Labour leader David Shearer recently gave a speech outlining his Party’s education policy.
Buried beneath a strange combination of proposals, it seems that the Labour leader has some good ideas.
For example, Mr Shearer said that parents needed more and clearer information about the performance of their children and their school.
As Maxim Institute recommended in 2005, one way to achieve this is to provide parents with a standard set of information about a school, including how much its students’ grades improved over a year, its financial performance and the quality of its staff.
This information could help them to be better equipped to evaluate the performance of their child’s school, or to find one that best suits their child’s needs.
But Mr Shearer wants to make optional the tool that could be used to provide clear and consistent information about the difference that schools make to children’s learning: National Standards.
With a bit of tweaking, the problems with inconsistent interpretation and reporting against the Standards in schools could be cleared.
Then the Standards could enable parents to judge with more confidence that their child is being offered the best education possible.
Rather than making it optional, Mr Shearer could achieve his goal with a few simple changes.
Source: Maxim Institute
