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The New Zealand Curriculum Standards, also known as the “National Standards,” came into effect this year. These standards have been described as aspirational with the intention of raising student achievement in English (Reading and Writing) and Mathematics. National Standards are not a test or a score but a set of benchmarks that set clear expectations for students in the first eight years at school. Schools are required to use a range of assessment methods to make a judgement about a student’s progress and achievement against those benchmarks or annual standards.
The New Zealand Curriculum Standards have been divided into a progression of benchmarks for English (Reading and Writing) and Mathematics:
- after one year at school
- after two years at school
- after three years at school
- by the end of Year 4
- by the end of Year 5 and
- by the end of Year 6.
At the end of each year, students will be assessed against these annual standards using a variety of assessment methods indicating whether he/she is:
- Above
- At or
- Below the Standard
Implementation of National Standards
The principles of the National Standards emphasise how assessment is used to help your child progress in their learning. Our intention is to implement the National Standards reflecting those principles rather than adopting superficial changes. Therefore, this year we focus on one of the three reporting areas. We have incorporated our school wide focus on writing (English) with the National Standards writing requirements. Of reading, maths and writing, writing is the most complex and most challenging to assess and moderate to set standards. We’ve chosen the toughest one first. Planning and preparation for implementing the writing standards has been a challenging and ambiguous process, requiring in-depth thinking and collaboration. Despite this challenge, we are well positioned with our assessment systems to deliver excellent information about your child’s progress and achievement.
Fulfilling the National Standards requirements in Reading and Mathematics will follow more smoothly having trialled ideas. By 2011 midyear, we will report against all three National Standards. We have received affirmative feedback on this process from a National Standards facilitator.
MBS National Standards reporting
Like all schools in New Zealand, we will report to parents at least two times each year on their child’s progress and achievement in relation to the annual standards. Most students will receive an Interim or a Final report depending on how long they have been at school:
Interim = indicates where the student is expected to be positioned at the end of a year and
Final = indicates where the student is positioned at the end of a year.
The information in these reports will help students, teachers, parents and families to better understand:
- the student’s strengths and current learning goals
- the student’s achievement in relation to the National Standards
- the student’s progress towards the National Standards
- what we will do to support the student's learning and
- what you as parents, family and whanau can do to support.
We ask parents to consider the following points when reading the writing reports:
· The new standards are aspirational: in other words they are higher than our existing expectations which have been based on norm based testing and that in some cases a ‘below standard’ is not a significant concern.
· Our school has applied a ‘mastery’ approach; in other words we only highlight items on the report when your child can do them independently most of the time. Many other schools use an ‘instructional’ model which means they highlight an item that your child is currently working at (and not necessarily mastered) This means that achieving a standard at Mairangi Bay School is harder than it would be in some other schools. This highlights one of the problems, as we know most parents will expect these standards to be the same across all schools. We’re working with the cluster schools to ensure better consistency.
Important message to parents
We support the assessment and learning principles behind National Standards (being clear about expectations and next steps and that parents, students and teachers are all working in the same direction to improve student learning and outcomes).
We strongly recommend that you look beyond the labels, (viz..at, above and below) until they are moderated across schools nationwide and hence reliable. Instead, focus on using the rich assessment information in the reports to benefit your child’s learning. We are confident that our reports can deliver that, and we expect, with your support, that our children will continue to soar to new heights.
