National Party MPs are holding meetings for parents on Anne Tolley’s standards. Here are some questions that could be asked:
Do you fully understand how National Standards will work in practice? Do you think Anne Tolley does? Can you explain exactly how the inter-school moderation will be carried out?
Why won’t you do a trial? If you did a trial and National Standards were found to be as successful as you claim they will be then parents and teachers would be able to have some confidence in them. Kura Kaupapa (Maori language immersion schools) are allowed to trial the standards before they are implemented so why not mainstream schools as well?
Is he/she confident that teachers know how National Standards are supposed to actually work and how they are supposed to implement them, because from what we are hearing they do not. Does the Minister even know how National Standards are supposed to work?
Considering that we know most parents do not understand National Standards and most teachers and education professionals are against National Standards, why is the government pushing ahead with them with such urgency? Doesn’t a trial seem like a fair and reasonable request?
Wouldn’t the government be better off spending the money it is putting towards National Standards on programmes or services that have already been proven to work, such as literacy support and teacher aides, rather than on something that is completely untested and unproven?
[NB: If they answer that they are putting money into teacher development as well, you can point out that In the May 2009 Budget, the National Government announced there would be $95 million worth of savings made over four years from the teachers staffing budget]
The government says that schools will report students’ progress to parents using a Plunket-style graph because it is easy for parents to understand. Isn’t there actually a risk that, in cases where teachers are already doing a good job of reporting to parents using existing methods such as schools reports and parent-teacher interviews, teachers will revert to using this Plunket-style graph instead and parents will actually end up getting a lot less useful information about how their kids are going at school?
Doesn’t the National Standards’ narrow focus on literacy and numeracy directly contradict the new curriculum?
What about other important subjects like science and art? Not all students are equal and a student who struggles in maths may excel in art, but National Standards will not recognise that.
How will the government ensure that National Standards does not lead to some teachers ‘teaching to the test’?
Won’t this lead to teachers putting their focus and energy only on those students who just need a little extra tuition to meet the National Standards, at the expense of our lowest performing students who would take too much teacher investment to get to a level where they can meet the Standards, and at the expense of our brightest students who will meet the Standards anyway?
Isn’t it harmful to label a child as young as 5 years old as a ‘failure’ because they do not meet the “standards” of their year group?
How will the government ensure that the way teachers measure whether a child is meeting the National Standards is consistent from teacher to teacher or school to school? The government has said that teachers can keep using the assessment techniques they currently use, but obviously these are not all equal so won’t this lead to unfair and inappropriate judgements about the quality of teachers and schools?
Is there a risk that this could lead to some teachers falsely marking students so that they “meet” the standards, even though in reality they are not?
Been talking to a few parents who support standards and think it is as simple as taking a test and reporting the result, the old A,B,C,D,E. More important than the minister, what are the questions we can pose for the parents so THEY realise the damage of this policy.
I can think of a few I have twigged people, such as why are we taking the 4th best system and copying the systems below us, on the advice of a real estate agent?
P.S. Trevor, I just caught up with some friends visiting from England, and Poms living here. All Parents, and every single one commented on the dramatic drop in Math & English and how the papers/experts all blame standards. They cannot believe we would consider following Can we import someone from UK schools to talk to the minister & PM?
P.S. Nice pat on the back today from Jane Clifton.
My first question would be… what is another alternative to help those 150,000 kids who are leaving school each year unable to read and write properly under the current system?
The second would be…. how can kids do science or art or anything if they can’t read and write?
The third would be… so teachers aren’t against the National Standards so much as the fact they are not being trialled?
@johnbt
Science goes hand in hand with reading. If a interest is sparked in a child through science, they are more likely to want to read about it. Be it an interest in space, reading a picture book on rockets going up into space etc.
If a child wanted to know about how plants drink when they have no mouth, show them roots and explained that the flowers suck up water through the roots, into the stem and into the flower. show them two white flowers and put one in blue food colouring and the other in water, yes a science experiment. The one in blue water turns pale blue after a few days. Then read a book like Sunflower house, my sons fav at the moment, and any other books on the subject.
They are more likely to read when an interest is sparked and reading needs to be practiced.
@ johnbt.
In most cases it’s not the system that’s the problem but the kids’ backgrounds. So the answer is to spend money and time on improving their lives and then they will have a chance to learn to read and write properly. I guess it’s a bit much for righties (like yourself?) to be able to work that one out.
@ A Mother, that in no way answers any of my questions. A kid cannot read about science if they can’t read.
@ Anne, I will assume you are a “lefty” as you totally ignore my questions and attack me as being a “righty” (which, on this blog, is akin to cussing) and believe that more money will solve the problem. So, I will ask… why is it that nobody has refuted the claims that there are a large number of incompetent teachers and principals out there?
@ johnbt – read the Cambridge study which shows (in a way that might be counter intuitive) that narrowing the curriculum in this way has negative results even in literacy and numeracy. That also happened in the US when they adopted a simialr approach.
It is a way to motivate children to learn to read. If they are motivated, do you not think that it would be easier to teach and for them to learn?
First thing most children recognise in print – their own name. Why? It’s personally interesting to them.
Same applies to subsequent learning. If a child wants to know, they are much easier to teach.
@Linda. Yes and this works better than National Standards. Just like I was saying with the science example above. You just said what I was trying to say.
I lecture at a Polytechnic. I, and my colleagues work hard to find ways to convey information (learning) to our students by using a context which interests them. I teach law to Sport Management and Coaching students. I could teach them entirely within a Legal framework with best legal examples. However, those examples will be from all spheres of society activity and many will not interest them. They will also have (on the whole) little or no personal experience of the subject areas. Accordingly EVERYTHING is sport connected, the cases, the examples, the context. Sport is their passion, law is what they need to understand to pass the course.
I hope that helps johnbt understand Linda and A Mother’s point more easily.
[...] I see from the local newspaper clippings that she is planning to do a few meetings at national party offices around the country to justify her pathetic development and implementation of her standards policy. Some aren’t big enough to take the parents from a whole class of kids. Talk about a chicken staying on safe ground. And I see from her otherwise light schedule that she is limiting her meetings to one hour – to avoid having to answer the pretty obvious questions. [...]