School standards: "A hot potato!"

National standards are a hot potato at the moment for a variety of reasons. For a start the pro and con sides cannot agree on what standards are for.

The pro standards people feel that standards will enable schools to sack struggling teachers and identify students with difficulties learning. Standards will identify students with difficulties, however these students are already identified in school. Standards will not enable schools to sack teachers, contracts will still be valid and the current process of supporting teachers through mentoring and extra professional development will still need to be followed. Most teachers improve during this process.

The con side feel that standards will label children and struggling students will be alienated by these labels. They see that schools already assess students regularly and use this to inform not only teaching but also access to support services.

The drive by Anne Tolley and John Key to persuade the public of the ‘rightness of standards and the wrongness of education professionals’ is a second issue. The leaflet featuring National’s logo prominently is in itself controversial as it may well contravene the Electoral Finance Act and at the very least is clearly party material rather than Ministry of Education material. Leaving that issue aside, pushing a policy by stating that professionals can’t do their job properly is hardly setting the scene for working together, something that is vital for the future of our children.

Next up is the Government's refusal to trial the standards, except in kura kaupapa. It is great that there is a trial in at least one part of the educational sector. The difficulty will be if that trial shows that standards do not in fact raise achievement – as has been found in the UK and USA. Trials should always be conducted for a year with a pilot group when introducing any major change in educational policy. Trials must then be analysed by independent qualified professionals in NZ.  Policy/politics are less important than outcomes for our tamariki.

Educational journeys are personal and need to be tracked individually and shared with respect to privacy and dignity of individuals. Goals need to be set for children by teachers in conjunction with whanau and the child. National standards do not value the work and personal journey of all children, only those achieving or above average.

Whanau needs to be given meaningful information about where their child is at the start of school and all through school. Goals should be more holistic, in line with kura kaupapa goals, and reflect the ideal that all our children should grow into adults who can benefit society in one way or another. Children who are high achievers need goals too and they also run the risk of not achieving their potential if they are ‘above average’ without effort.

Children and their whanau do not necessarily want achievement data in the public domain, what they do want to know is: do the teachers in a particular school care? Can they teach our children skilfully and meaningfully? Boards can report this via progress charting – on entry x% students knew y% of the alphabet etc and at year 1 these same students a% could read at level z etc etc. This is meaningful reporting and would also indicate students and staff who are struggling.