National Standards

Readers might remember a school called Dalefield School because its principal Kevin Jephson has featured in posts on the blog about National Standards. He was a very vocal opponent of them.

Regular readers will be aware of a nasty little Wairarapa principal called Kevin Jephson.

His style is to slag off the Government, National Standards and Anne Tolley to his local papers – which dutifully print every word, without wondering why he would be so critical.

Well, now we know.

Yet again, brave, plucky little Kevin is getting in the first blow against the big bad Government by going public with his school’s National Standards results – apparently instead of him and his teachers being responsible for poor standards at his school it is the government’s fault because they measured him and found him wanting.

But this usual smokescreen won’t hide the tragic facts for kids and parents at his school.

These results are shocking. That’s why the MoE wants to give them help.

Finally the Ministry of Education has acted and sacked the board which included Kevin Jephson.  Read more »

OK, so the teachers’ unions and their Labour/Green lapdogs have had their day in the sun.

It has to stop.

And let’s not forget the only tactic these scum have is to try and force the sacking or resignation of the education minister – so they can go on serving their own interests at the expense of kids.

They tried it with Tolley - and didn’t they just hate it when she refused to back down and won the battles of national standards, cuts to the bloated ECE sector, pay talks and hobby night classes.

Tolley’s rat cunning divided the unions and made them look selfish and unreasonable, while keeping parents onside.

Now the unions are back, all over the media pretending they are normal and pretending they care about education.

They are not normal. They don’t give a damn about parents or students.

They want to be in charge of the education sector. They think they have won.

They must be stopped.

Labour and the teachers unions hated the fact Anne Tolley had parents on side with National Standards and refused to back down.

Another supporter of National Standards is…John Tamihere.

His trust bought the West Auckland franchise for the Kip McGrath tutoring service 14 months ago because it was not happy with local schools.

“We are sick and tired of hearing that it’s our solo mothers that are failing the schools, it’s low-income families that are failing the schools,” he said.

“We know it’s our schools that are failing the families.

“We can’t have our babies hitting secondary school and not being able to participate in the secondary school curriculum because they can’t read and write and at no stage were we advised that it was a problem. So we support National Standards.”

He said that stance “doesn’t enamour us to the Principals’ Association in our area”.

“They say we are being judgmental on them. We have to be. We can’t allow this spate of Maori boys, in particular, to fall out of secondary school without even level 1 NCEA.”

So he isn’t afraid to go against teachers unions – which Labour has been relying on for support.

This should be interesting.

This is about what happens to you when you state publicly that you support National Standards.

The local Principals’ Association has written to this Principal and accused him of bringing the profession into disrepute.

Bear in mind that this is the same organisation, or affiliated organisation that never sanctioned Marlene Campbell for likening Anne Tolley to Adolf Hitler and Goebbels.

But dare speak in support of National Standards and you must be punished and censured for “bringing the profession into disrepute”. Might I suggest that Principals arguing against government policy ad nauseum is worse?

Principals

Paul Drummond doesn’t like National Standards but then talks about what they show re: equity/eqality. He also wants the government to address poverty in education and says so from a taxpayer funded junket in Melbourne with stacks of other Principals.

Principals Federation president Paul Drummond, who remains staunchly against the national standards in literacy and numeracy, said data obtained by Fairfax Media at least confirmed the “very strong correlation between student achievement and socio-economic status”.

“This highlights the fact that if we want to improve and lift achievement and learning in our schools across all things, then we have to make a really genuine effort to improve equity,” Mr Drummond said.

“Maybe this will be the catalyst for a stronger Government response around those equity issues. It has been worthwhile in confirming those correlations, but we knew that before national standards.”

National Standards data is everywhere as of yesterday. Big front page features in Dom and Herald. The cat is out of the proverbial bag and will never be put back.

Parents will be all over it. This info has never existed or been made public before. Fairfax has a very comprehensive website which makes for interesting reading.

Here is just one example:

Both of these schools have similar catchments and feeder schools. Yet somehow Howick Intermediate is a Decile 5. You can see the impact on this int he funding per student. Howick Intermediate receives $1578 more per student by having a lower decile rating than BBI. I know very well both of these schools. My son went to Howick Intermediate and my daughter went to BBI.

Howick Intermediate is rorting the decile system. That is how they manage to have a much lower decile rating and consequently a higher capitation per student. What they do is bus in kids from Sth Auckland, about 3 bus loads per day. It lowers their decile rating and they rake in the extra cash.

But here is the rub, it is a crap school, and parents know it. Look at the roll difference between the two.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the Principal at Howick Intermediate is a dyed in the wool unionist know it all. Also unsurprisingly Howick Intermediate hasn’t supplied data for the National Standards.

The NZEI and NZPF battled hard and tried everything to make Anne Tolley back down. She didn’t, and used her cunning to beat them at their own game.

The government and parents won.

The unions have suffered a big defeat. This genie is out of the bottle and now we can move forward in requiring more transparency and improving reporting and

In this interview Labour’s always eloquent Leader explains his education policy.

To summarise:

Labour will keep national standards in schools…
However, there won’t be any funding…
They won’t be national…
And they won’t include standards..

Glad we cleared that up.

Labour continues to flip flop all over the place regarding National Standards. These are statements from past spokespeople that directly contradict their current leader’s position that National Standards won’t be overturned.

National has now completely and comprehensively won the argument on National Standards.

The sideshow is going – let’s focus on improving teaching and learning

Posted by Trevor Mallard on October 16th, 2010
After lots of consultation the Labour Conference education workshop has passed a remit that will result in the Tolley standards being dropped.

and;

National: No New Ideas

Posted by Iain Lees-Galloway on February 15th, 2010

Look at what the first year of National-led government has brought us: Laissez-faire economics, tax-cuts for the rich, cuts to the public sector, National Standards in primary schools. All old ideas. All bad ideas.

and;

Labour on Standards

Posted by Trevor Mallard on December 1st, 2009

I’m interested in feedback on a clear sharp position statement on National’s education standards. How does this run with people as a proposed policy position:-“Labour will abolish the requirement for primary schools to examine and report to the Ministry of Education against a set national standard and will require ERO to report in each of their reviews of primary schools on the quality of formative assessment used in the school and the clarity of the reporting to parents.”

and;

National standards must focus on performance of students not schools

Trevor Mallard  |  Friday, October 23, 2009 – 12:38

Labour Education spokesperson Trevor Mallard says care must be taken to ensure the risk of information gathered by the Government’s new National Standards are not used to stigmatise poorer schools.

“We support standards to ensure parents get good information on the progress of their children – but standards have to be very carefully managed to ensure the information is used correctly.” Trevor Mallard said.

“There are risks that data collected into a national database will be turned into school league tables which will use to highlight poor performing schools.

“There is also risk that publishing league tables could negatively affect the ability of those schools to recruit teachers with the skill turn their performance around.”

Does Labour even know what it is talking about with Education? Does David Shearer?

Last month Labour’s education spokeswoman:

Just so I am clear from the outset, Labour does not support National Standards and League Tables. The Government has told parents on the one hand that they deserve good information about student achievement but are happy to mandate and post ‘ropey’ data on the Ministry’s website.

Labour does not support National Standards.

Except David Shearer on Breakfast has made that statement look silly:

“We won’t cancel National Standards. But many schools will want to move onto something a lot more comprehensive”

So Labour has done a complete flip flop on National Standards and now wants to in fact extend National Standards into something much mire comprehensive.