I support the assessment of students in national standards of literacy and numeracy and the publication of schools' results.

3 Comments

  1. Claire says "Numeracy and Literacy are important along with empowering our students to be confident learners and thinkers (not to mention a number of other vital skills like - healthy, socially confident, peaceful, proud of themselves and confident in their ability to enhance/protect this world we adults are mucking up them right now). Setting up whole schools to compete against each other for the best results does not seem a sensible way to acheive this."

    November 19th, 2009 at 11:14 AM

  2. happyparent says "As a parent I want to know whether my child is actually being taught and learning to read and write. Teachers aren't going to tell you they have failed to teach your child and it will be nice to know where they are on an independent national standard. My child left primary school hardly being able to read, yet the teachers told me she was above average and doing well."

    November 20th, 2009 at 10:54 AM

  3. bridget says "Peter Foster is so right in his expectations for education in our schools. As an ex teacher of 22 yrs my main objectives for the children who came under my care was to give them an enthusiasm for learning, the skills to learn for themselves and to be independtent thinkers. They were always encouraged to 'think' and all their ideas were accepted.These National tests have proved to be very unsuccessful overseas and have meant thet originality has been badly curtailed as the pupils are taught 'to the tests' and many do not reach their potential because of them. It also instils an uneccessary sense of failure in both children and parents which we can all do without.I have first hand seen the results of these tests overseas in this case it was a written lanquage exercise and out of 14 papers looked at one could hardly tell any difference between them, The sentsnce structure and use of vocabulary were almost identical!!! Do we as adults learn at the same rate, the same way and with identical results? Why do they expect that all children should reach the same stage at the same time. The idea is ridiculous and I wish the NZ teachers success in trying to prevent having this silly idea imposed on our at present renowned pupil centred education system,"

    November 25th, 2009 at 09:42 AM

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