Academics join the fray with open letter to Anne Tolley

Open Letter to the Minister of Education, Hon Anne Tolley

Warning about the new National Standards system

Minister, we are education academics from the Universities of Otago, Waikato and
Auckland who attended the National Standards forum organised by the NZEI last week.
We are writing to tell you that we share the main concerns expressed at the forum about
the intended new system of National Standards.
We are deeply committed to helping primary teachers to promote high quality learning for
all of their students. Assessment plays a key role in teachers’ work – it gives them vital
information about the results of their work with the whole class and with individual children,
helps them to give appropriate help and guidance to all children, and forms the basis for
effective reporting to parents and school leaders.
The Government has developed National Standards with similar goals in mind, and we
can see considerable merit in the idea of clearly identifying stages in the development of
children’s knowledge and skills, assessing each child’s progress and level of
achievement, and reporting that progress and achievement in accurate and
understandable ways to parents. There is also merit in paying close attention to the
development of children’s skills in reading, writing and mathematics, as is normally the
case in schools already.
Much of the work in developing the intended National Standards reflects positively on
those who have been involved in that process. However, the very brief time frame allowed
for the development of the standards and associated guidelines and requirements has
resulted in fundamental flaws.
Minister, in our view the flaws in the new system are so serious that full implementation of
the intended National Standards system over the next three years is unlikely to be
successful. It will not achieve intended goals and is likely to lead to dangerous side effects.
We are very concerned that the intended National Standards system wrongly assumes
that children are failing if they do not meet the standard for their age. This will lead to the
repeated labelling of many young children as failures and will be self-fulfilling because it
will damage children’s self-esteem and turn them off learning and achieving in literacy and
numeracy and other curricula areas. There are many successful New Zealanders with
unexceptional school records who would not have succeeded had they been constantly
labelled as failures during their childhood. A better form of assessment and reporting
would focus on the progress that children are making and we believe this is the approach
that should be being used.
Minister, you are aware the international record on the effects of national testing is
damning. We recognise the intended National Standards are not national tests, but our
understanding of why national testing has such adverse effects convinces us that the
intended National Standards system will suffer most of the same problems. We are
concerned about the damage that will occur if the performance of children against the
Standards is reported publicly, as has happened internationally. We stress that such
reporting of results at each year level will distort and impoverish the culture of teaching
and learning and assessment within schools. It will undermine the new curriculum and
lead to a narrower, less interesting form of primary education for New Zealand children. It
will also result in inappropriate judgements about the quality of schools and teachers.
We advise that the descriptions and examples of the Standards are not sufficient, at this
stage, to allow them to be applied consistently. Teachers will be forced to report to parents
and principals to their Boards in ways that could not be trusted to be sufficiently consistent
from teacher to teacher or school to school. There is likely to be far too much unnecessary
testing of children as teachers attempt to justify their judgements against uncertain
standards. In this respect the outcomes of the intended National Standards could be even
worse than national testing.
Minister, for all of these reasons, we advise further development work is necessary before
all schools are asked to implement National Standards. Such work should involve:
shifting the focus to measuring and reporting children’s progress against standards;
developing ways to moderate the judgements of teachers to achieve high consistency in
the interpretation and application of standards; developing agreed protocols with teacher
organisations for the use of data so as to prevent the adverse effects of reporting such
data on teaching and learning, and trying out standards in a sample of, say, 150 to 200
schools. In our view this additional work would allow the development of the most effective
implementation strategy to ensure standards are successfully introduced, without the
negative consequences.
In our view the intended National Standards system has little chance of engaging the
hearts and minds of New Zealand primary teachers. Our primary teachers have a strong
ethic of care for children. We believe they are opposing National Standards not because
they are reluctant to be accountable but because of genuine concerns about the effects of
the national standards system on children and their learning. However there is still the
potential to work with teachers and other educators to develop a system of National
Standards that could work. We note that it is because the new curriculum was developed
through extensive consultation with all parties that it has become a development that
schools are excited about.
Minister, we are all senior academics with international reputations and extensive New
Zealand and international experience in relation to education policy and assessment
issues. We urge you to take our advice seriously.
Prof. Martin Thrupp, University of Waikato
Prof. John Hattie, University of Auckland
Prof. Terry Crooks, University of Otago
Lester Flockton, University of Otago
23 November 2009