A beginner’s guide to National Standards
28th November 2009

When John Key launched the National Standards for primary schools last month he hailed them as the most important educational reform of the past 20 years. Opposition to the Standards from leading academics and teachers has been widely reported in the media this week, indicating that not everybody shares the Prime Minister’s optimism. The argument quickly becomes technical, so here is a beginner’s guide to National Standards.

The National Standards are a set of benchmarks that apply to reading, writing and mathematics. They define what children should be able to achieve in these 3 subjects at each year level from age 5 to the end of primary school. They recapture some very old ideas about teaching and learning – remember, we used to call the primary years the ‘standards.’

From 2010 primary and intermediate schools will be required to report to parents twice a year about how their children are achieving against the National Standards. They must report in “plain language”, which means they must state if the child is above, at, below or well below the Standards.

From 2011 each school must include specific goals relating to the National Standards in their annual charter. The goals must be written as percentages of students the school will ensure are achieving at or above the Standards. From 2012 school results must be reported to the Ministry of Education, this information becoming part of the public record.

The introduction of National Standards fulfils a National Party election promise. National claims two main reasons for introducing Standards. First, they say that parents throughout the country are confused by the way schools report student achievement and that they have the right to be told plainly how their children are getting on.

Second, they say National Standards will ensure that New Zealand’s long ‘tail’ of under-achievers will become successful at school.

The Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, says National Standards are an urgent and necessary measure to correct an education system that fails too many children. She says National Standards are about improving student achievement.

In reality, they are highly political. National Standards are education’s version of the market reforms of the 1980s and 90s. They are formed around a view that high stakes assessment will motivate schools to transform struggling students into geniuses. They are like the farmer who weighs his prize pig every day but fails to realise that simply weighing the pig does not fatten it.

The introduction of National Standards sends a message that up to now children have bobbed about in a sea of conjecture. This is untrue. Teachers already measure children’s progress against clearly defined standards. The difference is that the current standards are not pegged to a particular moment in a child’s schooling.

National Standards, by comparison, assume that all children start school with the same ability and potential, and continue throughout their school years to learn in a steady, unwavering curve of improved achievement. This is nonsense. By drawing a narrow line between success and failure National Standards act as a brake on the brightest and condemn low achievers to toil through their school years as dummies.

Remarkably, for a policy that is a cornerstone of this government, the National Standards are completely untried. They have been written in haste with no meaningful input from schools and against the advice of leading academics. There has been no attempt to gauge their accuracy. We do not know, for example, if the Year 3 standard for reading is achievable by 10% or 90% of children. Neither is there provision to review the standards once schools have worked with them.

Countries that introduced National Standards programmes in the 1990s now regard them as failed policies. In England they are blamed for narrowing the curriculum, de-motivating children and lowering achievement. Schools in England are threatening to boycott standardised testing. By comparison, New Zealand has continued to rank near the top in international surveys of educational achievement.

Tragically, Mr Key’s prediction about the importance of National Standards may be right. We may come to view them as the point where our education system went off the rails.

Hone hurls his toys
14th November 2009

Hone Howarya hadn’t always been a good boy, so when he got the invitation to the party he was very excited. “Look at this, Hilda!” he cried, “I’m gonna play in the big toy box!”

When Hone Howarya arrived at the party Aunt Tatty and Uncle Peet welcomed him. “Now, Hone,” said wise Aunt Tatty, “you must be on your best behaviour. There are toys here you don’t get on with but you have to be good or we’ll send you home.”
Hone looked around the big toy box. Aunt Tatty was right, there were a lot of bigwigs in this place and most of them were buggeryas.

If there was one thing Hone Howarya hated, it was the buggerya tribe. His hatred was an old one. It went back a long, long way to the time when the buggerya tribe gate-crashed the picnic and stole all the Howarya’s lollies. And while it was true they eventually gave some of the lollies back they made sure to keep all the best ones. Now Hone had to spend his days among the buggerya bigwigs, watching them chewing his lollies.

But for a while things just kept getting better, especially after the lection when Jonkey, the chief bigwig, invited Aunt Tatty and Uncle Peet to join the gummint. Hone felt very proud.

One day Uncle Peet took Hone aside and said, “Hone, you’ve been such a good boy you can take some friends and visit Wonderland.”
“Can I be the leader?” asked Hone.
“Yes, but you must be responsible and work very hard.”
“I will,” promised Hone, and ran off to pack his surfboard.

Hone took Hilda to Wonderland just because he could, and they were amazed. They had never seen anything as wonderful as Wonderland. The buildings were tall as mountains, the roads curved like spaghetti, the pastries were sweeter than honey and the frothy beer made Hone sneeze. My, how they laughed!

Everybody in Wonderland made Hone feel important. The Wonderland bigwigs asked him lots of questions and even listened to his answers. But alas, all this importance went to his head and then Hone Howarya did a very naughty thing. He and Hilda sneaked off to visit the Crystal City, the most fabulous of all the treasures in Wonderland.

“Well, why shouldn’t I have some fun?” sniffed Hone. “Those buggeryas have been visiting Crystal City for years. Now it’s my turn.”

But, oh dear, when Hone returned to the big toy box the news mediums heard about his naughty trip to Crystal City and then the fish hit the pan. Suddenly everybody was mad at Hone. Aunt Tatty and Uncle Peet wouldn’t talk to him, the buggeryas were up in arms and so were some of the other Howaryas. One even sent him a fleamail that was so itchy and biting that Hone lost his temper and sent a really nasty fleamail right back.


Matters only got worse when one of the buggerya bigwigs, Pill-the-Goff, said Hone should be sent home from the party without his party pack. Hone got so mad he said Pill-the-Goff should be shot and, anyway, he wasn’t a bit sorry.

Things moved quickly after that. Hone was sent home without any lollies, Aunt Tatty and Uncle Peet got married and retired to Balclutha and Jonkey formed a new gummint with Rubber Hide and the Green Peas.

Back home again, Hone Howarya sat dejectedly on the old wharf, dangling his feet.
“Oh well, Hilda,” he sighed, “looks like we’re back to throwing mud on Waitangi Day.” He leaned on his surfboard and stared across the lagoon.

Raising the Bar
30th October 2009

Tom is six and struggling to master high jump. The run up’s going well, pattering across the grass, his little legs pumping. The problems start when he arrives at the bar. There are of course the technical challenges of a successful scissors kick, but the real obstacle is in his mind.

When Tom approaches the bar he does not see, as you and I do, a thin, red-and-black carbon fibre rod. Tom sees a very large, very high, and potentially very painful obstacle. He sees a brick wall, topped with razor wire and broken glass, probably with a large slavering dog on the other side. Time and again he shies away and trudges to the back of the dwindling line of non-jumpers.

While National Standards have been this week’s big story in education, most teachers at this time of year are raising the bar for children in more literal ways. It’s athletics season and all around the country little Toms, Dicks and Harrys are facing up to the real hurdles.

My heart goes out to Tom. Wind the clock back and Tom was me. Generally I rode through the school year ticking the boxes and enjoying the warm feeling of success. But every November I faced, literally, the hurdle of athletics day – my day of shame.

The worst thing about athletics day was the small cardboard tag that was pinned to my t-shirt with a small safety pin on the morning of sports day. On the card was printed a list of the events and three columns for scoring. At each event you could score a 1, 2 or 3 depending on your prowess. My only consolation was that the score card had no column for scoring zero. As the day progressed the score card became the natural focus for attention and, in my case, misery.

I was bad at all athletics events but useless at high jump. Like Tom, the idea of throwing myself at a bar (they were steel then) defied every bone in my body. Even if I managed to clear it I then faced the prospect of landing in a hard, uninviting sawdust pit (no large blue spongy landing mats). The sawdust pit at our school had not seen sawdust since the last war. Any sawdust that remained was purely conjectural, a thin layer smeared across brick-hard dirt and the preferred dunny of every cat in the neighbourhood.

My problems were partly technical. I marvelled at the children who seemed instinctively to know which leg to take off from and how to arrive at the bar prepared to use that leg. More than once I found myself faced down on the bar, having leapt from the wrong leg.

At least I did not suffer the indignities of my friend Wayne who, having perfected the take off and got his leading leg over the bar, seemed incapable of lifting his trailing leg and always – always - ended up straddling the bar, to his disgrace and the delighted howls of the other boys. On one dreadful occasion Wayne landed on the bar so hard he had to be carried, howling, to the sick bay and the bar sent off to the caretaker to be straightened out.

I invariably arrived at the end of athletics day sunburned and demoralised. Slinking from the field I would tear off my score card and shred it.

Now, as a teacher, I enjoy athletics day. I warm to the sight of hundreds of children in earnest endeavour scattered across a green paddock under a bright spring sky, of picnicking parents and affectionate nanas. In these days of National Standards athletics training is a relief. And as I watch Tom’s struggles to get off the ground I am quietly grateful we do not yet have national standards in high jump.