More on Labour’s education policy

I blogged yesterday on how Labour's policy appears to be keep National Standards, but rename them and don't give the Government the data. I suspect their policy has not matched their rhetoric as they realise there are so many parents who really appreciate getting a plain language assessment of whether their child is achieving to the level needed to have adequate literacy and numeracy.

A reader has made a useful observation:

Mallard's big attack has been on moderation. How do you know that school A is judging a child against say the Year 1 Nat Std in the same way as school B is judging a child against the Year 1 Nat Std.

If you accept that is a valid criticism (and Moroney has continued to run it) then Labour does nothing about it.

Labour has said they will “Determine the Curriculum level a child is achieving.” But how do they know that two schools will make the same call without moderation. You'll have to train and trust teachers – as National has suggested we do.

The Union's support of Labour's policy only shows that they don't actually care about the issue of moderation – they just care who is fronting the policy.

So this confirms the moderation argument was always a red herring.

There is a National Standard in reading, writing and maths for each year – Years 1-8.

There are 8 curriculum levels covering children from ages 5 through to the end of high school.

That means there are approximately 4 curriculum levels covering children from Years 1-8.

It means the information is going to be meaningless. If you have a 5 year old child they will be judged against the curriculum level 1. They'll continue to be judged against that when they're ages 6 and 7 basically. That means for 2-3 years you'll get bugger all meaningful information because you are being assessed against the same standard for 2-3 years.

So its national standards lite, with less meaningful standards. What a great triumph for parents and pupils.

Labour seem to almost be embarrassed by the policy. Only two Labour have tweeted about it.  Their website has just a single page on it, there is no post on Red Alert about it and no questions in the House on national standards.

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