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Thursday, August 09, 2012

League Tables by stealth no longer need stealth



Website confirmed for national standards data
National standards data, Education Review Office reports, school annual reports and NCEA data will be made available publicly on the Education Ministry's website, Education Minister Hekia Parata announced today.

The right wing agenda by stealth campaign is over, this is now dogma by speed. I remember being on The Panel on Radio NZ (before I was banned) when the National Standards was first discussed and the Education Ministry rolled up to defend the policy. I remember then drilling the spokesperson to confirm that the data wouldn't ever be used to compile league tables. The inability for the spokesperson to categorically rule it out had the rest of the Panel agreeing that something smelled bad.

That was before the election, and the machinations and scope of implementing free market small Government dogma was hidden behind a cloak of stealth and moderation that looked like listening when in fact they were dog paddling until term 2.

Stealth is no longer needed, as witnessed by the bullying of the Waitangi Tribunal to bring their report forward. National need to ram all their hard right legislation through now because the longer it waits, the closer 2014.

National can't go into the election with the asset sale's still the topic and hope to win, that means full steam ahead for policy that radically deforms public service by injecting false competition models.

Like plastic economic cosmetic surgery gone wrong, National want to graft failed free market competition models onto all public services, especially social services despite all the empirical evidence damning that approach.

A vast ocean of corporate leeches bleeding the State dry is not a solution.

And so National get around to trying to break the Teachers Union. League tables were what National always wanted from these academically questionable national standards. By ranking schools, National suggest those teachers be 'rewarded' while those who don't should be penalized. Parents will of course get caught up in the middle class angst of the education fetish and the qualities of a well funded public system for social equity will get run over by the stampeding consumer ethics of 'me first and the gimmie gimmies'.

The importance of a public education system for all must not be mutilated in this manner by these ideological fanatics.

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1 Comments:

At 9/8/12 10:05 am, Blogger X said...

The only education league table I'd approve of: Make all the sitting MPs sit a high-school general knowledge exam and then share the results. I suspect National would be languishing at the bottom of any such league table.

 

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