Two thirds of pupils failing new standards

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MEASURING UP: National standards were implemented in primary and intermediate schools this year.

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Two-thirds of children are failing in the first year of primary school national standards, with serious problems exposed over their consistency, a new report has found.

A state-funded independent education think-tank, the New Zealand Council for Educational Research, has issued a report analysing the Government's flagship education policy.

The council used its pool of results from the Progressive Achievement Tests to model how many children would meet the Government's maths standards.

At Year 8, when most children are aged 11 or 12, only about 35 per cent of pupils performed at, or above, the standard.

The council did not think the figure reflected reality, because 71 per cent of pupils passed level 2 of the National Certificate of Education Achievement, which the standards are supposed to guide children towards.

The report said there were several possible explanations for the apparent mismatch, including that the subjective judgment needed to decide on national standards' results was open to variation.

"Moderation ... is a process that should help teachers become more consistent in their judgments. But [moderation] will take time to develop and the experience of the NCEA suggests no-one should under-estimate the professional learning involved."

National standards were implemented in primary and intermediate schools this year. All children aged five to 12 were ranked at above, below or well below national benchmarks in reading, writing and maths.

In another report on the standards, issued this week, the Education Review Office found 33 per cent of schools had either not considered how to moderate teacher judgments or were just beginning to look at it. There was a series of "challenges" for all schools to improve moderation.

Asked about the figures yesterday, Education Minister Anne Tolley initially said: "ERO didn't talk about moderation."

She later said she "didn't mean to say that". "What I was talking about was I don't think we should get too hung up on moderation.

"I think we're a long way away from worrying about that at this stage. Certainly next year, the probing around teacher judgment is going to be really, really important, but we've got to let these poor teachers implement the standards first."

It was a complex matter for schools and teachers to moderate the standards, she said.

The ERO report also showed 27 per cent of teachers had limited or no understanding of the standards and only 15 per cent of teachers understood them well.

More than half of all school trustees had limited or no understanding of them.

Mrs Tolley said she was concerned that one-fifth of schools were not prepared for the standards. "There's obviously some strong leadership issues there."

Labour's education spokesman, Trevor Mallard, said the ERO report raised serious concerns about how the standards were being implemented. Schools had not had time to use them properly because they were "foisted on them with such haste".