Education Ministry’s Alarm Bells Should Be Ringing with National Standards Report

It’s time to put teachers’ judgements first in assessing student standards, says New Zealand First.

“Ticking boxes just does not work and must go,” says New Zealand First Deputy Leader and Education Spokesperson Tracey Martin.

“Alarm bells should be ringing on National Standards given the Education Ministry’s latest report. It found a wide variance between the results on maths standards for a student’s age using the computer-based Progress and Consistency Tool (PACT) compared with teachers’ judgements.

“The tick box tool which overrides Overall Teacher Judgement does not make an overall assessment of the child and does nothing to help students achieve.

“Teachers have always assessed individual student needs, using their professional knowledge about the whole child to balance assessment scores. They can look behind the scenes to find out what might be going on in a student’s life if an unusual test score emerges.

“That is something no computer programme will ever be able to do” says Mrs Martin.

“With such a gap between results from the PACT tool and teachers’ judgements, alarm bells should be ringing at the ministry.”

ENDS

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