The worst Education Minister?

During my nearly fifty years as a primary school teacher I have encountered some seriously bad Ministers of Education. Lockwood Smith and Merv Wellington both displayed spectacular ignorance of their Education Portfolios.

The current minister however, Anne Tolley, is showing distinct signs that she may surpass even them in both ignorance and incompetence! Once again we have a minister who thinks that measuring children’s abilities equates to measuring teacher competencies, ignoring the fact that high ability advantaged children will always outperform low ability disadvantaged children, regardless of teacher input.

Of course good teaching can improve outcomes, but no one has yet devised a test capable of accurately measuring teacher input against the capabilities of particular children to learn. So we shall have league tables that compliment the already advantaged and denigrate the disadvantaged.

Meanwhile, teachers will continue to spend inordinate amounts of time engaged in assessment procedures at the expense of teaching practice and the coming teachers’ award negotiations, damaged by English’s declaration that there will be no wage increases, will herald a return to the industrial unrest experienced during the days of Smith and Wellington.