Hearts and minds

It is untenable that the democratically-elected Government of the country be held to ransom by elements in the education system intent of sabotaging a well-flagged national standards policy.

As Education Minister Anne Tolley has repeatedly pointed out - indeed it has become something of a mantra - the National Party campaigned conspicuously on addressing the distressing and unacceptably long "tail" of pupils failing to achieve even basic literacy and numeracy standards in our primary schools, and received the mandate to do something about it in the last election.

That mandate has taken the form of the introduction of national standards by which every young person in our primary schools is tested to gauge levels of literacy and numeracy - the better to identify, assess and address those who appear to be slipping behind.

It is on solid ground when it says it is determined to introduce the standards, and it must be within its wherewithal to "make it happen", but as the issue settles into intractable antagonism and entrenched positions, with regular sniping from both sides, it has to be said that this matter might have been handled with greater finesse.

Mrs Tolley has suffered considerable provocation, not least by the NZEI and the Principals' Federation, but it is one of the unwritten rules of political management that you keep the powder of your big guns dry until the last possible moment.

Her threat to sack, albeit in "extreme" cases, the boards of primary schools which "allow" teachers to boycott the new standards regime seems precipitous and potentially counter-productive.

It is not at all clear that the point of no return had been reached, and it is a measure of Mrs Tolley's political inexperience and apparently authoritarian temperament that she has allowed herself to be painted into this particular corner - when wiser heads in similar situations have estimated the turmoil ahead and proved more flexible.

ACC Minister Nick Smith and the motorcycle levies affair springs to mind.

There is no dishonour in taking a slightly more circuitous route to arrive at the same destination.

That is the art of politics.

It is also what teachers' unions, principals and academics seem to be advocating with their suggestions of a trial period before the standards are introduced proper.

Auckland University education head Prof John Hattie and a group of three other education academics have called for a trial, not because they are opposed to the intent, rather because they are concerned a hasty implementation will result in failure of the policy.

That is in no-one's interests, least of all those of our primary-school children.

Mrs Tolley might be forgiven for imagining that the opposition put up in the face of the new regime is philosophical: educators across the country have aired views at odds with those of the minister, some citing the tarnished experiences of other countries' literacy and numeracy programmes.

But it is also true that the large proportion of the teaching profession is of a different political stripe to the minister and therefore predisposed to become excitable at top-down pronouncements and the school ma'am-ish manner that Mrs Tolley has been known to assume.

That the issue has now descended into an ideological stalemate is, however, as much the fault of the teaching unions and what might be described as their self-interested stance.

But if the policy is going to be a success then the people - the teachers - implementing it must have confidence in both its design, and its results.

One of the loudest objections, beyond the nakedly ideological retort that such standards do not work, is that of lack of consultation.

It might exasperate Mrs Tolley that she has made, she claims, many changes in response to feedback from teachers, but there are lessons to be learned in the way the entire initiative has been handled.

They include those of "process" and "political pragmatism" - the latter ironically having proven a hallmark of John Key's Government thus far - and involve concepts such as consultation, negotiation and compromise.

The literacy and numeracy failings of our children must be addressed.

Most in the teaching profession have no argument with that.

It is just that they have yet to be convinced of the Government's proposed model - and the timetable for its introduction.

This latest talk about sacking school boards which do not insist on its implementation is hardly likely to further Mrs Tolley's cause.