Labour: No more national standards

More upheaval for students will come under a Labour-led government with plans to axe the way children are assessed in schools.

The national standards system used to test pupils in primary school would be replaced with a new model under Labour, and it would do a complete review of assessment load on both students and teachers at NCEA level.

Labour rolled out its education manifesto yesterday ahead of the September election, although much of it had already been announced or signalled in the last year.

The policy will see an extra $4 billion invested over four years, although $400 million is yet to be allocated and would likely be used on future announcements.

National standards, which test year 1 to 8 pupils on reading, writing and maths, were introduced in 2010 and have undergone a long bedding-in process as teachers, students and parents have struggled to make sense of how the standards work.

NCEA was phased in to secondary schools between 2002 and 2004.

Labour’s education spokesman Chris Hipkins said the ‘‘underinvestment’’ under National could no longer be ignored.

‘‘Nor the rapidly expectations our learners are facing.’’

Hipkins said the issue with national standards is that they’re not ‘‘national or standard’’. changing youngest

‘‘They’ve basically become a compliance, form-filling exercise, that’s resulted in an enormous increase in teacher workload without any real increase in student achievement, so we think we can ease that.’’

He said a new model to replace national standards would be a return to ‘‘formative testing’’ of the curriculum.

‘‘The very best thing that parents can do if they want to know how their kids are doing is have a conversation with their kids’ teachers.’’

Some other initiatives detailed in the manifesto include rebuilding outdated and worn-out school buildings, so that every school has modern classrooms by 2030, at a cost of $1.77b.

The next big ticket item, which had previously been announced, is introducing three years of free post-school education or training at a cost of $942m over four years.

Labour’s three free years policy would apply to university students, apprenticeships or training or retraining in NZQA approved courses.

The plan will be introduced in phases, with one year’s education available from 2019, two years from 2022 and three years from 2025 – rising to a cost of $1.2b at full implementation.

Labour had already announced yesterday an end to voluntary donations for the majority of parents across the country. Those schools who take up the scheme to stop asking parents for donations would receive an extra $150 per student.