bye bye National Standards

The Herald reports:

New Education Minister Chris Hipkins, in an interview with the Herald, says Primary schools will still have to report to parents on individual children’s progress against the eight levels of the curriculum, which most children cover during their 13 years at primary and secondary schools.

But National Standards, which set out levels of literacy and numeracy for Years 1 to 8, will be abolished and schools will be free to choose their own ways of assessing children’s progress.

So back to the days of school reports that don;’t actually tell you objectively how your kids are doing.

School Trustees Association Auckland chair Ebony-Rose Andrews said she unsure how she would know how well her two primary school-age daughters were doing without the standards.

“For me, National Standards have always been a good thing because we understand where our kids are tracking,” she said.

It is more important to Labour that schools are not judged by parents, rather than that parents know how their kids are doing.

Axing national standards may be unpopular with parents. A Herald poll when the standards were introduced in 2010 found that 73 per cent of parents with school-age children supported them.

Would be even more than that now.