School standards protest planned

Representatives of schools and communities from across New Zealand assembled in Parliament Grounds today to protest what they call the untested, over-hasty implementation of the Government's national education standards.

The demonstration came at the end of an New Zealand Education Institute (NZEI) tour of the country, collecting signatures for a petition national standards to be trialled before being introduced nationwide.

SNZEI president and Auckland's Fairburn School principal Frances Nelson told a 150-strong crowd school communities were overwhelmingly in favour of more testing of the standards system before implementing it.

The NZEI, principals and boards of trustees groups have vociferously opposed the new standards system, saying it could brand five-year-olds as failures, took no account of different learning styles and dramatically increased teacher workload.

The system has already being rolled out in schools, though some have apparently boycotted it.

"None of us, including the Government, should lose sight of what is really at stake here: the futures of our children," Shannon Oswold, a teacher at Auckland's New Windsor school, said.

The standards created an "expectation of failure" for those students who had skills in areas like oral communication, asking thoughtful questions and provoking discussion, but were not so strong in mathematics or written English.

The current "education crisis" was a government-manufactured one, and she slammed the national standards policy as "experimental educational policy".

"My students, their parents and all of our children deserve better," she said.

Board of trustees chairman at Merivale School in Tauranga, Bruce Delamere said his board was not against the standards -- he just wanted to make sure they worked properly before they were being used to assess real children.

"We are not against accountability. But I just want to make sure that this is the best thing for our kids. I just want to make sure we get this right," he said.

Keri Milne-Ihimaera, principal of Northland's Moerewa School which a 95 percent Maori roll, said the standards system assessed for Anglocentric-style learning and would set back Maori students.

"Once again, Maori knowledge is relegated to the bottom of the pile," she said.

Education Minister Anne Tolley, who did not attend the protest, said her department was looking to "move on" and the NZEI was arguing issues from last year's debate.

"We're implementing the standards, I've always had the door open for the sector, I want to work with them. In fact we worked together all of last year until just in November."

She said she had heard nothing about any schools boycotting the standards and was already getting positive feedback from parents about the new system.

"I think the standards are well on the way to being implemented in our schools."

- NZPA