John when we still have kids leaving without basic education it means that the policy of yester year is not working. Take you head out of the sand and consider the goal rather than just rant because you are anti everything.

Ahhh, Mr Minto the Union Worker. Was wondering when you would post scare mongering 'Unionised' propoganda on this...well done, you haven't let us down.

"Teachers and schools already know who the 20 per cent of students are who are failing. These students predominate in low socioeconomic areas and comprise the long tail of underachievement which has been the most serious educational problem facing the country for the last two decades."

Self-evidently it is insufficient that "teachers and schools" know who the failing students are.

Equally self-evidently it is important to know who the failing teachers and schools are.

Even more self-evidently, the solution to "poor quality information" is good quality information. Not no information which is Minto's bizarre preference.

Parents are not so stupid, John.

The Maori party have just shown themselves to tow a nationalistic line and i don't trust nationalists(they can scoff all they want, sheep), they'd let hitler in the back door to suit their means, why can't all politicians go to hell already, power corrupts absolutely, maybe we don't need new leaders, we need a new system for all(no commie here), ya think.

It is pleasing to see our teachers, principals and education academics fighting hard to maintain quality public education for all our kids

Quality (unlike beauty) should be objective not subjective. A child can either read to a standard or they cant. I child can add/subtract to a standard or they cant. As a parent i want to know if any potential school i send my children to, has a history of improvement and acheivement.

To pretend that all children are equally gifted is, scientifically, and observationaly untrue. To foster the myth that there are no bad teachers is by extention equally flawed.

A good teacher will show improvement in their class results, regardless of the starting point of those students. The facts are that 50% off all people are below average (simple statistics). But as long as the people have the ability to write, read and count to a standard there will be jobs and opportunities available for them.

Alan W said it perfectly "the solution to "poor quality information" is good quality information. Not no information"

John's strongest point here is that identifying a problem is not the same as fixing it.

Being able to categorically define a child as under-par does nothing, in and of itself, to bring that child's learning up to standard.

Key and Tolley's policy is not entirely useless (nor inherently dangerous)but it is half-baked and threatens to waste a lot of time and resources at all levels of the school system.

"Teachers and schools already know who the 20 per cent of students are who are failing. These students predominate in low socioeconomic areas and comprise the long tail of underachievement which has been the most serious educational problem facing the country for the last two decades. We don't need to keep measuring the tail - we need policy and action and not government excuses.

So you say we need Policy & Action yet as soon as someone puts frward the Policy to initate the actions you are against it? In every disease or condition the first step is diagnosis. You need to see what the problem is before you can fix it. National standards are a first step to determine if the problem is the student or the school.

John wrote:

The negative effects the former professor of education points to include parents picking and choosing schools based on incomplete and inaccurate information.

tick - I'm so glad to see you favour ensuring that the information is as complete and accurate as it is possible to be.

JM: The flow-on impact includes schools losing the support of their local communities, losing funding and struggling to get good teachers.

so no change then Good - no problem here.

JM: And all this as a result of poor quality information delivered to them through league tables which purport to compare results across schools.

Ah...again you get to the root of hte problem - excellent - I am so pleased you have decided that hte quality of the information shoudl be top notch so as to ensure that "purport" = "does".

Well done John - it is good to see that you have come into the real world on this one.

Sigh....well it was a nice thought for a second...then I read the rest of the post......I guess we need the John Mintos of this world to remind us how things could be so much worse!

Your entire blog is assuming that the report will be falsified.

"intended to undermine parents' confidence in their local schools and encourage them to choose schools as they would choose baked beans at the supermarket" - If the school performs well, then they've got nothing to fear.

"So if these problems can be addressed elsewhere why is the Government persisting with national standards in the face of intense opposition from teachers, principals and schools" - You claimed that issue with national standards would be schools falsifying their achievements. So you are arguing that somehow, allowing the schools to develop their own system of reporting, would stop them from falsifying their achievements? I would surmise that schools creating individual report system would not only be confusing for parents when they compare schools but would also allow dishonest schools to falsify their achievement even more easily.

Arguments made by John:

1. Parents will be given inaccurate information about school quality. 2. Rich parents will use the school quality information to select schools. 3. Therefore only the children of rich parents will receive good education.

Based on the arguments you have made the fairest system is to randomly generate the rating for each school. That way some rich kids will end up at good schools and some at bad schools. Likewise for poor children.

The best way to rate all students is to give them all the same exam but that got done away with so now you can't trust the results from any school.