They think this is a bad thing!

The Herald reports:

Thrupp’s in-depth study of national standards in six schools found that schools in poorer areas felt more forced to narrow their focus to lift their children up to national standards, whereas most children in richer areas were already achieving the standards so they could afford to keep spending time on other subjects.

A low-decile intermediate changed its timetable to give all students two hours of literacy and numeracy from 9am to 11am each day.

“It meant children could no longer be with specialist arts or technology teachers or doing physical education or other activities in the first block of each day,” Thrupp writes.

So Thrupp thinks it is a bad thing that a school has given more priority to literacy and numeracy over arts and PE!

I think that is a very good thing.

NZCER found that 63 per cent of teachers agree the standards have made them “focus particularly on students who are achieving ‘below’ or ‘well below'”.

So the struggling kids are being given more focus. And this is what Labour wants to scrap!