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Anne Tolley
If I were in a better frame of mind, it might have made
me smile. But since John Key has set the smiling standard,
beaming ceaselessly from the web, television, newspapers, and
now the glorious pamphlet for parents on national standards in
primary schools, I feel inadequate.
My lips are too thin, my lipstick's not right and
my teeth are yellow.
I can't even live up to Education Minister Anne Tolley's
rather too wide and, dare I say it, slightly
desperate-looking grin which also features on the same
pamphlet, along with many National Party logos.
Quite why the taxpayer should be required to pay hundreds of
thousands of dollars for anything featuring such happy snaps
and any party logo I am not sure, particularly when National
used to be critical of others for similar behaviour.
Still, as I said, I am not in a good frame of mind.
If I were, I might also be roaring with laughter at the
incongruity of the PM's electioneering pamphlet appearing the
same week he was prissily tut-tutting about the
inappropriateness of money-making from the Maori flag.
Following my late grandmother's advice for the doldrums, I
have been tidying, a chore she enjoyed as much as I do - her
theory being that doing something "ghastly" must make you
feel better afterwards.
Delving into the rats nest in my bedroom I discovered old
files from the late 1990s about plans for national external
tests for literacy and numeracy in primary schools at years 5
and 7.
Sadly, the parents' information pamphlet on that, How is Your
Child Really Doing at School?, has not survived my filing
system.
Perhaps it featured photos of an ebullient Dr Nick Smith, the
Nats' then minister of education.
Whatever it contained, I wasn't impressed at the time,
describing it in a submission as inadequate and clearly
designed to get a yes vote for testing.
I also posed the curly question, and am not sure it was ever
answered, of what would happen if I refused to have my
children participate, since other forms of national testing
were a matter of choice.
Nick was banging on about Spice at the time - Standards,
Pride, Innovation, Choice, Excellence - and National making
no apologies for being the party of choice.
"We believe choice helps drive excellence."
Do parents have any choice under the current standards
proposals?As four education academics, including Otago's
Terry Crooks and Lester Flockton, pointed out in their very
reasonable letter to Anne Tolley last year, the outcomes of
national standards could be worse than national testing.
