ERO Report Does Not Show Schools Support National Standards

A report on 80 schools, representing 3.6% of all primary and intermediate schools, does not necessarily reflect support for National Standards says Ernie Buutveld, President of the New Zealand Principals’ Federation.

The report claims that 27 schools are well prepared for National Standards and 47 have preparation underway.

“I would expect all schools to be giving due diligence to achievement, assessment and reporting and within this context learning about the National Standards. In the process  schools have found them wanting”, says Buutveld.

“A better measure of how the sector views National Standards is to observe how many Boards of Trustees have recently said they have no confidence in them.”

Earlier this month it was announced that 225 boards have taken a vote of ‘no confidence’ in the National Standards and will be deferring setting targets against them for next year. A New Zealand Council for Education Research (NZCER) report has also indicated that there are considerable disparities between schools in respect of how they are approaching National Standards. 

“These National Standards are not National Standards at all,” says Buutveld. “They are open to different interpretations and have fundamental flaws.  As more boards come to understand how flawed they are, I expect confidence in them to plummet further. We’d be better off to call them signposts or benchmarks and spend some time getting them right before setting targets against them, reporting to parents against them and in the annual report.” 

 The ERO report indicates that the level of understanding of National Standards still remains low with just 10% of boards currently having a full understanding of them.  

“NZPF is well aware how difficult it is to get an understanding of these Standards”, says Buutveld, “and this is why we launched www.ourprincipals.co.nz a public education campaign on the National Standards last month.” 

ENDS

For more information:

NZPF Spokesperson: NZPF President, Ernie Buutveld (04) 471 2338 or 027 448 4789

www.nzpf.ac.nz 

www.ourprincipals.org.nz