National+Standards

=National Standards=

range of assessment tools available) Parents can see the progress of their child over time ie added value, from a starting point (1st year at school) to their current year level in comparison to the national cohort. It gives principals something to talk about! They can organise meetings and have great lunches together.
 * ** Positives ** || ** Negatives ** || ** Questions ** ||
 * One positive is where a school can show over time the lifting of its pupil's performance as a cohort from below the National Standard to above it. (Schools are currently doing this if they are using the current

It is important for parents to know where their children are at. We need to be tranparent with this and work together with each other and parents to gain good achievement. Chris G || For ranking purposes the National Standards has the potential to reduce collaboration between schools.

How can we make the most of this initiative to benifit learnging for kids without narrowing our curriculum?

what impact will both learning about and the standards and designing any new reporting options have on the careful implication of the new curriculum?

It appears the standards will require end of year testing in October or November - how will this impact on currently assessment schedules and reporting in schools?

Up to Y4 the pupils need to be tested at the end of their school year which varies according to when they started school. This has workload implications for Junior Primary staff who will be required to assess throughout the year - S Moir

Will the new reprorting requirements mean that current reporting forms used will need to be changed or added to?

Implementation of these is going to require PD- in areas out side the main centres and in this economic climate how will this PD be delivered and funded? Standards are already part of our curriculum structure eg Level 1- 7- we already have tools used by many NZ schools that assess against standards- why do we need National standards? We dont seem to have the time to actually get ourheads around this. We have had loads of time with the NZC. We need atleast the same with national standards! Chris G || I was recently watching the movie "Super Size Me" which starts with talking about how No Child Left Behind has resulted in a narrowing of the curriculum in USA schools - many schools now only get one 40 minute period of physical exercise in the week due to the focus on meeting standards. This has had a huge detrimental affect on the physical health of their young people who are well below there 30 minutes/day quota. Will the same thing happen here in New Zealand?

Some pertinent thoughts related to National Standards from my recent reading of "The Essentials of School Leadership", and in particular a chapter by Andy Hargreaves on Sustainable leadership: He describes sustaining learning as learning that matters, that is deep and that lasts, that is at the heart of responsible leadership. This is leadership that fully understands the nature and process of student learning, that engages directly and regularly with learning and teaching in classrooms and that promote learning among other adults in order to find continuing ways to improve the learning of students (Glickman, 2002). Sustainable improvement is not a grindingly monotonous gradient of annual increments. Real learners have curves. Learning is not instant or steady and does not always immediately show. If we care about sustainable leadership and sustainable improvement, leaders must have the courage to stand together and say that the prevalence of short-term literacy targets in the UK and the Adequate Yearly Progresss demands of No Child Left Behind are fundamentally unworkable and unsound. As disposable policies are repeatedly outstripped by their more fashionable successors, they waste resources, human energy and people's time. Short-term achievement targets in Britain and demands for signs of Adequate Yearly Progress in America are the epitome of wasteful, unsustainable policies that cultivate and capitulate to cravings for instant political gratification. Sustainable leadership resists these cravings and defers gratification for results in order to fulfil the moral purpose of authentic, lasting and widespread success. Hargreaves wrote that the most resilient schools do not just react to external pressures, they engage assertively with their environment by activating personal and professional networks, forging strategic alliances with the community, influencing the media and even protesting against misconceived policies. - Stephen Moir