Schools bullied into compliance on National Standards

Hundreds of schools bullied into nominal compliance on National Standards

The education sector union NZEI Te Riu Roa says there are hundreds of schools which have no confidence in National Standards but have been bullied into nominal compliance.

Today more than 350 schools around the country handed over their charters to the Ministry of Education without National Standards information. They believe setting targets for student achievement using National Standards will produce unreliable information and are sticking with the trusted and evidence-based assessment data they have always used.

“These schools are rightly standing up and saying they will not subject their students to a set of hastily-developed, untested and potentially harmful set of National Standards which they know will make no difference to student achievement,” says NZEI President Ian Leckie.

“Their action comes in the face of increasingly heavy-handed tactics from the Ministry of Education to comply.”

“There are hundreds of other schools around the country which are only nominally complying. They are simply sprinkling the words ‘National Standards’ through their charters so they can be seen to be fulfilling their charter requirements, but it in no way signals their support for National Standards nor any change in their actual practice,” says Mr Leckie.

The implementation of the Standards and the way they are being interpreted also varies wildly from school to school, making any achievement targets set against them completely meaningless.

‘I applaud the actions of those schools which are showing moral leadership in protecting their students and school communities from ill-considered, politically driven education policy,” he says.

© Scoop Media