It was only a matter of time before this response came forward from the opposition.
It is scary to think how blind some people become by their own ignorance. Nikki Kaye shows just how out of touch she is with schools and what National Standards actually provided.
The government’s plan to scrap National Standards in schools is bad news for parents and will remove a key source of information, says former Education Minister Nikki Kaye.
Chris Hipkins, education minister in Jacinda Ardern’s new Labour-led government, has said primary schools will have to report to parents on progress across curriculum subjects.
But National Standards, which set out levels of numeracy and literacy for Years 1 to 8, will be abolished.
Mr Hipkins told the New Zealand Herald there were a range of tools schools could use for that, and it was a matter between teachers and parents.
Ms Kaye says it shows a disregard for parents and students.
See. No. If anything, it shows regard for parents and students. No teacher wants to label children, and even less so when we’re being asked each year to label kids with labels that have extremely negative connotations. No student needs to work hard all year, only to be told they’re “Well Below”. A generation of students who think “What’s the point” and who have learned to give up because all the hard work they have done hasn’t met a certain standard? Yeah… disregard for parents and students. Totally.
“Parents need to know where their kids are up to and children need to know how they are getting on,” she said on Monday.
“Families also deserve to know what Labour will replace National Standards with – not be told they are going to overhaul the way our students learn but will get back to you with the details later.”
Once again, Ms Kaye is wrong here. Why does National Standards have to be replaced with anything? Do doctors get rid of tumours and replace them with a benign lump of fat? No. Get rid of it. Destroy it. And let it heal. That’s what needs to happen here. In addition, National Standards has not been a system for how students learn, and never has. It has had a profound impact on how we teach, because of the complete restriction over the subjects that require the most attention, but it has not, and was never designed to, be a way that children learn.
Ms Kaye says National Standards also provide the Ministry of Education with key information that allows targeted interventions when students are not achieving well.
“Key information” that the man himself, Sir John Key, called ‘ropey’. Yeah. Such a loss to the MoE having to try and justify the standards. As for targeted interventions – I’d like to hear about where the Ministry had provided any kind of support to schools who had students that were not achieving well.
This has been communicated numerous times to the Minister, the Government and the Ministry of Education. Maybe instead of sticking by the National Standards, own up and try and see that you might have gotten it wrong. No one will think less of you. But don’t come out and start sprouting out ideals and hyperbole about how integral National Standards were when quite clearly they aren’t. Trying to use parents and students views to justify them is poor, because for every parent that ‘raves’ about them, there are those that oppose them.
Original Article: Scrapping National Standards ‘bad news’