27 November 2009
Media Statement

Pasifika Education plan takes wrong turn under National

National’s announcement today that it is shoehorning its controversial National Standards into the Pasifika Education Plan puts ideology before effectiveness, Labour's spokesperson for Pacific Island Affairs Luamanuvao Winnie Laban said.

“The Pasifika Education Plan (2009-2012), with its new goal of national standards for Primary school children, is a disappointing response by National because it ignores strong consensus arriving from wide consultation undertaken by Labour last year along with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Pacific Island Affairs,” Winnie Laban said.

“National has ignored a lot of good work that was done on the plan last year, simply to introduce a flawed measuring stick that will lead to schools in poorer areas being stigmatised because they often have fewer resources.

“The Pasifika plan already had agreed upon standards of achievement to work towards.

“They resulted from the extensive work between key stakeholders, using evidence from 2000 to 2007 to set out goals and targets across early childhood, school and tertiary education sectors that will significantly raise Pasifika achievement, retention and participation.

"It recognised that over the last 10 years achievement for pacific islanders at all levels of education had been steadily improving, and sought to build on that.

“This is being replaced with national standards which both international evidence and local experts warn will not improve the quality of education and will likely see a decrease in quality, and teaching to the test rather than focussing on a student's overall learning.

"Many Pacific island children attend low decile schools, and there are risks with national standards that data collected into a national database will be turned into school league tables which will stigmatise poorer schools." Winnie Laban said.

ENDS

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