Real education standards are very important. Good standards measure value add or progress rather than a simple pass fail hurdle. They require professional support to work. They won’t get this support if they lead to league tables in newspapers. Under the Official Information Act this is inevitable. We need a law change to prevent this happening. Together we can build a campaign to change the law and therefore give us a chance to have strong, high quality, meaningful and effective standards.
This blog is a bit like those on drug driving, mall opening and education ownership. It is designed to elicit feedback to help build policy.
We need to decide what education standards are for. In my view they are an essential tool in improving teaching and learning. Working well they can identify strengths and weaknesses of individual students, teachers and schools. Good assessment can be used to direct future learning for both students and teachers. It is a vital part of a feedback loop to parents, senior teachers and principals.
I’m a strong believer in formative assessment. As Minister of Education I invested millions of your dollars building asTTle. It is a world leading assessment system. It is beginning to work as designed because teachers trust it. And it is a high trust model. Information is collected and shared on an implicit and sometimes explicit understanding that it will not be available for purient sensational and often meaningless comparisons by way of league tables.
Anne Tolley’s proposed standards won’t add any value to most schools. They look like they have been designed to fulfil an election promise rather than to have any educational benefit whatsoever. They measure hurdles that in some cases are very very low and in others are so wishy washy that there is room for tremendous variation in assessment between schools. Most importantly they don’t measure progress or the amount a child has developed over a particular period. That is they key measure of learning and thereby of teaching.
But it is no use consulting on that question until the fundamental one of “Who are they for?” is answered.
Because if they enhance teaching and learning, they will get professional support. If they lead to useless league tables and competition between schools they won’t. It is as simple as that.
I have had an informal discussion with the Ombudsman on the issue. He has made it clear to me if we want to protect the information and prevent the league tables the best approach is for parliament to do just that by changing the law.
I’m interested in your views. If there is widespread support for this approach (and remember the mainstream media will never support holding back tables that can dominate their front pages for two days a year) then I’m happy to build a campaign to get the law changed.