LEVIN INTERMEDIATE SCHOOL
Collingwood Street, Levin.
23 June 2009
Dear Parents/Caregivers
NATIONAL STANDARDS and REPORTING TO PARENTS
The Government is about to introduce National Standards for student achievement which, on the face of it, sounds like a great idea. Sounds so obvious. Yet like all things which appear too good to be true, so is this. Feedback on this must be received by Friday 3 July, next week!
My main issue with these standards is that they will, without a doubt, label many children as failures from as young as six years old. A set standard to be judged against every two years during your primary schooling with no acknowledgement of progress made over that period, will see children who do not meet that standard disengage from learning. How many times should they and their families be told that they are below or well below average? And the standards are only for reading, writing and mathematics. Is that all there is to education?
What we have in place now is an assessment system which tells you how your child is performing against expectations but, more importantly, what needs to be learnt next to keep progressing. Our assessment sees the child as capable of making progress and expects the teacher to facilitate this progress. It does not label them as failures.
This political intervention could have a much broader and unintended downside – publication and comparison of overall school results with no context around them. For example, where children were performing academically when they started at a school, what support they have in the home, and how often they change schools or are away from school. These factors can have a major impact on academic performance and a school could be labelled as failing because of them. That would surely have an influence on which schools parents choose for their child leading to competition between schools rather than the cooperation we are trying to build in our town.
Plain English reporting which sits alongside the national standards is so simplistic that I think it is insulting to parents. It makes no allowance for our 3-way reporting and student portfolios which we think give parents and students a good understanding of progress and areas for development.
What can you do? A very short time frame has been given to New Zealand parents to understand these changes and give feedback. A Parent, Family and Whanau Information and Feedback booklet is available online at www.minedu.govt.nz/nationalstandards and I encourage everyone to have their say. It only takes a minute or two but it is very important.
You may not wish to tick any of the boxes in the questionnaire because the questions are very leading (e.g. they presume only a written report is of any use). However Q9 & Q10 allow for comment and you might want to think about some of these points:
· Consultation time frame is too short; not enough detail is provided to make informed comment.
· Education standards already exist in the NZ curriculum – why do we need these?
· The draft standards are only for every two years – what about the other years?
· There is no safeguard to prevent publication of 'league tables' which have had disastrous consequences in Britain and the USA for student learning and teachers' moral.
Trevor Jeffries, Principal