The implementation of National Standards could come with negative effects for the New Zealand school system, Gore educators warn.
Public consultation on the government's planned implementation of National Standards for primary and intermediate schools is set to begin next month.
Gore High School acting rector Jackie Barron said whether the policy would have negative or positive results would be ‘‘a case of wait and see''.
‘‘Research from countries which have implemented National Standards show they have been unsuccessful in improving literacy and numeracy rates,'' Mrs Barron said.
Mrs Barron said she would be interested to see how the standards would be implemented, how they would be assessed, and what additional funding would be made available to schools to deal with them.
‘‘Teachers will have to be trained in the National Standards, taught how to assess them, and there will be a whole other level of administration work to deal with, all of which will cost money.
‘‘I think a lot of people will be sitting on the fence . . . I'm sure everyone would be interested to hear exactly how they plan to implement them and how we'll be expected to report on them.''
Mrs Barron said she was not antistandards, but she was wary of another level of assessment schools might not be given the funds to carry out properly.
St Peter's College acting principal Lindy Cavanagh-Monaghan said National Standards could have positive and negative effects.
‘‘My immediate thoughts are that National Standards could be potentially useful as a set of guidelines to gauge where a pupil should be in their learning, but they could also be potentially dangerous,'' she said.
‘‘Particularly if they are used to try to determine a school's performance - that wouldn't be a valid use of that information.''
Striking an equal balance between assessments and learning was always a difficult task, but it could be detrimental to a pupil's development if the time spent assessing outweighed the time they spent learning, Mrs Cavanagh-Monaghan said.
‘‘Assessments at the moment are more individual and take into consideration a range of factors and use a range of tools.
‘‘National Standards could pave the way for everyone to be judged under one blanket, taking away that individual approach, which could have negative effects for some students.''
East Gore Primary School principal Wes Gentle said it was important not to neglect the different decile levels of schools when dealing with National Standards.
‘‘I'm not opposed to it [National Standards], but the problem I have is, if they start imposing standardised tests, it could lead to people teaching to those tests,'' Mr Gentle said.
‘‘It's not a level playing field either. Children start their education at different levels, and come in with different skills, so schools have to be able to take different approaches to their education.''
