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National Standards

Anne Tolley

“National Standards will set clear expectations about what students should be able to achieve in literacy and numeracy and by when. Students’ performance against these standards will be reported to parents in plain language."

“Parents want to know how well their children are doing and what they can expect when extra help is needed. This policy is about using existing assessment tools to provide feedback that supports student learning and teacher effectiveness. Consultation will establish who needs access to what information. Can I say again, there will be no single national test.”

National Standards could be beneficial to Warrington School because:

• We already use nationalised assessment tools as part of our Open Assessment gathering process - PAT, STAR, Exemplars
• We have assessment data indicating that Warrington pupils are achieving well
• We actively support those of our learners who are struggling to make progress
• We share pupil assessment data using plain language with our parents and pupils
• We gather data in simply processes that allows us to identify pupils who are high achieving, achieving and not achieving
• We use our data to demonstrate to parents that we are doing all that we can for their child
• We can say to our parents and Board of Trustees that although Warrington school is a bit zany, the children are happy and well supported in their learning

Yet

• We are an alternative thinking school probably working in a way that is different to many other schools

Will National Standards give licence to the school to continue on its present journey

• It is affirming that what we are doing as a school is ok – it works
• By being open with assessment data the school can serve the needs of its pupils

What we are doing works in this community

• Openness, Ubuntu, Wikieducator, beach, job sharing, school paddock, Warrington Well-Being Way, Envirethical and Decision Making Process all contribute to our difference.
• We allow the school processes to be open to scrutiny
• We as teachers are also seen as learners adapting to the changing environment and needs of our pupils
• Our wonderful free thinking school community is flourishing

National Standards would not change our school's assessment practices as long as data was not used to create nationwide league tables

What happens if the schoolwide assessment data declines?

• Data could assist the school to look for innovative ideas that may assist
• Parents may move their children to another school if this data was publicly available
• The Board may question the teacher's abilities rather than the changing demographics of the student population

The big difference at Warrington that could save the Government millions of dollars

Our method we believe could enable significant savings for the National government within its education spending.

• We have installed Free software (Ubuntu) on all our computers (This can be installed by anyone – we have our teachers installing it onto their school laptops and pupils as young as 8 years also installing it onto the school and their own computers)
• Using Ubuntu has meant we can continue to use older computers that may not be supported by Microsoft
• We have individuals, businesses and institutions (Otago University) donating their retired computers to us
• Surplus computers at school have been installed with Ubuntu and handed out to the community to those who need a computer

At then end of this year the government on behalf of NZ schools will be negotiating with Microsoft over the school's licensing agreements

• The actual cost of this for the last 3 years has been in the millions.
• The government does not need to renegotiate a Microsoft Agreement because if schools were all equally funded for their own agreements with software companies we could then choose to use that money else where and use free software.