Caution urged on standards data

Controversial education standards designed to measure pupils' achievement often fail to identify areas where students need particular help, local principals warn.

The latest National Standards results - for the 2012 school year - were released by the Government this week.

Masterton's Lakeview School principal Ed Hodgkinson, who is also president of the Wellington Regional Primary Principals' Association, cautioned against using the data as an absolute measure for progress.

"As a general picture, they show us where we're at. [But], you can't read a lot into these results. We're still trying to get our heads around it and work out what we're doing."

Publication of the data, which show whether New Zealand children are reaching expected reading, writing and mathematics standards, has renewed debate around the controversial system. Aggregate results, which provide a national snapshot of last year's achievement levels, show a slight improvement on 2011.

At least 70 per cent of students in Years 1-8 achieved their respective standards in reading (77.4 per cent), writing (70 per cent) and maths (73.6 per cent).

Maori and Pasifika students continue to trail other pupils, despite Pasifika students making the most progress in the latest results.

Male students were also lagging in reading and writing achievement compared to their female counterparts.

Individual year-level data, released for the first time since National Standards were implemented, shows standard achievement dropped in the maths and writing disciplines.

Mr Hodgkinson said National Standards often failed to identify where students needed particular help or extension in their learning.

"We've had our [Lakeview School] National Standards results up since the beginning of the year. I haven't had a parent yet talk to me about them, not even one comment."

Results for Wairarapa schools are due to be released later this month.

The country's largest teaching union, the New Zealand Educational Institute, slammed publication of the results - saying the most recent data failed to contribute anything new.

President Judith Nowotarski said the National Standards were as unreliable and invalid as last year in terms of judging teacher or school effectiveness.

Educators have warned of consistency problems in the reporting of National Standards achievement results since the system's 2010 implementation.

Education Minister Hekia Parata said the data gave a "comprehensive picture of our system and what we need to be focusing on".

But she was unable to guarantee uniformity between schools in their reporting of National Standards results.

The Education Ministry was still working with about 13 schools which had not produced accurate data.

"This is only the second year that the National Standards data has been reported and we expect the quality to continuously improve each year," Ms Parata said. - APNZ