Teachers question standard

South Canterbury teachers have got their red pens out and found errors in the Education Ministry's national standards booklet, but the ministry says the issue is not a "biggie".

South Canterbury Principals Association past president Wayne Facer said after the first training day last week, teachers noticed errors in the booklet, in which examples of the benchmarks were given.

The Education Ministry has sent out 64,000 booklets, costing $353,221, to explain the standards in reading, writing and mathematics. One example, for year 7 maths students, asked them to identify a common property in a number of shapes pictured and sort them into groups according to that property.

A square was put under a heading that read "two lines of reflective symmetry".

Mr Facer said a square had four lines of symmetry.

"We asked them, well, what are we supposed to teach our students? We all know there are four lines of symmetry but do we now tell them there are two?"

He said it raised questions about whether teachers should teach to the standard.

The booklet also showed an arrowhead under the heading "no right angles", although the arrowhead had a right angle.

Education Ministry group manager curriculum Mary Chamberlain said what Mr Facer had pointed out was "something that needs to be clarified", though she stopped short of using the word "error" in relation to the areas of concern highlighted by teachers.

She said it was great teachers had pointed it out because the ministry could now resolve them.

The ministry this week spoke to all its trainers so they were aware of the changes. It would also update the web version of the booklet in the next few days.

The first example needed to say "at least two lines of reflective symmetry", while the second required students to justify why they thought an arrowhead did not have a right angle.

Ms Chamberlain said the ministry had had a very thorough proofreading process with professional proofreaders and experts who were not involved in developing the standards.

"We don't like to put out things with errors," she said.

However, the issue was not a "biggie" and it was always possible for human error to creep in.

Ms Chamberlain said this was the first complaint the ministry had received about the booklet.

Mr Facer said the oversights could have been avoided if the Government had taken another week or so to let teachers proofread the standards.

"It's all because they've rushed it so quickly ... There have never been any other errors like this in, say, the New Zealand Curriculum that's been developed," he said.

"This process has been bulldozed [through] by a political party. It's supposed to be gospel and we're supposed to respect it but how can we with all these errors? I'm sure there are more errors in that book that we haven't even found yet."

- © Fairfax NZ News