Professor: Education standards fail pupils

A Palmerston North professor has blasted the Government's national standards policy, but academics are divided on whether the policy will help lift students' performance.

Massey University education professor Howard Lee said the plan was destined to fail and students were being used as guinea pigs in an "unfortunate experiment".

Under the $36 million scheme, the progress of primary school students will be measured against a national standard.

Prof Lee, head of the School of Educational Studies in Palmerston North, said schools were already tracking students' achievements. He feared young children would be labelled as failures.

"What type of message are we sending to kids if we tell them continually, year after year, you've not reached that standard?"

Prof Lee said the "dark shadows" of national standards were tried and failed between 1878 and 1937. "We got rid of standards for a very good reason in the 1930s and that was it changed the behaviour of teachers, it narrowed the curriculum to what was assessable."

Prof Lee said the Government should at least trial the system in a small number of schools before implementing it nationwide. He said national testing had failed students overseas.

"We need to learn the lessons of other countries and they're telling us loud and clear `don't go down this road'."

But Massey education professor Tom Nicholson said national standards would bring clarity and consistency across schools.

Prof Nicholson, co-director of Auckland's Centre for Research on Children's Literacy, said schools' current assessment methods lacked comparable results and gave parents jargon-filled reports.

"The new reports will say straight up, whether their child meets the standard, and will avoid ambiguities and vague comments."

Prof Nicholson said the standards armed parents and teachers with clear examples of what level a pupil should be reading at.

Prof Nicholson has bit back against critics, saying it is up to parents to decide what is best for their children.

"League tables [ranking schools] are not the end of the world – parents are smarter than that.

"It's better that [parents] can form their own assessments of schools with accurate information rather than hearsay.

Teachers already had the expertise to use the standards, he said. "They are part of the curriculum. Teachers do this assessment all the time."

Prof Lee agreed literacy levels were worse than ever, but national standards were not the right tool to fix them.

- © Fairfax NZ News