National focused on labelling – not lifting achievement

new-zealand-labour-party

Tue Jul 16 2013 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

National focused on labelling – not lifting achievement

Tuesday, 16 July 2013, 2:33 pm
Press Release: New Zealand Labour Party

Chris Hipkins
Education Spokesperson

16 July 2013

National focused on labelling – not lifting achievement

Labelling a third of Year 8 students as failures will do nothing to lift achievement and highlights many of the problems with the National Government’s approach, says Labour’s Education spokesperson Chris Hipkins.

“National rushed the introduction and implementation of national standards without a trial and despite many legitimate concerns being raised by the teaching profession. It’s no wonder things aren’t going to plan.

“Any reports that achievement is waning deserve consideration, but the government’s first port of call should be teachers themselves. Tick-box data sets, which teachers have said can be ropey and unreliable, will not get to the bottom of underachievement in our schools.

“Continually measuring the problem won’t do anything to fix it. We don’t need national standards to know which students are falling behind, countless studies have already told us.

“We don’t need national standards to identify the solutions either, we already have some excellent professional development programmes that have successfully raised achievement amongst students who have typically struggled.

“We all want to raise our kids’ performance, but telling them they aren’t meeting the mark, without offering extra support to succeed is no use to anyone.

“Tying teachers up with data-laden deadlines isn’t helping our kids get ahead either.

“What teachers are telling me is that they are fed-up with this government’s own-goal approach to education. The focus cannot continue to be on data collection and labelling, our education policy must be centred around students.”

ENDS

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