A lesson from the UK re Standards

Our Government is determined to going ahead with imposing of National Standards against the advice of teachers and reacted New Zealand educators. Only John Hattie is with them (I think) .His organisation is setting itself up to provide ( distort) the future direction for education in New Zealand with its obsession on 'objective' testing.

The technocrats, fragmenting and measuring learning bits, are wining over those with a holistic progressive educational beliefs.

In the meantime the standards experiments are being shown to fail in the UK and the US while the most successful country, Finland, wins the literacy and numeracy race without them.They have put their faith on trusting a well educated teaching profession! Ironically New Zealand is well ahead of of the UK and the US.

I received the following message to one of my recent blogs and thought it worth sharing.

'I have been reading and using parts of your blog for a couple of years and it has inspired me to change how I teach.

However, when I read of what is happening in New Zealand I despair.

Here in the UK the system of standards, top down curricula, league tables has failed.The profession - at the grass roots, teachers and heads - have lost confidence in the government but appears to have no influence on policy makers.

In New Zealand you should be very sceptical of this political dogmatism. It will paint your system into a corner over the next decades.Politicians should have nothing to do with curricula, standards and testing - this should be purely a professional matter.

Strike!
Campaign!
Protest!'

Posted in: Big Picture,national standards