As part of its education policy for the 2008 election campaign, the National Party pledged to deliver National Standards that would give parents clear and factual reports on their children's progress at primary and intermediate schools.
This was the cue for strong resistance from teachers, who insisted this was already being done quite satisfactorily.
Four years on, what has been achieved? Very little, given the Prime Minister's statement this week that National Standards data provided by schools was too "ropey" to show how well a school was doing in reading, writing and maths.
John Key said the "patchy" material supplied to the Ministry of Education made it difficult to create anything coherent for parents. This meant, most pertinently, that it would be impossible for either the ministry or the media to compile the sort of 'league tables' that parents want and which they receive at the secondary school level through NCEA results.
With that admission went the essence of the Government's promise of a more rigorous reporting of children's progress. Parents, therefore, are quite justified to query the whole point of National Standards.