Tolley asks people to look past standards controversy

Education Minister Anne Tolley has urged people to look beyond the controversy surrounding national standards as processes get underway to implement it in primary and intermediate schools.

Advisors this week begin training teachers in the delivery of national standards, and in a speech delivered in Auckland today Mrs Tolley said she believed the new policy was the biggest and most positive the education sector had seen in 20 years.

National standards are benchmarks in reading, writing and maths that will be used to assess year-one to -eight children, with regular reports sent to parents.

Many in the education sector have been critical of the new teaching requirements, demanding a trial to test it first and fearing league tables produced under the policy would be used by media to make black and white judgements of individual schools.

Mrs Tolley said schools were not required to report achievement data to the Education Ministry until 2012 and, in the meantime, stakeholders including unions, education associations and the ministry had agreed to work together on how data was to be reported and presented.

A three-year monitoring and evaluation programme had also been put in place, she said.

"National standards are not about league tables. Don't let yourselves get sidelined by that debate," she said.

"We all know the great variance in student achievement is within schools, not between schools.

"We have to balance the right to good information for parents and boards of trustees, alongside making sure that crude, misleading comparisons aren't made."

The New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) continued its criticism today, questioning how professional trainers could successfully train schools to implement the standards when they were untried and untested.

The system was being "pushed ahead" in the face of growing concern from parents, teachers, principals and educationalists, said NZEI president Frances Nelson. The union reiterated its call for a trial period - something the Government has dismissed.

"It is interesting that Mrs Tolley is explaining national standards to those tasked with helping to implement them when to date she hasn't been able to effectively explain them to schools or the New Zealand public," Ms Nelson said.

Mrs Tolley referred to a recent New Zealand Herald poll which said 73 percent of parents were in favour of national standards.

She said the gap between New Zealand's highest- and lowest-performing students was greater than other developed countries and getting wider. One in five young people were leaving school without adequate reading, writing or mathematical skills, and that needed to improve

At least 7000 teachers will be trained so they can use the standards effectively, and another 1200 will be offered opportunities to study university papers in literacy or numeracy to improve their content knowledge and understanding of effective teaching.

Mrs Tolley said teachers would be provided with the support needed to make systematic changes, and the Government was making available $36m earmarked in last year's budget to do so, on top of $26m being spent this year on professional development.