25 August 2008

Nats fail real test: should pay more attention in class

National's plans for national testing of school children, if implemented, will follow in the footsteps of other international failures and, like them, result in the dumbing down of teaching, the Green Party says.

"New Zealand kids deserve the best education not the bare minimum, and certainly not via a mechanism that has been shown to fail education objectives," Green Party Education Spokesperson Metiria Turei says.

"National testing directs teachers to teaching the bare minimum of the test rather than for the best learning outcomes for each child. It is an unnecessary distraction and sucks time and resources out of schools for no purpose.

"There are already enough good assessment tools which schools use successfully. The key issue for schools is a lack of resources. National has no plans to increase the Operations Grant for schools, nor to relieve them of some inherent funding anomalies, such as having to pay support staff from the same funding pool used for equipment and administration," Mrs Turei says.

"It is these inequities that schools need to have addressed, not just layers of bureaucracy and form filling that national testing standards will create."

ENDS

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