Editorial: Closing the door on standards

A concerning number of school boards and principals seem determined to give the Minister of Education a lesson in accountability.
Concerning for the minister, Anne Tolley, that is. A coalition of school boards has left her little choice but to come out swinging in the face of their defiance over national standards.
Twelve Hawke's Bay schools last week handed their school charters to the Ministry of Education office in Ahuriri with no mention of national standards. The Hawke's Bay schools, members of the Boards Taking Action Coalition, are not alone.
In Southland, as many as 16 schools were reported to be taking similar action. The Southland schools said they would set educational targets against "reliable, well-referenced tests" and not national standards which place the achievement of pupils aged 5-12 in reading, writing and maths at one of four levels: well below, below, at, or above the national standard.
The Boards Taking Action Coalition says about 200 schools refused to hand in charters endorsing national standards. That's 10 per cent of the 2000 schools involved in the new standards.
The Boards Taking Action Coalition has joined the NZEI and the New Zealand Principals' Federation in calling for a moratorium and complete revision of the standards, to be done in partnership with the education sector and to a standard the sector endorsed.
That is the level of consultation and accountability they want to see. The national standards, by contrast, were introduced under urgency in 2008 with no select committee process.
Mrs Tolley has warned legal action including statutory intervention could be an option for schools who continue to rebel against the new directive. That's tough talk but would the Prime Minister really allow such intervention this side of an election?
Yet the groundswell of opposition within some schools to the new standards has been growing as the minister closes the door ever more firmly on consultation.