I'd challenge the people who think they know the answers to put their hand to teaching and then confirm this wisdom. Good on people who want to give back to society and do the thankless jobs - especially when others sit on the side lines picking at you.

Maybe you should teach then Daz (#10) as you obviously have some expertise about encouraging people.

Stay a trainee Mike. Please don't become a fulltime teacher.

As a teacher trainee, I'm coming to the conclusion that many of the problems with education stem not from the teachers and schools, which do the best with what the limited resources available to them, but from the leftist ideologues in the education departments, universities and teachers colleges.

Teacher colleges for example, put a lot of pressure on teachers to make learning "fun and interesting," or "interactive" which is often extremely difficult to do when you have a large class of unruly teenagers and don't have access to fancy the ICT technology available at teacher's college. In fact, its often the dull and predictable lessons which actually work the best with low-achieving students.

What concerns teachers about league tables, is the danger that they won't take account of attitude and IQ differences between students from low and high socio-economic backgrounds, and that schools serving low socio-economic backgrounds will come in for unfair criticism if they don't achieve ambitious performance targets.

Stephanie,

As parents, our main consideration in life is our children's wellbeing and future. Period.

The political veiws of teachers comes a very long second. We will scrimp, save, and work long and hard for our offspring as would every decent parent.

We are going to carefully examine potential schools and weigh their benefits for our children. If that means we have to pay a bucket load of money to get our children a decent education then we will not hesitate to do so.

We will certainly not leave them to the questionable talents of the Heffernan's of this world.

As a parent, I'd suggest that you might have more understanding of teachers, and why they have concerns about how educationally sound national standards may be, when your children have been at school for a while.

Today's OECD Child wellbeing report shows Kiwi children doing poorly in almost every area EXCEPT education - to quote the report:

"Despite their relatively poor material living conditions, Kiwi kids manage high rates of educational achievement - the fourth best in the OECD." The report then notes that we have a bigger difference than most OECD countries between the children doing well, and those doing poorly. Will national standards help the 20% of children in the "long tail" of underachievement? I think the jury is still out on that one.

This is awful prose. Have the standards at fairfax slipped this much?

Your edititorial is certainly getting a kicking from teachers. As a parent whose children are shortly to begin primary school, I found the editorial a blessed relief. The teachers, who are so vociferously attacking this policy, are simply afraid of the light that is about to be shone apon them.

Heffernan's reponse that he would "fudge the results big time" demonstrates an apalling lack of honesty and integrity from a man who is expected to assist in instilling those very qualities in the youngsters placed in his charge.

If I lived in Auckland, those remarks would instantly disqualify his school from those that we might be considering for our daughters. I will not be surprised if Auckland Primary experiences a sudden drop in enrolments as a direct result of his disgraceful attitude.

Anne Tolley isn't a teacher, she's a career politician. She's happily dragging the education system down the road of targets and league tables, something that the UK has recently had slated as being a catastrophic failure and which has dragged the focus away from the students and onto the league tables. She interfering in something she doesn't really understand and once again, here's a politician focused on her own ideas so much she can't even step back for one second to learn lessons learned around the world.

The more pertinent question isn't why Heffernan still has a job, but why Tolley has her job at all.

A government "overwhelmingly voted into office"? Really? If that had been the case, they would be governing alone. With the vote of one or other of two supporting parties the National-led government does have a majority. If NZ First had gained less than 1% more of the votes, and a few more on the Maori roll had registered a vote in line with the predominant Maori vote, there would most likely have been a fourth term Labour-led government.

Why is it that so many commentators set out to consolidate this myth that National romped home and that Labour were ousted in no uncertain terms? Under MMP, the standing of support parties must be weighted.

Anyone might have voted National because they wanted the drug Hercepton funded and were totally opposed to its education policy. Actually, any policy apart from giving income tax cuts was barely discernable.

To suggest that educators should blithely comply with a populist, political doctrine which might be repugnant to their professionalism is simplistic, retrograde and dangerous.

I suggest that the editor take a little bit of time out and have a read of his own newspaper. There is an article, "Butt out, teachers tell Families Commission". Miss Tolley's concerns are to do with social malfunction. There is not any substantiation of an implicit suggestion that educators do not share the same concern. The article referred to gives excellent example as to how debate, questioning and research is able to blindside either convention or decree.

This issue dovetails with the presently much heralded notion that democracy is nothing more than imposing the will of the majority; and that there is able to be governance by referendums and the advice of experts and their professional obligations are able to be disregarded.

To coin a phrase from that delightful British comedy 'Yes, Minister'; 'governments cometh and governments goeth but the public service will always be here'. This is so true in many Western democracies where the public service runs the country. Japan the world's second largest economy it's the public service that runs the country not the politicians because they can't be trusted. As Sir Humphrey once remarked; politicians are here today and gone tomorrow but we the public service will always have our hand on the wheel'. The fact that teachers are defying the government is nothing new in New Zealand. There have always been fights between teachers and the government particulary National led governments. This is just a fact of life.