Tolley’s crowing strikes sour note
new-zealand-labour-party
Fri Oct 15 2010 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)
Tolley’s crowing strikes sour note
Friday, 15 October 2010, 4:04 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party
Tolley’s crowing strikes sour note
Instead of crowing about how constructive consultation over Nga Whanaketanga Rumaki Maori (Maori-medium national standards) has been, Education Minister Anne Tolley should reflect on the shambolic process she has inflicted over English-medium national standards, says Labour Education spokesperson Trevor Mallard.
“Thanks to her lack of consultation on English-medium national standards, schools have to deal with a completely unworkable shambles,” said Trevor Mallard.
“She can’t even take any credit for the Maori schools if the process turns out to be real and not just for show there.
”The only reason things might be better there is because at the start of this year Associate Minister and Maori Party co-leader Pita Sharples withdrew his earlier support for the standards on the grounds that they ‘pose grave dangers for Maori’.
“Anne Tolley was then forced to extend the timeframe for the Maori-medium standards in order to placate him,” Trevor Mallard said. “It’s a pity the rest of our schools couldn’t find any minister in this Government willing to stand up for them too.
“A similar process of consultation over the English-medium National Standards might just have avoided the problems Anne Tolley has created.
”The vast majority of primary schools have been lumped with a poorly thought-out and unworkable National Standards policy that they are now have to try to make sense of while doing their best to shield students from the damage that might result.”
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Trevor Mallard said schools, parents and educational experts had raised serious concerns about the National Standards policy from the start.
“But their concerns have fallen on deaf ears. Anne Tolley still tries to claim that a thorough consultation process was undertaken, but how valuable can consultation be when the party leading it has already made its mind up, refuses to listen genuinely, and passes the policy into law without so much as a select committee hearing.”
ENDS
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