Christopher #35 - We will all be teaching to the test because league tables will make education into a big competition with schools competing to be the best. With competition brought into the equation, quality teaching will be pushed out. This is no fault of the teachers or schools - you assume that we have total control over what we do. If we want to get more enrollments, we have to be at the top of the tables. This means teaching to the test.

After reading all the comments on this page, I went back and re-read comment #19. Thank you Darren for finally writing a comment that approached this issue intelligently. However, I feel what principal, Paul Heffernan, was saying was a sarcastic way to show how ridiculous the whole idea is. This sarcasm was lost on a lot of people, and instead of looking at the politicians as the root of the problem, everyone turns to the teachers. I guess it is always easier to blame the teachers though. It happens all the time in New Zealand.

After reading this article and more significantly the comments associated with it, it is little wonder that high quality teachers are no longer prepared to be involved in New Zealand education.

Many of the comments are related to basic misunderstanding of modern education theory. If people were prepared to read further and take the time to consider why New Zealand education is moving in its current direction then they would also be aware of how highly our system is regarded overseas.

While people will continue to criticise those things that they do not understand, all that needs to be asked for is to give New Zealand education a chance. While there can be no doubt that there are flaws that need to considered, there is also no doubt that our students are being prepared for life in an environment that is fundamentally different to the one that we grew up in.

Well, the educators certainly regard the Decile ranking system as valid so why would that not enhance these league tables that the government has said they will not produce but that will eventually be produced by the media. Imagine the handwringing if a school that wasn't in Remuera or Merivale (Claire@ #40) came closer to the top than they were 'supposed' too,the teachers would quite rightly claim responsibility for that. We are not going to run a system to protect the late starting at school of a refugee, so lets keep this focussed on the big picture.

See what we don't know is how many decile 3,4 or 5 schools are near the top of these ficticious tables and how many are not. And if we already have these terrible measures 'bob the teacher #39' why is there no visbility of them - is this more waste from the previous administration. If we don't know whats wrong with the system, how do we fix it. Again I ask, why would a Principal direct his staff to teach a test, when there is a responsibility and accountability to teach the curriculum.

This is a one day old news item about arguably the most important Government function in the country - there are 45 odd comments - we have got and seemingly will get the education system we deserve.

The attitudes of these primary school principals will do nothing to prepare their children for NCEA which is already a complete joke.

Heffernan needs to be sacked, he is obvisiously underqualified to understand how to nurture and educate children

Teachers need better pay and better training so idiots wont go to teachers college which seems to be a joke of a degree

If there is no competition or aiming to be the best, then these kids will be useless even if they make it through to uni, proven fact most people already are due to NCEA

Why do teachers feel that they are unaccountable?

These Heads of Schools around the country need to take a look at WHAT THEIR JOB IS, Sad people, they're responsible for the next generation of New zealand Youth, and because they dont like the look of things, They intend to throw a tantrum fully quite capable of Wrecking childrens educations, Winners. They should go somewhere else, perhaps look at a real job somewhere, like Holding a lollypop or something. really sad state of affairs

OMG if teachers are behaving in such an imature and underhanded way and they are so afraid to have their true results put out there it really is no wonder that they are failing our kids.

They themselves need to grow up and accept to be judged on their performance... my god they have one of the most important jobs in the country/world ...to teach our kids

Any school prepared to fudge the results should be ashamed of themselves.

Jum #33 -- in essence you are right. Society as it is right now requires this sort of prefixing to keep itself running. The problem is that is not meritocratic, it is based on finance. People from poor areas are predominantly the ones who end up in the positions that you mentioned. Perhaps there is an effective societal system that would fix this problem, communism is founded around the idea of equality, but it does not work. If we have a system of education, it should be designed to give children equal opportunities from the start and reward merit, not memory. Testing children does not teach them skills, in order to teach to a test, many teachers must give the information, and not the process. It is like this in NCEA -- many maths teachers end up teaching the formulas, and not the theory behind them. This is quite possibly why New Zealand does not do so well at maths. Ultimately, this doesn't make students more intelligent, it is just a test of memory. At the same time, schools don't teach students' how to use their memory properly. If this system is set up in such a way that tests do not actually assess the ability of the student in the subject, then students who have the ability, but a terrible memory, end up getting few qualifications, where students who know how to use their memory (and may not acutally have much ability) end up becoming "qualified", and New Zealand is not better off for it.

The unfortunate problem with many of these comments is that they are not based on the realities of the NZ education system. A school in Remuera or Merivale or other high socio-economic zones will almost always top these league tables as opposed to a school in Mangere or Aranui. Why? Because of the vastly different background of the students in these schools. These league tables fail to make transparent the TRUE measure of successful teaching, which is the progress made from one year to the next by individual students. A refugee who has no knowledge of English will not be starting at the same point as a student for whom English is their first language. Therefore, what should be measured is how much that refugee's grasp of English has improved not how that refugee compares to a student who live in a mansion in a wealthy neighbourhood with a plethora of opportunities available to them.