As we know John Key made a great deal this week of what he called “misinformation” from those who oppose the National Standards policy. But it seems he might want to look in the mirror for misinfomation. In the Dominion Post today is a letter from Ivan Snook, Emeritus Professor of Education at Massey University. He takes the PM to task about his claims about an Education Review Office report into reading and writing in Years 1 and 2. He takes each of Key’s claims in turn. Over to Ivan;
“1. Two-thirds of teachers were not properly managing assessment. Not correct. It found that some leaders trusted their junior school teacher or leader who knew the pupils well, a perfectly reasonsable thing to do.
2. 30 per cent of teachers were not doing a good job of teaching reading and writing. Not correct. It found that 10 per cent of teachers were less than adequate.
3. Many principals aren’t adequately sharing their school’s achevement information with their communities. Not correct it found that they reported to the school community about their own school, but did not always give data comparing it to other schools”.
Its quite clear that the Government went into furious damage control last week around National Standards. They must have put out the word for some “evidence” to back their claims, and it seems they might have got a bit over-excited.
It seems to me that national are making things up to give the impression that their standards are necessary.
Making things up! I would suggest that most of what comes from John Key’s mouth is utter lies.
Two relevant articles – one on how bad teachers will be accountable – good for everyone
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10624401&pnum=2
Second on how the NZ public perceives National Standards – perhaps labour would be more popular if they support them? or are they that out of touch?
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10624503
Always worth going back to the primary sources with reading and comprehension skills being what they are these days (even among Emeritus Professors of Education). I’m not sure that Key always got it right to the nth degree (nor that I’ve got exactly the apposite quote), but better batting average than Snook in my view.
Taking each point in turn:
1. Two-thirds of teachers were not properly managing assessment. Not correct. It found that some leaders trusted their junior school teacher or leader who knew the pupils well, a perfectly reasonsable [sic] thing to do.
“Although many classroom teachers used assessment information well, school leaders were less clear about how they should use data to set and monitor appropriate reading and writing achievement expectations for children in Years 1 and 2. It is of concern that only about a quarter of school leaders set expectations that strongly promoted high levels of reading and writing achievement for children in their first two years. Furthermore, in nearly two-thirds of schools, leaders used limited or poor processes to monitor the progress and achievement of these young children.” (page 2)
2. 30 per cent of teachers were not doing a good job of teaching reading and writing. Not correct. It found that 10 per cent of teachers were less than adequate.
“In contrast, the remaining 30 percent of teachers had little or no sense of how critical it was for children to develop confidence and independence in early reading and writing. These teachers had minimal understanding of effective reading and writing teaching, set inappropriately low expectations and did not seek opportunities to extend their own confidence in using a wider range of teaching practices. In these classrooms learning opportunities to motivate, engage or extend children were limited.” (page 1)
3. Many principals aren’t adequately sharing their school’s achevement [sic] information with their communities. Not correct it found that they reported to the school community about their own school, but did not always give data comparing it to other schools”.
“Boards of trustees make many important investment decisions about reading interventions for Years 1 and 2 children. Many school had few processes to monitor the effect of these programmes on children’s achievement. Teachers often shared information with trustees about the programme content without using assessments to demonstrate whether these interventions were improving children’s achievement from when they started, to when they were discontinued from the programme.” (page 38)
If people support standards, why has the govt gone into overdrive – and spending millions of dollars – trying to justify them?
Anyone who thinks they are a good idea may well have accepted the govt’s ludicrous assertions about how they will solve problems that in fact they are not even designed to address – some people don’t have time to research things like this and rely on the govt not to lie, a big mistake here.
If we already know 20% of children are failing, why not divert these extra resources to supporting them?
@ Simon, Do you realy beleive we should be pushing our kids to read at 5?, Here is an article on stuff recently.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/3183208/No-advantage-in-learning-to-read-from-five
or this link from the UK. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7107798.stm
And why are we forgetting the most important people who teach there children, the parent. They need to be held accountable if there children are struggling at school as well.
2monica says. On what planet do you live, there are already standards and enough information to access children or teachers and principals have known for years which teachers are not “cutting the mustard”
National is trying to take a big hammer to crack a small nut, ie, 20% of the pupils and 10% or less of the teachers.
Here’s a bright idea, spend the time and money on the 20% of pupils and up-skill the teachers who need to be up-skilled.
If they don’t measure up then work with the NZEI to get these teachers out of the system.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/news/3284174/Back-to-basics-spells-lost-jobs-at-Massey
Didn’t Anne tolley say it won’t narrow curriculum?
@John Dalley
And the children that are ahead to extend them. If they are left and forgotten it has been shown that they don’t know how to face a challenge when it occurs and can get disruptive to the other students because they are board.
You can see Tolley and Key’s press conference from last Tuesday on Youtube. It’s cringe material to watch. The journalists ask some worthy questions, but Tolley and Key bumble their way through.
Tolley and Key are clearly running scared, and so now they’re obviously onto the part of the plan that says “bag the teachers and the union”.
It would be interesting to know the research methodology behind the ERO report that focused on teachers of Year 1 & 2 classes. I hope the data behind the report is available. Hopefully an academic picks this up. Thanks also, Grant, for pointing us to Ivan’s letter in today’s paper. Thank goodness for the Ivan’s of this world. His book, “The Ethical Teacher” is a must read for every teaching graduate.
The article about Hattie in today’s Herald is quite revealing, and while I haven’t agreed with all of Hattie’s ideas in the past, his suggestion to scrap the Standards, criticisms of teaching to a test (the standards), narrowing learning experiences, and statistical flaws in the data collection are welcome.
Finally, as Otago University academic Lester Flockton notes, “why have National Standards for every child, every year, when the majority our our children are doing very well in literacy and numeracy” and that “New Zealand schools already have and use a variety of assessment tools and processes that reliably show which children are struggling. National Standards were never needed for this.”
As a primary teacher, I worry that there are children whose data will be plotted on a plunket style graph, and even if they have recognised learning disabilities or not, they will be labelled as “well below expectations” (in other words, a failure) in one or more curriculum areas for possibly their entire eight years of primary schooling. This to me is just inhumane and unethical. Their parents (and the child) do not need these sorts of labels in order for greater assistance to occur.
Flockton also suggests that even with further assistance (which despite Tolley and Key’s rhetoric, teachers have actually been doing for years), there are about 10% of children who struggle to achieve because of considerable disadvantage and life circumstances.
I understand that 10% of teachers were below adequate and a further 20% were classed as adequate.
Now I for one would like to know at what level a teacher is considered ‘adequate’. I would certainly prefer my child to be taught by a teacher whose performance was better than ‘adequate’, wouldn’t you?
I feel our children deserve better. 30% of teachers should be pulling their socks up so to speak.
@waterboy – “that the most important early factors for later reading achievement, for most children, are language and learning experiences that are gained without formal reading instruction.”
This is an important consideration – it is esp impt in classrooms with students who are developmentally delayed. In this case, it is inappropriate and premature, to expect these children to be able to read. They need to spend much time learning at a developmentally appropriate level. They will be engaged in more play, social skill development and experienced based learning activities. Now, while this is happening for these children, that same jnr teacher will be running reading groups for the various levels in their class and delivering literacy and numeracy programmes. The developmentally delayed kids wont met the standards – not for a long time. Yet, if Nat has its way, the teacher will have to push a formal literacy prog for these kids (who wont meet the std) because they are informed by the govt that they must – the worst part about this story is that these kids wont be getting the developmentally correct programme either (teacher too busy trying to stuff a std into them) – lose lose for these kids.
The point here is that a good teacher in the jnr school knows that some kids need to have longer with the developmentally appropriate programmes (its not just developmentally delayed kids, but those that have not had formal ECE (still heaps of kids that do not access early childhood), little boys who just want to be boys and the kids who are still too immature for school) – and these good teachers do not push the kids before it is too soon. And good schools allow their junr teachers to do what is best. The results usually show later in the school when you look at the data. However, what Nt stds will do is force this good teacher to ignore best practice and to teach to the std only. This is why it is setting our kids up to fail.
@SR – I would like to know these two things:
1. What was the background of the ERO reviewers who undertook this review? This gives us some context of how effective the acutual reveiwer is. (oftentimes, you get high school teachers accessing best practice in a jnr primary class – and the reviewer can sometimes be someone who has not real classroom experience – ever)
2. What was the criteria and the tools used to measure the teachers? (usually, ero uses a set of questions, and they have a tick chart of specific things they want to see – eg: teacher articulates learning intentions to the class…Also, they are only seeing a snapshot – they may be in the classroom for as little as one lesson – I do acknowledge that use of tick charts, a short observation, and a reliance on ‘gut feel’ can give you an overview, but its a bit more deeper than that)
Indirect questions that fall out of the two above would be:
- who cross referenced the data and how? Was it peer reviewed? How many people were going around the schools – one team or many different teams.
- what tools did they use to provide the data – were they norm referenced?
Waterboy – I’ve reread what I posted a couple of times and I’m completely flummoxed over how you get to your rhetorical question. What I posted about was someone who should know better telling Porkies. Snook three times says that the ERO report didn’t say what it did say (give or take). And Grant Robertson should have been smart enough not to have lined up behind this sophistry.
Returning to your rhetorical question I have to confess it’s over 30 years since I was close to education research and I haven’t got the faintest idea about when best to start teaching reading or who should do it. However I strongly suspects that the answer is “It depends”.
I should add that I really don’t think a study that compares Rudolf Steiner kids with state-run school kids is going to give results that can be generalised across the population, or across all schools. On the BBC reference I note that Dr Katz was criticising the policies of the UK government in introducing more structured learning in pre-school.
Kane – the study is available at http://ero.govt.nz/publications/pubs2009/readingwriting-y1&2-dec09.pdf and about 2 seconds with Google would have found it for you. The report includes a summary of results and the methodology. Rather than rely upon an academic perhaps read for yourself and make your own judgements.
In light of Snook’s contribution to this particular debate I can only assume his book on ethics draws heavily on Machiavelli’s brand of Consequentialism.
Finally I guess if Flockton is right and 10% will never make it (and I’m not sure that I’m really happy with that prognosis) what are we going to do about the balance who are not making it (significantly higher proportions than 10% in most demographics)?
I can hear those spine chilling words “Trust me I’m a trained professional”.
Paul at 9.00pm – ditto my last comment to Kane
Paul at 9.08pm – ditto my first comment to Kane
Adequate in this situation would mean that the teachers are teaching up to an acceptable level wouldn’t it? After all, that’s what the word means.
And then there’s the fact that if we want our teachers to teach at a higher level then we need to fund the teachers, Which means more tax.
@ Simon
“It is of concern that only about a quarter of school leaders set expectations that strongly promoted high levels of reading and writing achievement for children in their first two years.”
It is this statement that worries me, why would we promote high levels of reading and writing acheivement for 5- 6 year olds. Talk about politically corrctness gone mad, let them be kids. I have a 4 year old, we read to him, teach him about all sorts of things that will be of no use but are interesting. I want him to enjoy learning, not focus on high levels of reading and writing acheivement and some stupid test.
I dont need to know where he is on the standards chart in comparrison to other children, it is bad enough thoes parents who comnpare there children on the plunket growth chart and skite how advanced or above average there little johnny is.
I want my son to be able to fix his own car, work on his own house, play sport, understand the world around him. He will read well, he has lots of books and loves them, he will either be good at math or he wont, thats genetics. If he fails it is us as parents fault, not the schools and national standards will not do nothin!
@paul (9:08 pm)
Does this signify a change of tack?
For a week I’ve been reading that we don’t need to have national standards reported in the way the government is insisting because we have ERO reports on every school which parents can use to get in depth and quality information on which to base their choice of school.
Now, faced with a pretty damning report from ERO on reading in Years 1 and 2 you’re casting doubts over the ability of those who did the investigations and wrote the report to come to the conclusions they did.
Do you think that it is only this specific ERO report that is suspect, or should all of the their report, good or bad, be taken with a huge pinch of salt?
The more I read this sort of thing the more suspect I get of the motives of some of those making the comments.
If Labour feels the same as Paul about the validity of this report will an appointed spokesman make an official comment to that effect? I was under the impression that, as unpalatable as the findings were, they were accepted as having validity. If Labour and/or the NZEI have grounds for disputing this then I think that this view should be in the open as it is extremely pertinent to the current debate.
Paul, what is the difference between what you are asking of the ERO in terms of adequate reporting and what the government is asking of schools in terms of adequate reporting?
Waterboy, there’s a massive difference between a four-year-old and a 5-6 year old. You can’t extrapolate from one to the other. You’ll know that when your young one gets older.
Maths isn’t solely down to genetics. It can certainly be learned. Likewise for reading. As for it being the parents’ fault if he fails – how will you know if he is failing if it is not reported to you? And why bother sending him to school if the teaching has no effect?
@Bea , If you dont know if you child is suggeeding or failing your not a very good parent. Maths can be learned, but only certain types of people tend to be good at maths, being an artist can be learnt, but only certain types of people are good at it (genetics).
And what is the logical reason for knowing how he compares to other children of a same age? other than so you can skite about it??? Teachers know who is struggling and who isnt, parents should knw what your children are goog at and not good at. Why put children through effectively exams at a very young age when there is no good reason for it and no actual benefit for them to do well in the test. If children who perform lower on the test are going to get extra attention, as a parent you could encourage your child to fail it to get extra teacher time.
So Paul.
What you are asking for is a simple, easy to understand report on how a school is doing I take it? We’re they norm referenced? I don’t know the answer but wouldn’t it be nice to have, say, some form of National Standard to measure against?
Waterboy says: “@Bea , If you dont know if you child is suggeeding or failing your not a very good parent.”
I think that’s a bit unreasonable, Waterboy. I hope that isn’t the default attitude of the teaching profession or supporters of the Labour Party.
I certainly don’t think that it’s bad parenting to not know instinctively what would be an acceptable standard in a range of subjects at a variety of age ranges.
At what age, for example, would it be appropriate to pick up a child for writing “your” instead of “you’re”?
We all know that some kids will have a knack for areas where others do not. But the purpose of National Standards is not to develope the next great novelist or theoretical physicists.
These fields take care of themselves.
National Standards is about kids being grounded in Basic Literacy and Numeracy to enable them to go even further in their chosen fields, whatever that may be, and to give them a wider range of choices.
“At what age, for example, would it be appropriate to pick up a child for writing “your” instead of “you’re”?”
Get onto contractions as quickly as possible – late Year 1/Year 2. Certainly get in early because so many adults stuff this up through poor habit. Don’t be fooled. There was no golden era for quality teaching of literacy.
Yes, very surface feature. I know.
“At what age, for example, would it be appropriate to pick up a child for writing “your” instead of “you’re”?”
your is in that is yours.
You’re as in you are great.
If you’ve written “you’re,” try substituting “you are.” If it doesn’t work, the word you want is “your.”
Learnt this at age 6. I remember as I had a male teacher that year. He was one of the best primary school teachers I had.
I think it is all in how you explain it to young people.
A Mother February 6, 2010 at 8:21:pm
If they are left and forgotten it has been shown that they don’t know how to face a challenge when it occurs and can get disruptive to the other students because they are board.
lol
@ several above re my questions re ero
Firstly, I am asking these questions because I do not know the answers to them – ERO is an interesting beast – I wish I could say I was always confident that they do a good job – and I am not. Its a study that certainly highlights some interesting points that we need to be interested in and to take note of – but its not the be all and end all, and as for Nat stds, as I have said (over and over) they are not the answers.
It is a concern that ERO thought that the leaders (principals) were not doing as they wanted, but its left more questions for me than has given me answers. Its the same for the comments on adequate – based on what? Does that mean adequate good or adequate bad? Its a little subjective. Asttle is not used in the Jnr school, so what I want to know is what did they assess the teachers against? How many times did they go into the classrooms and observe, and what criteria did they use? Was it part of the normal review where they collect info on national interest at the same time, in which case it is likely that they observed for a short time. These make a difference to the actual validity of the snapshot. I am not discounting the result, merely showing the problematic nature of the beast.
ERO has its place, it collects data that provide a snapshot – and a failing school is something they can discover (by looking at a lot of information and triangulating it) – but in the case of these studies, it is not clear what the criteria are. It would not have been asttle, so I wonder if they used 6 year net data, reading recovery data, criteria from the curriculum or exemplars.
What is more telling is the data NEMP collect across the country, in all schools, each year, and this picture over time tells us far more about the state of our countries education system than snap shots. I am not discounting the ERO report at all – simply asking reflective questions that should challenge all of us to be careful about making judgements when the qualifying information is missing. Ditto for PIRLS etc – plenty of data floating around – nat stds wont change that.
A Mother (2:20) – but were you one of the few classess of 6 year olds who were being taught and expected to cope with this sort of thing that year, or were most 6 year olds expected to understand the concept?
Should your parents’ reaction have been delight at how you understood so advanced a concept at that age, confidance that your teacher had managed to bring you up to roughly the expected level or horror at the fact that it had taken you so long to pick up this simple concept?
I can’t remember now back to when my kids first understood this sort of thing, but I think that if they’d have demonstrated it to me at 6 I’d have been well impressed. And I think I have pretty high expectations. (So well done you and well done that teacher…)
The point I’m trying to make is that however enthusiastic and well meaning and ‘good’ parents are they don’t have sufficient knowledge to be able to gauge, merely by inspection and instinct, how their children are doing. They need very clear input, not in academic jargon or PC code, from the experts, their children’s teachers. Otherwise some parents will instinctively think their children are doing much better than is the case, and vice versa.
Which was why I took issue with Waterboy for suggesting to Bea that if you couldn’t work this out you weren’t a good parent.
@Bea
“Paul, what is the difference between what you are asking of the ERO in terms of adequate reporting and what the government is asking of schools in terms of adequate reporting?”
Big difference – schools have the tools, they know what kids are failing, (those who dont should be addressed sure) but implementing more costly ‘tools’ that actually dont do a thing to address the issue (such as putting the resources in – see other posts) is just pushing a bigger agenda that the govt wont share with us yet. It really has nothing to do with kids – if it was, there would be better solutions to the issues raised than this (again, see my other posts on this) – and that would be far better for kids. Again, it is not rocket science to remedy these issues – but the govt will not allow what educationalists have been asking for in order to address it – because this scaremongering and vote seeking nonsense is far more impt to them than our kids future.
Lab started to make inroads into these issues – but Nat has come and either cut the good stuff, or refused to take the necessary steps to address them. That is what the difference is and that is just plain stupid. I can tell you now there are many better solutions than Nat Stds – many more. Proven things that will actually help raise the tail, address poor performance and mean that all schools – not just the higher decile ones – can show success for all students. It frustrates the blinking daylights out of me to hear the same old nonsense on this topic – when the solutions are not that difficult to grasp but the govt refuse to put the resources in. So, you tell me what the real agenda is.
Paul (5:30) – the report contains a section on the methodology used, and also on the sample.
I haven’t seen a critique of the report on the grounds that the methodology was suspect or the sample unrepresentative, and in the absence of that have assumed that no one has any issues with these aspects.
Perhaps someone can enlighten us if the NZEI or another professional body has raised concerns.
@George – you prob wont see someone ask those questions – they wont want to take ero on to hard. The thing with ero reports on topic areas, is that they are snapshots, not long term studies that can be cross referenced. So, while they provide some good snapshot information, we should be a bit careful when we read an ero report to look a bit between the lines – that way we can see the bigger picture. I am not discounting it fully as there will be truth in there that must be heeded, but to use it by the govt in this way (without being able to provide other research that backs their stance up, that is international, or long term) and with a relatively small sample of teachers, in a small and problematic part of the curriculum, is concerning to me.
(and was it not snook who raised questions on it? Could have the wrong academic)
ps and hardly evidence that supports them (govt) for all teachers in all age groups in all aspects of literacy and numeracy that to me, justifies the govts position on nat stds.
Paul – I think that the sample was approx 10% of schools which, if properly constituted, is a huge sample size in statistical terms.
Especially when some of the findings are so marked (such as 30% underperforming in some areas).
Someone clever than I will be able to tell you the confidence levels of this sample size with this overall population, but I’d bet that the picture even a couple of standard deviations from the mean would still suggest a serious issue exists.
And whilst I accept that individual teachers or principals might not want to put their head above the parapet and question ERO’s methodology, if there were problems with it I’d expect the Labour Party or the professional organisation to have no such inhibitions. (They don’t seem to be backward at telling the minister and prime minister what they thing of policy
)
Waterboy: @Bea , If you dont know if you (sic> child is suggeeding sic or failing your sic not a very good parent. Maths can be learned, but only certain types of people tend to be good at maths, being an artist can be learnt, but only certain types of people are good at it (genetics).
But all people need maths skills as well as English skills. And surely you don’t want your child to only achieve at the things they have a natural aptitude for?
Try this article for maths genetics vs environment http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/02/41886
And what is the logical reason for knowing how he compares to other children of a same age? other than so you can skite about it???
So that I know if he is progressing as he should. And so that I know if he is progressing to the extent that he is capable of. It happens often enough that a child who is very capable in a particular subject can go backwards with an ineffectual teacher.
Why put children through effectively exams at a very young age when there is no good reason for it and no actual benefit for them to do well in the test.
They already get exams at a very young age. New entrants are assessed, there’s a Year 2 assessment and there’s the PATs. I guess the education system already considers that assessment is valuable. As Deborah Coddington has pointed out in her Herald article today, the issue appears to be reporting to parents.
@George – attacking ero is problematic – its harder than you might imagine to ’stick you neck out’ with this group.
And I agree, while a smallish sample, it does give the snapshot that provides data that can be used by schools to refine and improve practice – thats a good thing – but I am wary for the reasons outlined above. Its not enough ‘proof’ (as outlined).
@Bea, Im not involved in, or have enough knowledge of the ins and outs of our primary education to know half of what your talking about, but i do know this, and this is my main concern.
If we concentrate on English and Maths and testing, something else has to give, unless we lenghten the school day. Kiwi kids as a whole are doign well in comparrison to other countrys in these areas, so why the focus, and what are we going to drop off to allow the extra time for testing, and focussing on Math and English.
Do we want to look back in 15 years time and say again “well that was teh point that killed teh trades in NZ, like we now do with teh abolishent of the apprenticeship schemes”. What else will suffer? sciences maybe?
http://www.notonthetest.com/
Akldnut
http://www.brainy-child.com/expert/under-challenged-gifted-child.shtml
Though there is a better example in a book I just returned to the library
I have an intrest in this subject.
I have no problems with the ERO report. I think we all may need to look deeper into exactly what their definition of “adequate” and “limited” is, but I wouldn’t angst too much over that.
I looked at their recommendations. For the Ministry of Education they said this:
1 develop writing assessment tools for Years 1 and 2
2 support beginning teachers so they can confidently use and analyse data from a range of reading and writing assessment tools, and are introduced to a repertoire of teaching approaches that cater for all Years 1 and 2 students’ literacy needs.
Where did I miss the recommendation to introduce National’s standards?
And if National’s election manifesto is their Bible, please, may I have my tax cut now? Backdated, thanks.
Waterboy, the PATs are “Progressive Achievement Tests”. Most schools do them yearly or sometimes twice a year. Each one takes half-an-hour to 3/4 hour to do and there’s, I think, 3 in facets of English and one in Maths. The results are compared against national results. Some teachers report them to parents as a matter of course complete with graphs and normal curves and things. For other teachers its like getting blood from a stone.
Keys/Tolley spouting on about falling educational standards in NZ and quoting a rather dubious ERO Report. Here are the correct facts, that are indisputable.
Also don’t forget that NZ is one of the few countries to include all their children in PIRLS eg Aussie doesn’t include all Aboriginal. Ireland all its Romney Children etc.
PISA 2006, at age 15, in 57 countries
Mathematics literacy:
Five countries higher than NZ (Chinese Taipei, Finland, Hong Kong-China, Korea, Netherlands).
NZ indistinguishable from Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Belgium, Australia (and others)
NZ well ahead of UK and USA who don’t forget have systems in place similar to Nat Standards.
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
NZ had 14% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, compared to OECD average of 21%.
Scientific literacy:
NZ ahead of 46 countries, including UK and USA.
Two countries higher than NZ (Finland & Hong Kong-China).
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
NZ indistinguishable from Canada, Chinese Taipei, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Korea (and others)
NZ had 14% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, similar to Australia at 13%, compared to OECD average of 19%.
Reading literacy:
Three countries higher than NZ (Korea, Finland, Hong Kong-China).
NZ indistinguishable from Canada, Ireland (and others)
New Zealand score unchanged from the 2003 and 2000 assessments
NZ ahead of Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, UK, Austria, Germany, France, Norway, ETC.
NZ had 15% at Level 1 proficiency or lower, similar to Australia at 13%, compared to OECD average of 20%.
TIMMS 2006, for year 5 students
NZ mathematics score unchanged from 2002, improved from 1994
NZ science score decreased from 2002 but unchanged from 1994.
PIRLS 2006
NZ reading literacy score unchanged from 2001 (no earlier comparison on same metric)
NEMP, 1995 to 2008, year 4 and 8 in 15 curriculum areas
Pat – I’d be interested in the reasons why that particular ERO report is considered by you to be rather dubious. I haven’t heard it attacked officially by NZEI or the Labour Party on those grounds. Presumably you have specific reasons for being sceptical at its findings.
Also, I find it interesting that much of your last comment seems to be using league tables to allow you to make judgements on how well New Zealand is doing compared to other countries. On this basis you contend that what we’re doing is working well. If, as a result of this awful government, we drop in these rankings, I assume you’d present that as an indication that what we were then doing wasn’t working and needed to be changed.
What’s the qualatative difference between this and parents wanting the same sort of information for their children and the schools they are attending? Is it that you’re educated so can analyse the information appropriately whereas parents aren’t and can’t?
Across the whole of society we have comparative information – across organisation, regions, nations. It seems that there’s one small area where a small number of people don’t think that comparative information should be made available. Something doesn’t smell quite right about that.
Did you guys know that anne tolley has said that national standards will not improve student ablity
‘When Anne Tolley finally answered the question about whether standards would actually raise achievement of actual children, she stated that they would not.
Standards, she said, would tell parents if their child was failing, in plain language that they could
understand. When questioned about the effect on children of reading reports that used negative
language like failing, below standard, well below, Anne Tolley asked why parents would want to
share reports with their children. Continuing on, and contradicting her presentation Anne then
stated that schools did not have to use the words “well below standard, below standard, at
standard or above standard, schools can use whatever language they like, check the NAG.”‘
so why do we have them????????????????