Labour associate education spokesperson Steve Maharey said the Government was playing populist politics with a mish mash of plans for primary school assessment.

Steve Maharey said Labour supports the National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) and will look at extending it, but said other aspects of National's announcement today smacked on pre-election preening rather than any genuine attempt to lift standards in schools.

"Labour carefully considered the idea of national testing, but we came to the conclusion that testing did not help children read and write better. In fact there was considerable evidence to show that it encouraged rote learning rather than good learning techniques.

"Earlier this year, Nick Smith was also opposed to a 'single standard assessment tool' saying that it went against school choice. Now he is planning to introduce testing but has no ideas of how the results would be used.

"Lifting the level of literacy in New Zealand is something all New Zealanders have a
an interest in. Yet rather than 'testing' children, Labour's education policy for schools has a number of initiatives to increase overall standards in schools. These include the establishment of voluntary homework centres particularly in low socio economic areas, re-examining the staffing ratios of small schools so that they better meet the needs of their children and ensuring that operation grants are increased in line with inflation so that schools can provide the necessary support to students.

"I can give no guarantee that the pilot programme proposed by Nick Smith will even get off the ground under a Labour Government," Steve Maharey said.

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>