'Not achieved'

In the battle for the minds of junior school pupils, it may be supposed by outsiders that all the usual weapons are being brought to bear.

On one side stands the Minister of Education, Anne Tolley, with the backing of National Party policy, insisting that standards of education among the young be improved and bringing to bear an armoury of selective statistics to support her case.

On the other side stand the teachers, represented by their various unions, who in general terms consider themselves to be the experts in education and that their views should prevail.

It would be a laughable situation were it not so serious, or such important issues were at stake.

In the middle are the parents whose chief hope is that their children will emerge from the school system able to read, write and count, properly equipped to keep on learning and to take their due place in the workaday world.

If perceptions that standards in education had not slipped, particularly in English and arithmetic, would there now be an insistence that they be achieved, that the quality of education ought to be comparable between schools, and that those experts largely - but by no means wholly - responsible be held to account?

Consider the state of numeracy and literacy, as measured in school leaver statistics published by the Ministry of Education earlier this month for the 2008 year: nearly a fifth failed to achieve even NCEA Level One or above. Is that good enough?

If one major purpose of the national standards is to identify pupils who are falling behind and provide help to schools to ensure they improve, what sense is there in resisting it?

If primary and intermediate schools are obliged from next year to measure pupil progress in basic subjects against desired standards, and report the information to parents, what objection can teachers have to it? Is it the fear of their own teaching standards being challenged?

The publication last week of a report by the Education Review Office into the education of some of our youngest pupils, while politically timely so far as Mrs Tolley's battle may be concerned, was also sufficiently reassuring for most parents of new entrants.

The office surveyed 212 schools and found that, in most, reading and writing was being taught to a high or good standard, and that most teachers approached literacy teaching passionately.

Mrs Tolley or her spin doctors chose not to emphasise this conclusion, but to feature another finding of the report, that while 70% of teachers were performing well, the other 30% were not.

Teachers will say that the phenomenon is well known and may be a consequence of schools having newly graduated teachers take year 1 and year 2 classes.

In other words, inexperience is being matched with ignorance, when such classes really need very competent and experienced teachers.

If that is the case, then the problem is one of employment and process.

The setting of national standards will not solve it.

More worrying was the report's finding that almost two-thirds of principals and senior managers were not properly monitoring students' achievement or progress, and that three-quarters of principals did not set expectations of high achievement levels.

To which a parent might respond by asking: what are school boards of trustees doing about that? Surely, the responsibility for standards in education does not end at the teacher's or the principal's door.

The point is well made by the office in its report that school leaders, teachers and trustees need to reflect on the quality of teaching, assessment and monitoring of reading and writing for children in their first two years at school.

Quite properly, the office suggests processes of regular self-reviewing by boards will quickly establish the extent of underachievement and lead to improvements.

Behaviour like that of the trustees of Macandrew Intermediate in Dunedin, ordering its principal not to open a box containing information about the national standards initiative until the Ministry provided effective professional development and a clear implementation pathway, is entirely unhelpful, however symbolic, if the trustees' goal is improved literacy and numeracy for the pupils for which they are responsible.

Schools have nothing to fear from national standards if effective teaching is already taking place - as it clearly is in the majority of schools - and where it is not occurring, national standards will require improved practices, closer monitoring and steps to correct poor teaching.

Parents should demand nothing less.