National Standards Under Fire From Advisory Group
‘Recommendations from the ‘National Standards Aggregate Results Advisory Group’ to the Minster are pointing to a lack of
confidence in the standards themselves, and call for reviewing processes to be implemented, claims a spokesperson for
the New Zealand Principals’ Federation, Paul Drummond.
‘It is clear that after three years of implementation the national standards are still not embedded and the profession
has no confidence that they can make a difference for priority learners,’ says Drummond. ‘The advisory group knows that
and recommends that we should be investing in research and drawing on existing research to build knowledge about best
practices for raising the achievement of priority groups,’ he said.
Teaching professionals and school leaders have for years been calling for a full review of the hastily constructed
standards and more recently gave the thumbs down to the mandating of the Ministry’s online Progress and Consistency Tool
(PACT) designed to make the national standards results more reliable.
‘The advisory group agrees with us that PACT should not be mandatory’, said Drummond. ‘There is a high lack of trust
throughout the profession about what national standards results will be used for in the future and these things have
nothing to do with improving children’s learning,’ says Drummond.
‘The national standards have been a disaster since day one and it is comforting to the profession to hear the
government’s own advisors agreeing with us,’ said Drummond.
For more information visit www.nzpf.ac.nz
ENDS