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New education standards to be introduced next year, tracking a student's progress and reporting it to their parents, have been released.
The government is to spend $36 million over four years to support schools' implementation of the standards.
Under the standards, parents will twice a year receive school reports on their children's' progress.
The standards focus on detailed areas that teachers will be expected to test students against at each school level. For example, after one year at school, students would read The Way it Was by Dot Meharry.
They will then be expected to answer questions from the teacher and provide additional information on the story, such as the use of different colours in the illustrations or the way time difference was depicted.
Teachers will use a variety of assessment activities when they write reports and may use samples of students' work.
Students will not be compared to others - assessment will measure only their progress and achievement against the national standards.
Education Minister Anne Tolley says the standards will be introduced in all English-based primary and intermediate schools and will involve years one to eight.
"If students have these foundation skills in literacy and numeracy they will be able to learn across all areas of the school curriculum and will be on track to get at least NCEA level 2," she says.
"I'm delighted for the first time (parents) will now have information on what their children should be able to achieve and by when."
Prime Minister John Key says the standards are supported by parents, will lift achievement standards and provide "clear signposts" on a child's progress. One in five students is being left behind and they need to be identified so they can receive the help they need, he says.
"Parents want, and deserve, clear information on how their children are doing at school."
Parents cannot intervene if they do not know there is a problem, Key says.
"In order to succeed our children must have the very best educational opportunities. National standards will help realise those opportunities."
NZEI president Frances Nelson says it is "problematic" that teachers' and principals' first look at the standards was at the end of the year.
"We now need time to study them very closely and see how they're going to fit alongside everything else we do."
Back to basics
Education Minister Anne Tolley says going back to basics first is important if children are to learn other things, but other subjects will not take a back seat.
Tolley says some schools already have assessment standards, but half do not.
Setting national standards in reading, writing and maths was a National Party campaign promise and is due to come in next year.
"Many schools have said this is 'just business as usual for us this was just good teaching'," Tolley told Breakfast.
The standards are based on an Education Review Office report that said half of schools were not using assessment well and did not know who struggling students are, she says.
Teachers will need to know how a student reached an answer, rather than simply whether the answer is correct, Tolley says.
It is about "digging into" how a student learns, she says.
"We know that teaching has the most effect on a child's learning, good teaching, so if we can clear some of the other responsibility away from teachers a focus on getting them to teach well.
"If they do nothing other than teach our children read and write and do maths and be good socialised New Zealand people then they've done a really good job."
The Ministry of Education has told schools they will not get extra support for teaching arts, science and physical education next year.
The money will go to support for the core subjects in the national standards.
Teacher unions are afraid the national standards will be used to compare the performance of schools through "league tables".
The government has said it will do all it can to stop that happening.
However, the Principals' Federation and NZEI said they would not attend the standards launch in Auckland on Friday, as to do so would be to offer tacit support to a policy they did not agree with.
