Two thirds of Pupils Failing New Stanadards

An article on stuff.co.nz shares findings from a report analyzing the governments 'National Standards' education policy. The research was carried out by an independent education think-tank, the NZ Council for Educational Research (NZCER). The council used its pool of results from the Progressive Achievement Tests to model how many children would meet the Government's maths standards.

The report highlights that two-thirds of children are failing to met the standards in the first year of the implementation of this primary school initiative, with serious problems exposed over their consistency.

To read this article click on the link below:

Two-thirds-of-pupils-failing-new-standards

This week I was fortunate enough to attend a professional learning workshop where I was able to talk to teachers and Principals from other schools across the Wellington region, mainly about how they are going about implementing the standards. It was interesting to discover that there were noticeable variations in what levels of achievement were deemed to be 'at' each of the standards. This should be of real concern to the ministry as from the dozen or so schools I spoke to it would be impossible to make any comparisons what so ever on student achievement, not just between the schools I spoke with but nationwide. It was also felt that the subjective nature of the OTJ's was causing real concern for teachers, especially when trying to make mid year judgements.