Labour puts an end to National Standards

The Government has officially ended the National Standards programme, meaning schools from next year will no longer have to report on them annually.

Labour has had a long-standing position to scrap National Standards and Education Minister Chris Hipkins says both schools and parents had lost confidence in them.

While schools will no longer report on National Standards they will still be able to use the assessment tool in the classroom to report child progress against the curriculum.

NZEI, the country’s biggest teacher union, said it was a ‘‘day of celebration’’ for those who ‘‘fought tooth and nail’’ against the introduction of National Standards in 2010.

‘‘National Standards narrowed the curriculum, put undue pressure on children, increased teacher workload and weren’t even an accurate measure of a child’s progress,’’ NZEI president Lynda Stuart said.

‘‘We never gave up the fight and our members can be rightly proud of their hard work and determination that has resulted in the new government putting an end to this horrible experiment.’’

Christchurch’s Linwood North School principal, Sandra Smith, had mixed feelings about the standards being scrapped, saying there needed to be some kind of guideline for reporting.

‘‘I just find that it’s really challenging, being in education a long time, that things keep getting changed.

‘‘All the systems seem to be flawed because they rely on overall teacher judgement and that tends to vary greatly.’’

There were much better ways of reporting than National Standards, which could be ‘‘quite cruel on some children and families, particularly if you never meet standard’’, she said.

Many principals would be pleased with the standards being scrapped, she said.

The Principals’ Federation is delighted by the move and its president, Whetu Cormick, said it was a ‘‘win for all principals’’. ‘‘We repeatedly said that National Standards were not a valid measure of a school’s performance, would not raise achievement and would narrow the curriculum to reading, writing and mathematics.’’

‘‘Today we were vindicated,’’ Cormick said.

National’s education spokeswoman Nikki Kaye said there would be confusion around this change and nobody was clear on what the new system will look like.

‘‘It’s a very sad day for New Zealand. We’ve got a Minister making a decision that affects hundreds and thousands of children and their parents without consulting with parents, without talking to them about what this new system could look like.’’

Kaye said she would have liked to work with the Government on new tools for measuring progress.

An international study last week revealed children of New Zealand’s National Standards era had lower literacy, which Hipkins said at the time was a sign the assessment system had ‘‘clearly failed’’.

New Zealand ranked 33rd out of 50 countries in the 2016 Progress in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) released yesterday, behind frontrunners Russia and Singapore and eight places lower than in 2011.

‘‘Last week’s international report showed that since National Standards were introduced in 2010 reading levels of New Zealand children have dropped to their lowest level on record. It made sobering reading,’’ Hipkins said.

‘‘Today I am announcing that the Government has stopped National Standards and Nga¯ Whanaketanga Rumaki Ma¯ ori and will instead focus on the progress and achievement of all children across the New Zealand Curriculum and Te Marautanga o Aotearoa.’’

Hipkins said the process of of compelling schools to report National Standards was ‘‘little more than a compliance exercise and was a major distraction to schools’’.

‘‘There are better ways to build a nationwide picture.’’