National Standards @ Saint Paul's

There have been two things that have shaped my thinking around National Standards over the past few months. The first was the New Zealand Principal's Conference just before the break.

They had  a number of international speakers from different countries with their views on educational trends and how this relates to student achievement. National standards has been a significant issue across the world with a lot of countries discarding them as detrimental to fruitful outcomes for children and the nation. Without too much in-depth explanation I have summarized the important points that I gleaned from these speakers:

1. Finland has the best achievement results and this is due to their drive to lower accountability and increased responsibility for teachers. They pay enough to attract the best candidates from their Universities to go teaching. 
2. Equal societies do better. The tail in New Zealand is almost exclusively made up of Maori and Polynesian students.
3. A mindful approach to technology is a feature of successful education systems. 
4. Diagnosis and Design are the keys to successful school improvement.
5. Other factors that drive school improvement are: encouragement of deep learning, reducing gaps within schools, providing high support alongside high expectations, providing enrichment for all students and early intervention with minimal labeling.
6. If you put global competitiveness up against literacy and numeracy results you will find that countries like the US, who are bottom of the academic results table are top of the GDP per capita table. A prosperous future will depend on citizens who can invent a job rather than get one. Creative and Entrepreneurial skills provide three million new jobs each year while existing enterprises are losing 1 million. China is working to develop these skills by a range of efforts including the banning of national testing!

 The other event that has made an impact is the recent Education Review Office visit to Saint Paul's. It was interesting to engage in debate about the use of National Standards and their use at the school. We had gone through the time consuming task of unpacking the standards, making Overall Teacher Judgements of our children's grades and moderating the results. Unfortunately we had learnt too late  grading at 40, 80 and 180 weeks at school in the first three years as these anniversaries had passed for a number of our children. Inthe New Entrant class the teacher had indicated that the students were below standard because they had yet to reach the standard. They had yet to reach their anniversary so this data was inaccurate.
The solution for us was to go back to the standardised tests. We analysed this data to set measurable goals for ourselves. The ERO team initially indicated that this was going to be a non-compliance as there were no 'grey' areas. Much like the standards themselves we were to be judged 'below' despite our efforts to make the changes required and falling short at the finish line.( because of the sped of implementation)
After discussion back at the office they decided that to downgrade this in the final report. As part of the my follow up to the visit  I have put a report together around National Standards that interestingly is at odds with what tests such as  asTTLe are saying about our student achievement. Remember that our results were marked downwards.
This raises questions for us about the relationship between our good norm-referenced test results and the national standards results. It also asks questions about the practicality of using the 'big picture' standards. In our school they are not lining up against norm-referenced testing.
It will  be rare for children to make the kind of significant change that would lift their result. Progress that is smaller and incremental will not be recognized. Reports and analysis will not be productive.
There are practical and philosophic questions about the standards that need to be worked through before we commit to more valuable teacher time and energy.