Teachers dispute school standards claims

Anne Tolley said if anyone disagreed with the union, it attacked and tried to discredit them. Photo / Mark Mitchell

The primary teachers union is disputing figures used by Education Minister Anne Tolley this week to justify the taxpayer-funded publicity campaign on the introduction of national standards to schools.

But in doing so, the New Zealand Educational Institute has taken the unusual step of questioning aspects of the Education Review Office report the figures were based on.

And that has prompted a return volley from Mrs Tolley, who said if anyone disagreed with the union, it attacked and tried to discredit them.

"'I hope these are not the same type of bullying tactics that they are using on their bus tour against parents, teachers and principals. It's disappointing that the union has attacked the highly respected Education Review Office, just because it is unhappy with the findings of the report."

The union is running a bus campaign around the country arguing for a trial of the standards, and today one of the buses will be at Waitangi, where many politicians are headed.

Yesterday, the union issued a statement titled "The truth about student achievement and teacher performance". It tries to rebut some of Mrs Tolley's statistics taken from a December ERO report titled "Reading/Writing in Years 1 and 2".

It cites some praise in the report, such as its statement that "the majority of teachers were good at using assessment to reflect on and improve their teaching of reading and writing".

But it also highlights negative parts of the report as being unsubstantiated.

"ERO's claim that principals are not sharing achievement information is unsubstantiated," the union said.

"ERO's statement that one in three teachers had 'little sense of how critical it was for years 1 and 2 students to develop confidence in reading and writing' is unsubstantiated."

The NZEI takes issue with Mrs Tolley's claims that two-thirds of school leaders were not monitoring how well young people were achieving; that about 30 per cent of teachers were not doing a good job; and that principals were not sharing achievement information.

The union believes, on the basis of the ERO report, that the 30 per cent is overstated.

Mrs Tolley said that nothing in the information released by the union refuted statements made by her. "We never made it up. It's in the ERO report." She had a meeting with the NZEI about the report and the concerns had not been raised with her.