Written By: - Date published: 1:32 pm, July 12th, 2010 - 8 comments
Two different headlines on national standards this morning paint an interesting picture. Tolley is a disgrace and her national standards are worse. Get rid of both of them.
Written By: - Date published: 2:45 pm, July 9th, 2010 - 25 comments
Anne Tolley is on record. She told the Principals gathered at their annual conference that rather than run to the media that they need to talk to her directly.
Lets see some of those who have voiced their opposition to Nationals Standards so far…..
Written By: - Date published: 4:20 pm, July 8th, 2010 - 15 comments
God knows what the National Standards are designed to do – it can’t be to lift achievement. Even the Minister says that is not the case. It can’t be to identify those behind – schools already do that. Anyway there is no money or extra resources to ‘fix’ them. Maybe there is a bigger plan …
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, July 3rd, 2010 - 57 comments
The Minister of Education Anne Tolley, and the Government, is facing a fair amount of (growing) opposition to the implementation of her National Standards. Her message was essentially that schools need to get on with the job of putting the Standards in place and not to publicly criticize the policy. Unfortunately, the Minister herself is responsible for a fair degree of the criticism.
Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, July 3rd, 2010 - 13 comments
Tolley told principals they should stop talking to the media about national standards. Their criticisms are valid. She would rather silence the critics than fix the problems. A wise authority figure power talks softly and carries a big stick. An idiot with an ego problem yells loudly while carrying no stick. Threatening 500 pillars of local communities when you’ve got no power over them. That’s just dumb.
Written By: - Date published: 1:38 pm, June 25th, 2010 - 59 comments
Just a few days ago I wrote about schools in Dunedin and Invercargill refusing to participate in National’s flawed, damaging “national standards” process. The boycott is spreading, with the Auckland Primary Principals’ Association refusing to participate in training, and warning of “further action”.
Written By: - Date published: 10:20 am, June 19th, 2010 - 12 comments
Several schools have spoken out against the imposition of national standards, and three have gone so far as to completely refuse to cooperate. This creates a dilemma for the Nats. How will they respond? Not, I hope, by following one moronic suggestion to cut funding to schools
Written By: - Date published: 2:26 pm, June 8th, 2010 - 27 comments
We all know what a disaster America’s ‘No Child Left Behind’, the inspiration for the Nats’ National Standards has been. It seems Australia has gone down a very similar track and the results have been the same – teaching to the test, grade inflation, and institutional cheating as teachers and schools find themselves being judged solely on their students’ grades.
Written By: - Date published: 6:18 am, March 22nd, 2010 - 27 comments
Anne Tolley has promised that national standards have been introduced so that “every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school”.
The depths of arrogance and ignorance in that claim leave me at a loss for words…
Written By: - Date published: 6:15 am, March 20th, 2010 - 40 comments
Education Minister Anne Tolley has made an extraordinary promise: “New Zealand elected a Government that promised to introduce national standards so that every single child could read, write, and do maths when they left school. That is what the country voted for.” We would all love to see National deliver, but they can’t, and they know that they can’t. It’s an empty promise.
Written By: - Date published: 3:55 pm, March 19th, 2010 - 19 comments
New instalment from John Key impersonater “Plumedekiwi”, in which the PM gets his linguistic knickers in a twist over national standards….
If you haven’t seen the other vids by Plumedekiwi, check him out here
Written By: - Date published: 12:37 pm, March 16th, 2010 - 14 comments
Anne Tolley put out an odd media statement on Friday. She reckons Trevor Mallard, opposition spokesperson for Education, dominated two public meetings in Auckland on her Government’s unpopular national standards policy. Which begs the question, was she actually all there at either meeting?
Written By: - Date published: 12:22 pm, March 15th, 2010 - 19 comments
Lorraine Kerr, head of the NZ School Trustees Association is one of National’s few supporters on National Standards. She says a survey of boards of trustees gives her a mandate for this position, with only four boards opposing the Standards. Now, she has been forced to admit that only 14 schools were included in the survey result.
Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, March 13th, 2010 - 30 comments
We keep hearing, from the Key government, statements about education that make no logical or factual sense at all. Here are two examples. Help me choose — which is the stupider statement, and why?
Written By: - Date published: 11:49 am, March 10th, 2010 - 24 comments
“Tolley finds ally in school mum” screams the headline of Audrey Young’s piece today.
When National runs a bus tour the Herald is desperate in its attempts to drum up support, when it’s Labour all they want to talk about is how much the bus is costing the taxpayer.
Written By: - Date published: 7:37 am, March 5th, 2010 - 11 comments
All available evidence and expert opinion suggests that National Standards, as the government intends to introduce them in our primary schools, won’t work. They may even do damage. Will Key and Tolley ever take heed of the evidence, or is this just a blind ideological crusade? Bring on Diane Ravitch…
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, February 24th, 2010 - 26 comments
Success for Opposition frontbenchers largely consists of embarrassing their opposite number by forcing them to answer questions they would rather not. Labour showed both how to do that and how not to do it in the House yesterday.
Written By: - Date published: 3:01 pm, February 19th, 2010 - 40 comments
The letter warning school boards not to speak out over national standards is an outrage, but John Key and his National Party have a long and dishonourable record of trying to shut down those who speak out to oppose them.
Written By: - Date published: 11:23 pm, February 17th, 2010 - 9 comments
It’s hard to decide which is worst: Do Nothing John Key flouncing around the country while thousands of Kiwis lose their jobs, the Joyce cabal pushing their hard-right economic agenda, or the rest of them who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.
Written By: - Date published: 1:00 pm, February 15th, 2010 - 37 comments
When the Government came under fire over National Standards John Key was quick to raise the anti-union bogey. The old stereotypes are certainly still strong in National, but they have led Key into a trap. What might have worked for Muldoon or Maggie in the past won’t work now for a number of reasons.
Written By: - Date published: 9:27 am, February 6th, 2010 - 85 comments
School principal Pat Newman posted the following as a comment on Red Alert. It’s not a polished piece written with distribution in mind, but it’s from the heart, and well worth reproducing here (minor typos corrected). Pat added several further excellent comments, follow the link above. I speak as a principal of a Decile 2 …
Written By: - Date published: 1:25 pm, February 4th, 2010 - 16 comments
I wasn’t expecting to do another in this series so soon, but then I’m much too polite to decline a clear invitation like this. John Key says that parents should not have to put up with “creeping political correctness in our schools”. So what does “creeping political correctness in our schools” mean? Its tempting to …
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, December 17th, 2009 - 120 comments
Another disgraceful Herald editorial recently: Teachers must learn to obey Govt’s orders Three years ago, when the National Party announced its plan to make all primary schools test pupils’ ability in reading, writing and mathematics, teachers were scornful. … The union, in league with the Principals Federation, says the standards are being rushed … Mrs …
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, October 22nd, 2009 - 23 comments
National’s Anne Tolley, our education minister who thought that taking a ‘helicopter view’ of something meant taking a ride in a chopper, is cutting education resources so we can have an additional measure of how well kids are learning. $10 million is being taken out of extra support for Science, PE, and art teaching in …
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