Dellis Hunt's Page

Morning Dellis

My interest is professional as a former principal now working as a professional develop ment advisor mostly in leadership and management. I was involved in the development of the NCEA so am aware of the fraught nature of introducing a new assessment system based on standards. I'm not opposed to defining standards for attainment per se because I believe it sharpens teachers' understanding of curriculum achievement objectives and assists in promoting professional discussion amongst teachers about how to assess and moderate studnet attainment against the standards.

My problem with national standards is the ways in which the information generated from the application of the standards will be used, especially as a means of measuring school and teacher performance and then used as a stick to beat teachers around the head.

Inspite of all the promises from MoE and politicians about not using the information for this prupose the experience of the US and the UK suggests otherwise - the temptatiuon will be just too great for politicians and the media to use the achievment information as a way of ranking teachers and schools.

Hi Dellis
I'm happy for you to create links to my blog :-)

Happy to keep in touch Dellis. This debate is going to carry for some time I expect. One downside of this focus on 'standards' is the narrowing of the curriculum that wil result - I've seen the practical expression of this in the changes the MoE is making to professinoal development contracts which will see learning area advisory support for teachers in primary schools replaced by a focus on numeracy and literacy advisory support - this seems to overlook the fact that literacy and numeracy skills are most readily acquired by developing those skills in a range of learning area contexts - science, social studies,technology etc