Ok can someone help me. As a parent should I be more concerned about the standards? On the news it showed all the principals who were opposed to it. Do they know more than us parents. What are your thoughts.

Basically it depends on a few things. If your school reported to you well before and you felt that you knew where your children were at, and that they were achieving age appropriately then they are meaningless. Or, if your children weren't achieving age appropriately, but they had been identified as needing extra support and were recieiving this (or were on a list to receive it when money/positions were available) then they are meaningless.

If you felt that your school had crap communication and you couldn't talk to anyone to find out what your kids were doing in terms of age appropriateness, then you might find national standards helpful.

All they are is a list of where kids should be at the end of their first 3 years of schooling, then for the next 3 years, where they should be by the end of each year level. Most schools I have been involved in have already communicated that sort of stuff, without having to do the things for nat standards (basically extra paperwork and some changes in the way stuff that is known is reported and seemingly from many parental comments not for the better). However, I know that there are some scchools that haven't been communicating this well with parents so that might help, though that remains to be seen.

And that is what the principals have issues with - the cost in teacher hours for PD, changes to report structures and everything else to implement something that has been proven to be totally irrelevant to lifting achievement levels overseas (in more than one country), has been since dropped in overseas countries in some cases as they have in fact found them counter-productive to achievement for something that has not been trialled or tested here.

had they said - ;et's trial this for a year, then introduced it when it was found to be useful, made changes to improve it before rolling it out countrywide - the principals would have had no problem.

Does that help?

Ok I get that now, thanks for that explanation makes sense. So much easier when someone explains it to you.

hehe, glad it was understandable!

i want to know WHY they don't do that? is it because they don't want to go 'oh we tried that but it didn't work so we are taking it back' and afraid it makes them look like they can't stick to anything/make bad choices/can't make a strong decision? because honestly i think a govt who says 'we did this and we were wrong about it' is much better than one that says 'we did this and its not working but WE DON'T CARE LALALALALA KEEP DOING IT MAYBE IT WILL WORK ONE DAY'.

my personal understand (and experience ) with national standards is that its kind of like a line in the sand, and if your kid falls under the line then they will get help to bring them up to the line and if you have a kid that is over the line but still needs help then you are screwed because the school is all tied up helping kids under the line because, you know, if you have kids under the line and you cannot meet this magical 'national standard' then you are really provideing sub-standard education, right? regardless of whether or not thats whats actually happening

i thought there already WERE standards, anyway? i mean, i know they like kids to be reading xx level by the end of year 3 and i imagine they have a bunch of goals each student should meet by the end of the year in order to progress on to the next year without struggling..... right? so.... why do we need national standards, then?

There have always been age expectations - it has never been randomly 'oh, you can be where you like, when you like'. And schools have always been working out who needs extra help from children falling below expectations.

Reading has always had a reading age - pretty easy to see where a child is by looking at their age and comparing it to the reading age then making a call as to whether or not the child is at risk of underachieving or is currently below due to all manner of reasons but likely to achieve at their level within a time frame without extra support.

With maths, obviously it is mainly numeracy focussed, but yeah, most schools have expectation of what level a child should be at within the numeracy levels, and again, support is there for those that need it.

interestingly, with all this so called 'identifying children who fall below standards to give extra support', there has yet to be any sign of extra money in schools to support these kids.



Very good qustion. I would say because it looks good. it looks like they are doing something. Education is a hot point with many - and to have something that whips them lefty commy teachers into line, focussing on reading, riting and rithmatic is also pretty popular with right lead governments.

I like the national standards - we have just had interviews and for all 3 kids the standards were spot on. The areas of focus were exactly what I would have expected - the areas that the boys are excelling at are also exactly what I would have thought.

Talking to the other parents - it is the same story.

Great it is working for you - and I know plenty of other schools that it is working well for too - and they have not had to change things much as they were already doing this. So I can see a total benefit for schools that were not communicating in this manner before them, if it improves what they are telling parents.

Then you have schools like Gutzmum on the other thread whose school sounds like their reporting to parents has got worse with standards, rather than better.

Because you see, all these standards require is saying if a child is going to meet them within the time frame for their year. It is then up to the school what else they do - I imagine that a school who communicated poorly before is still not going to communicate well!

The reporting that has got worse though is not the fault of the standards - its the fault of the school. They need to step up their game and the parents need to complain.

No, it is the fault of having too short a time, limited development at the expense of schools (no extra funding), unclear expectations in types of reporting and untrialled wholesale implemetation.

All the principals asked for was a years trial where things like the style of reporting could be finetuned before rolling out across the country.

The reporting that has got worse/not improved would then have had a standard to base itself against and parents would have a right to complain if it fell below the expected level. At the moment, if the reporting states the standard and where the child is in regards to achieving it, I don't think (not 100% sure of the exact requirements) there is anything else that needs to be said. So there is nothing to complain about.

As a parent the national standards are a waste of time for me. I have no interest at all in knowing how my children compare with others from similar schools...

The reality is that my children are very able. They can reach the 'national standard' while firing on two cylinders. To me, having this 'line' means that a teacher could use the results to say that the child is doing well. The reality however could be quite different.

We recently got a two page report (but not a report ) which says exactly what my children are achieving in literacy and numeracy.... all information I knew from personal discussions with their teachers and from working closely with my own children. Waste of the teacher's time.

National standards are never going to raise achievement, how can they?

well they haven't in any other country in the world that they have been in! Not a single one.

Exactly - you got told information that you already knew. The problem is, that information took teachers extra time and effort to formally give/record. Time the teacher could have used to make a real difference to a struggling child's education... IMO.



And we all know it... but somehow the people at the top don't...

And they are not a 'national' standard. At least NCEA exams are the same throughout the country.

I have to feed to the Y8 dean whether I think my students are at the standard for reading and writing. I get to make up the assessment and decide how to mark it and then decide if they are at the standard.... no moderation or any input from other teachers on what I am doing- sole charge decision by me. What a joke! I have had no PD in national standards being a secondary teacher so I base it on my professional opinion. Now having been a teacher for awhile and heavily involved in the national exams, I trust my judgement but I have no trust in a national standard comparability between schools.

And that is another thing that trialling them for a year would have worked out and come up with a more sensible solution.

amen

It's what the voters want. According to Ms. Tolley.

Sooo... my boys' school reports have always has three columns with below expected, expected, above expected for everything - and then a smiley face (how nice ) in the column that fits them. I take it that means they are meeting the expected 'standard' for their year?

We got a leaflet about the standards in the envelope with the school reports, but the reports look the same as they have since 2007 when M. got his first one, so I take it nothing needed to be changed and they have been reporting 'correctly' since then anyway?

To play devils advocate....if they HAD gone with trialling the standards for a year, wouldn't that have been quite inefficient cost wise? Presumably everyone still would have had to have training/PD etc on it anyway. I guess as TC said...if they decided it wasn't working and not to run with it, they would have an 'out' but as it is now, we have to suck it up and go with it. I guess the govt. is between a rock and a hard place - carry on in the face of opposition from professionals at the front lines, or ditch it - either way looks bad.

Don't know why everyone is so het up A good school will have standards similar to the new national ones anyway, it took our DP 30 minutes to change our report layout and was a lot less for us to enter so good for the teachers....

My only concern is part of the national standards involves OTJ or objective teacher judgement as a measurement... if you're a not so hot teacher your professional judgement is not going to be so good and they might amend (?) results/comments so THEY don't look bad to the parents.

Training for teachers on National Standards has been rushed and poor - training for parents has been terrible! Check out this link for some decent info, hope it helps! http://www.tworedapples.com/1/post/2010/07/national-standards-a-personal-view.html