Standardistan

Elizabeth Brown talks to three principals who’ve taken a stand on National Standards.

Roger Goulstone, Valley School, Pukekohe
“A policy which has produced huge divisions and is a waste of time, money and energy.” That’s how Roger sums up National Standards. He’s even lost a board member over it.
After taking a balanced look at the arguments and consulting with the community, Valley School decided early on that National Standards would not add any value.
“Our bottom-line was what is best for our kids learning,” says Roger.
“The board decided that National Standards didn’t fit with what they wanted for their kids and that the school already had robust systems in place.”
The school was one of the hundreds around the country which, on July 1, submitted its charter without any mention of National Standards.
“You can imagine my surprise when two weeks later the charter came back from the ministry saying it was compliant and met all the requirements,” Roger says.
The school could have left things there but decided to query it. The ministry then came back saying the school had ten days to submit a compliant charter.
“That’s when the board chair resigned,” says Roger. “He could see that we would be forced to comply and felt he didn’t want to be part of that.”
Bigger battles to come

Valley School has gone down the path of being ”minimally compliant under duress”.
Roger says it’s been a tough decision but “we are choosing compliance over having a statutory manager put in place because we believe our students and our community are best served by a board of Trustees.
“The board also knows there are big battles to come such as national testing and league tables and it wants to be there to fight those battles – not have a statutory manager.”
Roger feels National Standards have put immense pressure on the community and on himself.
“You’re faced with a professional and moral responsibility by being forced to include something in your charter you don’t believe in. The government is actually taking away choice from self-governing schools which is what Tomorrow’s Schools is all about in that each school should reflect its community – it’s dictating what should happen and it doesn’t sit well with me.”
He believes the tens of millions being spent on National Standards should go on targeting where underachievement is happening and addressing issues such as child poverty.


Carolyn Marino, principal, Westmere School, Auckland
When it comes to National Standards, Auckland’s Westmere School is marching to the beat of its own drum.
Despite serious concerns and reservations the school took the decision not to voice its opposition to the standards, but to have a go and try and work with them.
It turned out to be no easy task. Carolyn says the school already had its own standards, benchmarks and an expectation that every child will leave the school as a reader. One of its core principles is to look at what is best for each individual student.
“I can honestly say that we tried to use the standards but we couldn’t make sense of them so we went back to our own benchmarks.
“We did not want to go out of our way to be non-compliant but we also weren’t going to pretend. What we have done is to strengthen our overall teacher judgments.”
Integrity compromised
Carolyn works hard to ensure that her parents and school community know what is going on. She keeps parents informed through a regular blog and keeps the issues out there.
What Westmere has done is to continue to set achievement targets on its own terms, using a strong set of school-based standards in which children are measured against the curriculum and there is a robust OTJ approach.
In terms of what it put in its charter about National Standards, it chose its words carefully:
 “At Westmere School we currently use a range of national normed assessment tools and school benchmarks to help form OTJs of student achievement referenced against National Standards where we are able. No moderation of data has been done with other schools. For this reason our data is most reliable when viewed as school-based standards referenced against National Standards.”
Carolyn says what that is saying is that “our data only has any validity or reliability within our school context – not outside it.”
She is very concerned about what will happen next with National Standards data given there is so much inconsistency in the way the standards are being implemented.
Some 12% of Westmere students are in a special needs programme and the school’s data includes them. But as Carolyn points out some schools may choose to leave their special needs children’s achievement data out or report on it separately, further compromising the integrity of any comparative National Standards information.

Brent Godfery, Pembroke School, Oamaru
Brent knows what it’s like to be at the sharp end of the National Standards debate.
In August Pembroke became the focus of a heavy-handed attempt by the ministry to toe the line over its unwavering opposition to the standards.
As the decile three school prepared to host an education-based community Pasifika Fono, the ministry suddenly said that would not be appropriate given the school’s position on standards.
“We were being publicly punished,” says Brent. “The irony is that the fono was designed to get local Pacific Island parents more involved in their children’s education – something which would have far more meaning in terms of student learning and achievement than standards .”
It was last July when the board of Pembroke School decided strongly against implementing the standards after taking a good hard look at all the information.
“They didn’t want kids labelled as failures,” Brent says. “The school took a position in the interests of the children in its own community and was happy to defend it. What we didn’t see coming was the level of bullying and non-negotiation on the part of the ministry.”
Keeping kids positive
Pembroke has been forced to make its charter compliant. In fact the ministry has given it National Standards targets to put in.
But it hasn’t gone down without a fight. It has submitted its charter clearly stating that the targets have been imposed. It’s also included a letter calling on the ministry to write to the minister and the secretary for education on the school’s behalf to say that it is strongly opposed to National Standards.
“We feel we’ve taken the strongest stand we can without breaking the law. The reality is we will probably be putting National Standards on the shelf,” says Brent.
The next battle for Pembroke School will be around sending in achievement data.
Apart from the dangers around league tables, Brent believes some schools will fudge their results either to get more money or make their school look more successful. He also fears the ministry is already developing ways of getting into school computer systems to extract the information it wants.
Brent says the National Standards debate has given strength and confidence to the school community in determining what it wants for its children.
“Our education system is very good; we are number 4 in the world. You have to keep kids positive to keep them learning and recognise that children learn very differently. We should all be worried about the road National Standards will take us down.”


Dispatches from the frontline
NZEI, the Principals Federation, and the Boards Taking Action Coaltion are joining forces to fight against the standardization of student learning. There is a very real risk that junk data from National Standards will be used next year to generate league tables and assess performance.

The Child Poverty Action group has taken a damning swipe at National Standards in its report Left further behind – how policies fail the poorest children in New Zealand. It says standards will make it even harder for poor children to break out of poverty - www.cpag.org.nz.

The National Council of Women has called for a review of the standards.

Evidence of the psychological injury to children, particularly young children, of high-stakes testing is accumulating in Australia and the UK – at the same time as Australian teachers will now receive “bonus payments” according to their students’ test results. Read “NAPLAN nightmares” at www.educationaotearoa.org.nz

The School Sample Monitoring and Evaluation Project carried out for the Ministry of Education shows an overwhelming number of principals and boards of trustees have concerns about National Standards: 93% of principals and 71% of boards are moderately to very concerned about league tables, 88% of principals and 69% of boards are moderately to very concerned about the demotivation of students, and 83% of principals have concerns about the narrowing of the curriculum.

A Christchurch special education school was told to put National Standards in its charter even though its students have severe disabilities and none were up to level 1 on the curriculum. It must also report to parents against National Standards.

NZEI has developed a professional discussion resource as part of its response to National Standards. It’s a practical package for use at staff meetings and with communities – www.nzei.org.nz