National Standards Suck Soul out of Science

2 May 2012

National Standards Suck Soul out of Science

Principals are saddened but not surprised to see that Science is not thriving in schools. They warned two years ago that this was just one inevitable outcome of the national standards policy.

‘The Principals’ Federation predicted that focusing on the three areas of reading writing and maths, as the national standards policy does, would be detrimental to the wider curriculum,’ said Vice President of the NZ Principals’ Federation, Philip Harding today. ‘You get what you measure and this Government wants to measure just three things,’ he said.

‘Millions of dollars were poured into implementing national standards which had to be drawn from somewhere,’ he said. ‘Unfortunately that meant a reduction in resources for professional development in many areas including in Science,’ he said.

‘Principals are disappointed to see this result because it is our broad rich curriculum developed in partnership with our school communities that has lifted our achievement levels to be amongst the best in the world,’ said Harding. ‘We fear that if we continue to keep a narrow curriculum focus on account of national standards, we will lose our high world ranking,’ he said.

www.nzpf.ac.nz

ENDS

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