This morning, Chereè Kinnear reports Marama Davidson's surgery, no public media merger, and the Police Minister's youth crime goals. VIdeo / NZ Herald / Whakaata Māori
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Minister of Education Erica Stanford have announced the introduction of standardised testing in primary schools across New Zealand.
Speaking to media during a visit to Silverstream School in Upper Hutt, Luxon said education achievement was not meeting expectations.
“That’s why the Government is introducing consistent assessment tools so no matter where you live in New Zealand, parents and teachers will know more about how our young people are learning.”
From next year, all children in their first year of schooling will have an opportunity to run through a phonics check, to help teachers understand how well a child can read words by sounding out letters.
“This will be done after 20 weeks of schooling and repeated after 40 weeks. It will help teachers identify and arrange additional support for those who need it right at the start of the child’s education,” Stanford said.
Progression monitoring on reading, writing and maths will also be introduced for children in Years 3 through 8.
These will be done twice each year and will inform teachers about the next steps needed for a child’s learning.
Stanford guaranteed parents that they would know more about how their children were doing at school going forward, regardless of where they lived or what school they attended.
She said it would help teachers identify struggling kids and provide parents with “rich data” regarding how their children were going.
It formed part of the Government’s strategy to get 80% of students “at curriculum” by the time they reached high school.
“That is not our intention at all,” Stanford said, when asked if schools would be pitted against each other based on how well their students were doing.
Labour: ‘Another backwards step’
Labour’s education spokeswoman Jan Tinetti described the announcement as a “backwards step for education that will leave students behind”.
“Erica Stanford is hellbent on a one-size-fits-all education system. National Standards have failed students before; going back to standardised testing is taking us down the same path.
“It will only work if it’s followed through with interventions to pick up students who need a bit more help. We have not heard from the Government its plan for making sure that happens, instead it has made cuts to intervention programmes and did not give learning support any additional funding in this year’s Budget.”
The coalition Government has made a series of announcements in recent months around education.
Act leader David Seymour. Photo / Alex Burton
This includes plans to bring back charter schools to the New Zealand school system with $153 million in funding for up to 50 new schools. Of these, 15 would be new and 35 would be converted state schools.
There has also been a shake-up of the school lunches programme, which Associate Education Minister David Seymour says will save the country approximately $107m a year.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon reads with a student at Silverstream primary school. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“Students will receive nutritious food that they want to eat,” Seymour said when the programme was announced.
“It will be made up of the sorts of food items thousands of mums and dads put into lunch boxes every day for their kids – forget quinoa, couscous and hummus, it will be more like sandwiches and fruit.”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
