National standards 'disaster' feared

A top academic has told the government its controversial national standards system could be a disaster, warning it to block league tables, prevent teachers playing "devious games" with marking, and be prepared to dump the policy if it does not work.

Professor John Hattie of Auckland University predicts that even with the changes he recommends, the system – a key National policy – will do little to raise student achievement.

"My terror is that if we go down the wrong pathway, it will fail," Hattie told the Sunday Star-Times.

Education Minister Anne Tolley says she has had several conversations with Hattie about his concerns and the pair agree on some issues but disagree on others. "We both acknowledge that this is a momentous moment in time, if you like, and that it can go either way."

The controversial national standards system will go live next year, when teachers will start measuring all primary and intermediate school children against set national targets in reading, writing and mathematics. Parents will be sent charts and clearly written reports showing their children's progress and, from 2012, schools will start to feed their results to the Education Ministry.

Prime Minister John Key has credited Hattie, a highly influential education expert who is often called in to advise officials on education matters, with inspiring the system.

But today Hattie is going public with a critical discussion paper – which he says is a to-do list rather than an attack on the system. The paper warns that although the national standards system could be a "wonderful opportunity" it:

Could be the most disastrous education policy ever formulated.

Will only barely raise student achievement, if at all.

Could "pervert the nature of teaching" by pitting schools and teachers against one another.

Hattie also writes that the standards themselves – the targets students will be measured against – are "untested and experimental" and need to be drawn up based on evidence, not committees.

Tolley responds: "It's been based on a great deal of national and international data... It's not as if a group of people just sat down and put them together."

The system is intended to boost student achievement but Hattie writes that officials need to give clear "signposts" showing where achievement is at now, and how far the system should lift it. Tolley says there is no way to know where achievement is now, but the new system will reveal that and allow the ministry to set better targets.

Hattie's biggest concern about the system is league tables: he writes that if officials allow these school-by-school rankings to be published, the new system will fail. "We know from NCEA what happens," he says. "I don't want to go through that debacle."

His paper says that in order to compete, schools and teachers will start "teaching to the test" and playing "devious" games with students' results – and may even blame students who don't meet the targets.

His paper quotes teachers who have given excuses such as: "I have taught them, but they have not learned... They come from poor homes so I cannot be responsible... I have Maori/Pasifika (or many other groups) and they underachieve... He's ADHD/Aspergers/dyslexic (and so on), so I cannot be held responsible."

Once the ministry starts collating school results the rankings will be easy for media to access. Tolley says she is not planning to block media access to the data, but it is so complex that it will be difficult for media to rank schools accurately.

Hattie disputes that, pointing to the NCEA rankings that media manage to draw up each year. He says that to make sure competition does not lead to inconsistent judgements – as it has, arguably, in NCEA – officials need a system to check that teachers are judging students fairly, like the system that monitors their NCEA marking.

"Where is the plan to get in front of this issue and not wait for moderation to be the next front page scandal?" Hattie's paper says.

Mary Chamberlain, who is heading the project for the ministry, insists there is a moderation plan which will be updated as the system progresses. She says the checks will not be like NCEA's because national standards are not a formal qualification, and because this time teachers will be able to measure their judgements against a firm, external target – unlike in NCEA.

Hattie is demanding that the government order an independent evaluation to take place in two years, with an agreement to "self-destruct" the policy if the evaluation finds it is not working.

Tolley says the policy will be constantly reviewed, but two years will not be enough time to know whether the system is working.

"The reality is that governments are always reviewing the effectiveness of policies and nothing ever remains static... The government always has that option, of saying `look, this isn't working, we've got to either do something completely different or we've got to modify it quite significantly ... '."

catherine.woulfe@star-times.co.nz

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