NZ Principals Federation votes "no confidence" in National Standards - and teachers agree!

700 principals from around the country last weekend voted "no confidence" in National Standards.  The Minister's response:  don't vote for National. Rather than address the professional and ethical concerns professional leaders have, Anne Tolley just politicises the whole debate.  Meanwhile, NZEI has done a survey of teachers in primary schools around the country. More than 70% of staffrooms responding were at "boiling" or "warming up" temperatures in their reaction to the Standards.  And NZEI's own polling show that parents share teachers' concerns about the risk of labelling children as failures, de-motivating them as learners and narrowing the curriculum.  More than half of parents disagreed that the Standards would raise achievement, and even more believed that teachers gave a better idea of students' achievement than the National Standards.