Academics sign letter opposing league tables

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Academics sign letter opposing league tables

3News NZ

By 3 News online staff

More than 100 education academics have signed a letter against the introduction of primary school league tables based on National Standards.

They believe league tables are educationally harmful and the political argument for their introduction is unreliable and flawed. 

One of the signatories, Professor Stephen May from the University of Auckland, spoke to Firsline this morning – saying similar programmes have failed universally wherever they have been implemented.

“The problem with league tables is that their basis doesn’t provide for informative decision making. You can’t compare schools on the basis of league tables effectively, they’re too blunt an instrument,” he told the show.

“It’s like buying a product on the basis of a faulty consumer report, it’s just not good enough.”

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Comments

24/07/2012 11:27:19 a.m.

Ilana wrote:

This is to Gary, who wants league tables comparing individual students in a school. NCEA, which I assume your school has, is a standards based system meaning there is a set bar that the child has to reach to pass. They are not graded in comparison to other students so a league table of these results will not give as much useful information as you may expect without other data markers being used, and that becomes a privacy issue.

18/07/2012 6:50:50 a.m.

Brent wrote:

Numbers are dropping with the unions,

17/07/2012 11:52:58 a.m.

madness wrote:

You go guys!!!!!! Our govt needs to learn that alot of their ideas are rather rediculous and that we will fight them. You think with all the stink that came up about the class sizes they would have learnt to leave education alone. Fight them all the way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

17/07/2012 10:45:54 a.m.

Gary wrote:

Why can't we have tables within each school just to show how your child is doing against the other kids at the same school. League tables to measure school against school is political nonsence. The only purpose it serves is the education ministers and no one elses so a complete waste of time. Parents just want to know how their child is doing compared to the other kids in the same class year at that school. This way you can give the child help where it is needed to try and improve them. Parents should want to know this and not the politically correct speal you get at the parent teacher evenings. If a child is totally lost and dumb at a subject then lets here it.

17/07/2012 10:39:55 a.m.

Mike wrote:

Every industry has unions against standards. Education is no different.

In Food saftey, it was lack of standards in Sanlu that lead to the Sanlu disaster.

The movement against standards is likely to produce as bad results in education - even if nobody dies from it. How many are getting sub-par education that unions want ignored?

Any system can be made to fail by those using it, be it with standards or not. In the private sector businesses cant breach standards without being held accountable. Be it disclosure standards that saw jail terms for Hanover directors, or Food saftey that saw Sanlu directors executed in China.

Are Standards harsh on those that dont measure up? They can be. But they can also be used to improve everyones levels. Take drug cheating in sport, it used to be rife and so much cheating. But with standards introduced and testing, the amount of drug cheating has decreased.

These academics are like sports people not wanting drug testig standards years back to help protect the under performers and cheats.

Take some of the harshest standards used - Fonterra milk testing where every farm has a sample taken of its milk for every milk collection. Some farmers were also against this standard of testing as it was harsh, and now if one fails the standard the farmer responsible gets charged for disposal of contaminated milk (their milk and any other contaminated by their milk). NZ dairy (Fonterra) has the best quality in the world, and only through in this case, private sector standards. The EU leagislates to allow the same poison as in the Sanlu disaster up to 10 parts per million while Fonterra is 0 tollerance. If you were buying baby formulae - would you want no standards? low standards like the EU? or the toughest standards possible?

We shouldn't be asking the academics, we should be asking parents what they want. Do they want an education for their children which at the end they can't tell if their child can even read/write?