It's Broken Down

Now Even the Mundane Requires a Miracle

How about this?  NZ government primary schools are having to report back on how their charges performed under National Standards.  One school has fessed up and exposed to all the world how its students and the school have failed. 

A Wairarapa school will come under special attention from the Ministry of Education after most of its students failed the National Standards benchmark last year.  But Dalefield School principal Kevin Jephson, who voluntarily went public about his school's results, said the standards were invalid and inappropriate for his school.

It turns out that the principal, Mr Jephson has been an implacable opponent of National Standards.  By going public, no doubt, he is endeavouring to make a political point.  "Our students failed, and we are proud of it" would be the sub-text.


Mr Jephson goes on to argue that National Standards were unrealistic for most schools. 

Mr Jephson said the primary school sector had known all along the achievement components for National Standards were unrealistic for most primary schoolchildren.  "Schools have been placed in an untenable position and should not be expected to accommodate National Standards when they are clearly inadequate," he said.

Let's see: having kids taught how to read and write and do maths is an unrealistic expectation.  Mmmm.  We are all aware that the actual standards in National Standards are pretty basic, even banal.  If a school is failing its pupils here it ought to be razed, period.  Or much better, put the school up to be a charter school.  But the Ministry of Education has a softly, softly approach.  It will go and counsel everybody, including the janitor.Good luck with that. 

Meanwhile a primary school down the road, Solway had entirely different outcomes:

But Gail Marshall, principal of Solway Primary School in Masterton, said she had utmost faith in National Standards as a workable system.  The standards were trialled at Solway ahead of being rolled out nationwide.

The 2011 assessment at Solway found 91 per cent of Years 4 to 6 pupils met the reading standard, 87 per cent the writing standard and 82 per cent the mathematics standard.  "What I like about the standards is that it shows very clearly what the kids need, and we can target that. This year we'll be concentrating on writing and maths and we can target toward that end."

The quotation to trump all comes from Mr Jephson:

"National Standards are a backward step for our kids. They're written to make kids walk on water, and if they can't do that, they fail.

Deconstructing that clanger, it is apparent that Mr Jephson believes that teaching a child how to read, write and do arithmetic requires a miracle.  Mr Jephson is in the wrong profession.  Get out now while you have a scintilla of dignity left.

He has an excuse, of course.  It's the kids and their families.  (This is code, by the way, for "it's the gummint's fault that we cannot teach our pupils to read and write.  If our families were not so poor, and more wealth was distributed, we would be able to teach our kids to read.")

"There's some troubled families out there and hungry kids, and the ministry expects high performing students, while we're struggling just to get them to school."

Maybe, just maybe the kids and parents are unmotivated to get their kids to school because they have already decided it's useless and of no worth--having been exposed to Mr Jephson's sophisticated and advanced pedagogy.  Who knows. 

But if kids don't come there are persons called truancy officers.  Instead of faux hand-wringing over dollops of guilt and pity, Mr Jephson we suggest you do your job--thoroughly, with professional application and diligence.  What you demand of parents will eventually be delivered. 

In the meantime, you had better learn how to teach kids reading and writing.