Comments on: Available at last Tolley floundering

By: Hands up for Learning » 25th Feb

Hands up for Learning » 25th Feb — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:57:42 +0000

[...] Alert Tolley floundering in the House announcing the independent advisory group on Feb 18. watch (Or scroll down the right hand column on this [...]

By: Paul

Paul — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 23:19:42 +0000

I’ve sat in many meetings attempting to moderate children’s writing and all have been largely unsuccessful this despite having exemplars (which are, in a way,a kind of national standard). There are just so many aspects to writing and so many different points of view about the weighting that should be given to the surface features of writing (spelling, paragraphing, punctuation etc) and the deeper features (how the story is told for example). My approach is always this – teachers should do their best to assess writing to help guide future teaching and learning – this is the most important bit. Then they should try to level the work the best they can – for school wide data (see above this data is always subject to differing points of view) and finally they should be most concerned that children are actually improving and making progress. To even contemplate that schools should be having meetings with neighboring schools to discuss moderation is ridiculous and quite simply a waste of time that could be used far more usefully. A note too on this ERO report comment on use of assessment data by Principals – the comment suggested that principals share their own schools assessment data with their boards but that they do not share data comparing their schools progress with that of other schools. That is due to one reason only – they don’t have access to that information – and neither should they.

By: Alex

Alex — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:31:38 +0000

Wonderful stuff Tolley is rapidly making the East Cape Electorate a very contestable seat. It all makes you wonder balance deleted personal abuse Trevor

By: Spud

Spud — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:02:04 +0000

I liked Lockwood in that video and he got her to answer the question.

By: n0exit

n0exit — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:25:40 +0000

The hand waving (dancingish??) thing tolley does around 9:12 is what makes it even worse…. Somebody needs to tell her she’s not selling houses anymore…… Also, out of the 10mins I think Lockwood Smith speaks for about 2 of them. Why does he need to talk so much when the decision is straight forward, you wouldn’t want people to think he’s stalling for her…. Do you ever get the urge to just tell him to sit down and shut up??

By: Carolyn Stuart

Carolyn Stuart — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:30:29 +0000

Why is it that the Minister of Education keeps quoting PISA as the evidence that the difference lies within primary schools? How can PISA possibly tell us this when it is a secondary school assessment?

By: Kelvin

Kelvin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:30:08 +0000

I meant to say ‘…. can’t read the massive amount of research against National Testing. Nor understand the massive amount of work……’

By: Kelvin

Kelvin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:22:47 +0000

Hi Trevor. Thanks for your efforts. It is just sad to me that we could have a Min of Ed who just doesn’t get it and apparently can’t read the massive amount of work that is going to be needed to implement the standards – much less true moderation across classes, let alone moderation across schools and districts.
Someone needs to tell her how standardised testing is infact ‘moderated’ or standardised!
Keep up the hard work.

By: Jules

Jules — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:01:46 +0000

I watched the video of Anne Tolley and laughed and cried. She has no idea of what happens in a school. I work in a school and enter the data for the teachers for the Asstle testing. Our teachers know which students aren’t achieving where they should be and are working with them to change this. Are our children going to be labeled as failures if they don’t reach the expected level for their age. This is going to be great for the childrens confidence.Has Tolley made allowances for ESOL (English as a second language) students. Half of my school are ESOL students. Hows that going to look for the school. The national government needs to get their head out of the sand and listen to what the NZ people (especially the education sector)are saying they know as they work with the children everyday.

By: Tracey

Tracey — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 20:00:27 +0000

…of course it isn’t really a “National” standard because Maori immersion and Private Schools are exempt, so it kind of applies nationally but not really…