Friday, 12 March 2010
THE New Zealand Educational Institute’s national standards school bus tour visited schools and spoke to people on The Strand in Whakatane on Tuesday.
Staff from NZEI, the union for primary school teachers, and Eastern Bay teachers collected signatures for a petition that calls on the Government to trial national standards before making a decision to introduce them to all schools.
Opposition is based on concern among many parents, teachers, principals and education experts that the standards are untried and untested.
Whakatane NZEI branch president Eric van Dijk, a teacher at Edgecumbe Primary School, said teachers already had adequate data about their pupils’ performance.
“We know the children who need help. We don’t need that information on a national basis.”
Mr van Dijk said standards would inevitably be used to rank schools but there was no way to do that fairly.
He said teachers wanted the Government to trial the system rather than introduce it nationally.
NZEI community campaigns co-ordinator Lyndy McIntyre said 20 teachers gathered at lunchtime in The Strand outside education minister and East Coast MP Anne Tolley’s office to oppose national standards.