Lift Education (Lift), a division of South Pacific Press
Limited, has been named as the new provider of publishing services for the
Ministry of Education’s instructional series, which includes the School
Journal, Ready to Read and Connected.
Neale Pitches, CEO of South Pacific Press (and former CEO
of Learning Media) is excited about working on this series with the Ministry,
who will be the publisher. “We will continue to support the Ministry to tell
New Zealand stories and to build the School Journal community of excited
readers and Kiwi talent,” said Pitches.
“We have a quality team of educators and publishers who
push the boundaries,” Pitches said. “We also hold what might be described as an
‘abundance model’ of teaching and learning, preferring to focus on what
students bring to the classroom rather than what they don’t know. This has led
us to take an interest in research that questions so-called ability grouping of
students and to develop new models of teaching and learning in the middle years
that offer all students in diverse classrooms the chance to learn and think at
higher levels than may have previously been encouraged.
The role of vibrant, engaging, and
professionally-developed learning materials across media platforms is often
underestimated in our quest to improve student achievement.”
“The new arrangement is best described as a
‘collaboration’, with the Ministry as publisher,” Pitches said. “We offer the
people, expertise, skills and passion that the Ministry needs to meet its goal
of lifting student achievement, especially for priority learners, and to
continue the unique New-Zealand tradition of supporting students and teachers
with government-sponsored learning materials of the highest quality.”
A feature of this contract is a commitment to nurturing
aspiring New Zealand writers and illustrators. “We are fortunate that New
Zealand’s best, including Joy Cowley, Witi Ihimaera, Patricia Grace, Gus
Sinaumea Hunter and Gavin Bishop have agreed to mentor new authors and
illustrators,” said Pitches.
Pitches and fellow director Meryl-Lynn Pluck (publisher
of Rainbow Reading) have spent nine years developing South Pacific Press Ltd.
They bought Lift from founder Dr Sue Watson in 2007. The Wellington-based
company now has two imprints, Lift and CSI Literacy.
Both imprints featured in the 2012 CLNZ Educational
Publishing Awards. Lift was shortlisted for its work with the New Zealand Fire
Service and CSI Literacy Kit 3 was awarded ‘Best Programme or Resource for
Export’. Another CSI resource, CSI Chapters, is a finalist in the export
category in this year’s awards, which will be announced on 14 November.
“We are extremely proud to be shortlisted again. When
developing CSI Literacy learning materials for New Zealand and overseas
classrooms, we ask schools to submit evaluation data so we can see if we’re on
the right track.
Dr Sarah Powell has analysed this case-study data to
quantify student achievement and we are very pleased with the achievement data,
especially for Māori, Pasifika and struggling readers,” said Pitches.
Pitches emphasises Lift’s strong track record as instructional
designers. In recent years, Lift has developed literacy and curriculum
resources for the government, and corporate and non-corporate organisations,
including the Ministry of Education, New Zealand Blood Service, Electoral
Commission, New Zealand Olympic Committee, New Zealand Fire Service, New
Zealand Transport Agency, and many more.
“We always commission local content where possible, when
developing resources for our clients and for export. New Zealand has a talented
pool of educators, authors, illustrators, photographers, designers and
technologists, who are fantastic at bringing New Zealand content to life for
New Zealand and international learners. We will continue to draw from this pool
for the instructional series, as we have done for Connected 2013 which is
entirely written, illustrated, designed, edited and overseen by New
Zealanders,” said Pitches.
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