By Emma Joliff
Nearly a third of year one and two teachers are cheating – according to the Education Review Office (ERO).
It says the teachers are setting standards deliberately low so their students do not appear to be failing.
It also says principals are hiding poor results from boards of trustees.
The report assessed teachers of years one and two across 212 schools, across all deciles in the first two terms of this year.
“If they don't get that good basis in reading, writing and maths in those two years, they're going to be behind right through the rest of primary school,” says Education Minister Anne Tolley.
She says parents should be concerned about the findings.
Thirty percent of teachers had little or no sense of how critical it was for children to develop confidence in early reading and writing.
They had minimal understanding of effective reading and writing teaching and set inappropriately low expectations.
But that is not all.
“I think the biggest concern is that two thirds of senior leaders – principals and primary staff – are not actively tracking and monitoring the progress of youngsters,” says Ms Tolley.
Sandra McCallum, principal of Wellington's Mt Cook School, says the ERO is being used as a political tool.
“It's another political weapon to fan the flames around the whole Nationals Standards issue.”
She says it is about blame.
“The way the minister's approached it; I feel to be, again, hitting teachers over the head, saying it's all their fault.”
“I'm more worried about the principals. They've been saying to me all year ‘look we don't need the national standards, we're already doing this’. Actually, this report shows they're not,” says Ms Tolley.
But they agree on one thing – schools cannot do it all. Parents should read with children at home and talk to them about what they did at school each day.
The president of New Zealand School Trustees, Lindsay Kerr, says she is not surprised at the findings that schools are hiding poor results.
She says there is a lot of resistance to national standards from the teaching sector because they will identify schools that are failing.
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