The Auckland Primary Principals’ Association (APPA) is telling members to boycott training to implement national standards.
APPA president Iain Taylor wrote to members that after “significant deliberation, APPA recommends that its members cease to attend any training around the implementation of the national standards”.
The organisation said the policy was too flawed to work.
“The standards are not in fact standards and therefore cannot be moderated to provide valid, reliable and consistent achievement data,” he said.
He said concerns raised by leading New Zealand academics in November last year had not been addressed. At the time the group said it was worried that the standards wrongly assumed children were failing if they did not meet the standard for their age; that labelling children as failures could harm learning and motivation; that the education system and students would suffer from public reporting of standards, ie league tables, and that the limited nature of the descriptions and standards without effective moderation would mean the information will be inconsistent and therefore unreliable.
“APPA believes the Government’s national standards policy will not provide a solution to the Minister’s issue of under-achievement,” Mr Taylor said.
“APPA advises members to continue to use robust assessment practices in schools and report accurately to parents in plain language.”
Mr Tayor said principals who attended national standards training found trainers had been unable to answer crucial questions around the standards.
He said the APPA would take further action if concerns were not addressed.
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