• Full Story

Govt will publish school results

Email
Print

Govt will publish school results

3News NZ

Hekia Parata (Getty)

Hekia Parata (Getty)

By 3 News online staff

Education Minister Hekia Parata has revealed how the Government will publish schools' national standards results, ERO reports and NCEA data.

Called 'Public Achievement Information', the reports will be accessible through the Government's 'Education Counts' website.

Ms Parata says it will "allow parents to see how their child’s school is performing and will allow the Government to see how well the system is doing as a whole in order to raise achievement for all learners".

The first sets of data will be published in September in whatever format schools supplied it in.

"It is the first year, and no consistent format was required so that was to be expected," says Ms Parata.

"It can only get better and better both in quality and its use over time and we want to work with schools to do this.

"We have developed a five year plan - reflecting our five year Better Public Service education targets – to improve year on year the quality and use of National Standards data."

Opposition parties say publishing the data will lead to parents and the media creating misleading "league tables".

"League tables, drawn from National Standards, publically rank schools on a few select criteria, but don’t give the full story," says Labour's education spokesperson Nanaia Mahuta.

"Without proper context and moderation some schools may be unfairly labelled as underachieving and parents will be fed misleading information.

"The Government’s aim to implement league tables is not about learning outcomes for children, it's about National ranking 'good' schools and 'bad' school, 'good' and 'bad' teachers."

"Simply ranking schools won’t improve student achievement."

But Ms Parata says publishing the data is a "key feature of performance education systems internationally".

"We want all our kids to leave school with the skills they need to reach their potential in the modern economy," she says. "That means lifting up those who are being left behind, and encouraging those who are doing well to do even better. This will require a system wide lift in achievement. 

"Having robust, quality data that helps us all to understand and support a student’s learning is one of the ways we are working to achieve this."

3 News

Post a Comment

Before commenting, please take the time to read our moderation guide


(Won't be published)



Comments

10/08/2012 8:30:07 p.m.

S wrote:

All school results should be 100% open and transparent, nothing should be hidden from parents.

9/08/2012 5:38:51 p.m.

Gary wrote:

@Mike - just a question, do you get paid well for your posts? I thought the idea behind that was to disguise your comments as if it is from a member of the general public but you never have?? I know you probably use other names too, I have now even started skipping over your MIKE comments as it is just propoganda.

9/08/2012 5:30:32 p.m.

Gary wrote:

This will have a negative affect on many schools. It does nothing for children's education only gives government more power to intervene and regulate. It will also affect house prices in areas on top and bottom of the league tables, but I guess we live in a world where money rules. It is something that is kind of known anyway now by parents, they know which schools get the best results, usually you can just go by the house prices in that area. I would be in favour of tables for each school to show where your child sits with respect to the other students in their school. It will be like the football league, the club with the most money comes 1st. At least people will know where to buy a house and be prepared to pay way over the valuation for it due to the school? It may allow them to increase their "donation" based on their result with people willing to pay without question. Also you could get top schools filling up and able to start selecting students based on results so they maintain their status. It does create a drive and competition but only for schools in affluent areas, it is definitely unfair to many schools but then National are about promoting wealthy areas not poor. Next they will want to stop poor low educated people from breeding - oh forgot, they already tried that one!!

9/08/2012 10:57:56 a.m.

john wrote:

those who have want more, those that dont get overlooked. Yet another example of the widening class differences in new zealand.

8/08/2012 8:35:18 p.m.

Seannachie wrote:

Since Nationals EducationaL standards are totally unworkable, unnecessary and a complete waste of the taxpayers dollar any parent relying on them as an indicator of a schools performance would have to be brain dead.

8/08/2012 7:01:25 p.m.

Cam wrote:

Supporters of league tables need to get educated themselves. They have spelled disaster in numerous countries, have been opposed by 150 of New Zealand's top education researchers and academics. A good number of these hold Phd's but will they be listened to? I doubt it. What makes it worse is that national standards are not national or standard. The only attempt at moderation is an online tool that barely any teachers have even heard of yet. Ad hoc policy making will damage our education system. Schools are not businesses or factories, education is not just about reaching a standard. Many of our most innovative and successful Kiwis would have been labelled as failures by national standards. Our most vulnerable children in lower decile schools will be hit hardest by this approach which we're told is the group we are trying to help. Please, before you consider league tables and national standards a good idea, learn a bit more about what they mean and look at the overseas failures. If you really care about our kids you'll learn more and oppose the publishing of league tables.

8/08/2012 6:57:12 p.m.

bukster wrote:

I've worked in schools. The depths a principal will stoop to in order to make the school look good know no bounds. Staff will do everything possible to stop any sort of independent assessment of a school's performance. You will never get a straight answer out of them.

8/08/2012 5:04:30 p.m.

Mike wrote:

If it was food saftey, the union would be against it as it might identify those low performers which are risking NZ health through low results, and this could work out badly for those low performers.

National standards and a national database of students/teachers would allow those performing well to be identified, as well as those performing badly. It will allow for learning from the better perfroming, and also target more support/changes for the lower performing. But the unions dont want any identification of good or bad, as unions never like good performance rewarded, and so stand together for the worst performance.

The union wont even provide any policy or figures against national standards, instead they like a 2 yr-old, they conduct themselves in the mature sport of name calling. If they had any data to support against national standards we would have heard them, but since we have heard only name calling, it explains their resistance.

Much like in food saftey, those who would not measure up to national standards would be the most vocal against the standards, the unions stand for the lowest performing teachers. That and they believe in strong-arm tactics, given their holding NZ to rasom everytime they hold industrial action to threaten/cost working NZ, and their favourite party emblem, that of a strong-arm!

Charter schools also offer opportunities that the union is against, like improvements learnt through Christchurch experiences, or the ability of charter schools to set higher standards like compulsory drug testing of teachers which exceed union acceptability, as they would protect junkie teachers over the rights of parents to have drug free teachers of their children.

8/08/2012 3:46:15 p.m.

Moera wrote:

It seems very americanised, Nationals policies on education. Why would they do that to NZders when history has proven that these policies don't work for anyone other than the rich...or am I wrong?

8/08/2012 2:20:22 p.m.

David wrote:

I see the National Party have sent in their Public Relations team... their job to come online during a work day and post in favour of anything National does. Tis the only job they could get apparently... and they dont seem to do any other work... some of them even post dozens and dozens of times per day. LOL come on TV3... in your terms, include a disclosure agreement where these people have to admitt to being paid mouthpieces.