New Proposals Morph National Standards Into National Testing

MANA educations spokesperson John Minto says it seems clear the government has serious plans to morph National Standards into National Testing after the election.

He says the government has advertised a contract for an IT project leader to develop a framework which aims to standardise teacher evaluation of students against national standards and effectively eliminate a teacher's professional judgement of their students.

"That is in effect national testing which Anne Tolley was at pains to deny when she rolled out National's controversial national standards policy which is strongly opposed by parents, teachers and education professionals.

"This government says the new "progress and consistency tool" being developed will help teachers in their evaluation of students against national standards but it clearly goes much further.

Mr Minto says it appears the government is preparing the ground to require schools to provide month by month individual student achievement data which will be stored in a Big Brother computer at the Ministry.

"2014 appears to be the target date to have the system up and running.

"Stalin would have recognised such a system but why does our government want to store every student's assessment data on a month by month basis?

"Joining the dots this means more detailed league tables to encourage competition rather than co-operation between schools and the destruction of the national pay scale for teachers and the introduction of so-called "performance pay."

Mr Minto says instead of developing this framework behind closed doors the Minister of Education should come clean and explain to parents her government's intentions before the election.

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