Cautious approach needed to National Standards – Part One

by Martin Thrupp

Over the next two weeks we have an opinion piece from Martin Thrupp of the University of Waikato, looking at the consultation that is underway for the National Standards.

Nationwide consultation has now started around the government’s controversial plans to introduce National Standards into all primary and intermediate schools from 2010.

Depending on the form they take and the way they are used, National Standards could be a very damaging development for NZ or they could be more useful. The consultation will certainly warrant attention by all concerned with the wellbeing of NZs children and its future prosperity.

If they are done badly, National Standards will introduce some kind of high-stakes testing regime into NZ primary schools.

Countries like England and the US have had such approaches for many years and there is much research evidence to show how damaging their testing policies have been.

What happens in high-stakes testing regimes is that the ‘tail wags the dog’.

Teachers, under external pressure to get good results, begin to teach to the test/standard, substantially narrowing the taught curriculum and making teaching and learning less authentic.

Test results increase for a few years but then flatten out once the ‘testing to the test’ effect gets used up. This is because there have been few genuine learning or creativity gains to sustain further improvement.

Teaching becomes a less rewarding occupation and it becomes harder to recruit teachers, especially in those low socio-economic settings where the pressures are greatest.

For individual children in high-stakes testing cultures, lessons become less interesting and less likely to address their needs. They become labelled by their achievements and subjected to ‘educational triage’ where schools focus on some children at the expense of others depending on whether or not they have the potential to pass the tests.

Children also become a commodity for schools when they try to recruit high achievers who can enhance their school’s test results. They try to avoid taking on ‘expensive’ special needs students and those with behavioural problems.

In contrast to this disastrous scenario, the NZ Education Institute, the NZ Principals Federation and the NZ Assessment Academy (a group of education academics) are all calling for approaches which would see National Standards providing assessment information in ways which do not set up harmful and controlling performance cultures in schools.

They are asking for a focus on supporting and enhancing teaching and learning rather than taking a heavy-handed approach which displaces teachers’ professional expertise.

Their arguments offer sensible responses to the paradox that the more performative pressure is placed on teachers, the less authentic their teaching will often become. For this reason high-stakes National Standards will be deeply counterproductive.

The consultation will no doubt raise more of the same from the sector but it remains to be seen how much the government will trust this advice.

One reason to be concerned is the way National Standards have come about to date. They follow a decade of National Party proposals for some kind of national testing in schools which have always emphasised the need for more public accountability of schools and teachers.

•    Martin Thrupp is Professor of Education at the University of Waikato and a spokesperson for the Quality Public Education Coalition and the Child Poverty Action Group. E-mail: thrupp@waikato.ac.nz

Please look out next week for the conclusion of this opinion piece.