Daniel Murfitt, William Colenso College principal, uses National Standards as the assessment for his intermediate school students.
"For us we're complying with the National Standards, which means we've introduced it and are reporting using the National Standards - and I believe a lot of schools are doing that, as they feel
they have to. So there might be a large per cent complying, but whether they're doing so because they believe in it might be questionable.
"We have a difficulty with National Standards and that's the way that parents and the Ministry are using the information. Parents are told their children are being put either below, well below, at or above this "national standard". So a student could be well below from the age of five to the age of 12 before they even get to secondary school, but they will have made a lot of progress at the same time.
"You get the child and the parent going to be told from the age of five they are well below, and in terms of self-esteem this is quite damaging. Rather than saying - using a different reference point - 'the child can do this, but they need to develop this, and this area's being addressed,' because to show progress is very important.
"Another concern is the way the National Standards have started driving curriculum. What I can see could potentially happen is that it might force schools to focus solely on literacy and numeracy, but really we want our schools to be focused on yes, literacy, yes, numeracy, but also arts, sports, and all these other creative, innovative curriculum programmes encouraging learning."
