te Mana’s messages are focused on rangatahi, their teachers and whanau (parents and caregivers), but research shows that Te Mana is having a much wider influence and a significant impact. From April 2003 to March 2004, 61% of rangatahi and 45% of whanau interviewed said that they had taken action as a result of Te Mana,” said Mr Fancy.

The Ministry of Education’s project ‘asTTle’ was highly commended in both the Public Service and the Innovation in Technology categories at last night’s awards presentation.

Developed in partnership with Auckland University, asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) is an innovative CD-Rom tool that aims to improve student achievement by enabling teachers to create and analyse literacy and numeracy tests.

”Project asTTLe allows precise interpretations of individual student achievement rather than a score, providing specific feedback for teachers and students, and access to resources for next steps in learning. As the first bilingual assessment tool to be developed in New Zealand, asTTLe enables teachers to monitor student progress and compare results with similar schools and nationwide data,” Mr Fancy said.

Since its launch in 2001, asTTLe has generated a high level of interest from overseas education providers and over 95 per cent of primary schools and 115 secondary schools have requested access to it in New Zealand. The latest version will be released early next year and development is underway to make it a web-based tool.

This is the second major award for Project asTTLe, which also won a ComputerWorld Excellence Award for IT in Education: tertiary, community and commercial earlier this year.

ENDS

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