I may be wrong but . . . .

Following my article a couple of days ago, I’m still struggling to figure out what’s going on in Education Minister Anne Tolley’s (or the government’s) mind. But I think I’m starting to see how this confrontation between the education sector and Tolley/Key took root and where it’s going.

As I wrote on Wednesday, I simply cannot reconcile the certainty with which Tolley speaks about the “one in five children that we know are failing” in numeracy and literacy, with her passionate insistence that we set up this potentially damaging and unproven system of standards in order to provide evidence that these children are failing.

On this morning’s radio I heard all this repeated by the School Trustees Association representative – that we know there are kids failing and how many, we know roughly who they are and what areas they come from, and we know a lot about their ethnicity.

What we don’t know, or have yet to articulate, is what we’ll do about the results when they come in. If we know about these failures – who they are and where they’re taught – then why are we not doing something about it now, such as strengthening teacher resources and training teachers to do a better job? Why are we throwing millions of precious dollars at a testing regime to tell us what we (or at least Tolley) already know? How will knowing that make for any improvements that we cannot implement already?

Yes, the logic has been escaping me. So I’ve been thinking back to how this came about, and how the policy drivers have morphed.

There are two possibilities, I believe. The first is that the government, and Tolley in particular, are stupid and pig-headed, determined to show who’s boss at all costs. Pig-headed? Certainly, no question – but what government isn’t on key policies. Stupid? I’m not prepared to call these seemingly intelligent leaders stupid just yet.

The more likely possibility arises from this scenario:

When electioneering back in 2008, the National party picked on pupil literacy and numeracy problems as a great issue to appeal to middle and upper class Kiwi voters. Like that other perennial easy hit, Law and Order, it was simple to express and it resonated with many parents. And (again like law and order and the implications on prison costs) it didn’t lend itself during election time to much in-depth analysis thinking about the implications of setting national standards, especially among people who don’t understand much about education issues and the problems real teachers face day to day.

National won the election. So the new Education Minister, who had extolled her policy initiative pre-election, had to follow through. And it was then that the people who actually understand the educational process began to suggest that things were not quite so straightforward.

So Tolley faced expert, in-depth analysis and criticism that simply testing children does not necessarily make them any better off, and that – worse – it may well do harm to the education of individual children and the country as a whole. Issues such as teaching to the test, labelling slower kids as perennial failures, and publishable school league tables were brought into the open. The paucity of sound argument by Tolley and her supporters also came to light as we learn that she has no plan whatsoever as to how to use the results to improve education.

Except for one thing. And I’ve realised that this is the underlying motivation that keeps supporters of standards testing rolling.

Tolley is hoping that the publication of results will enable the naming and shaming of teachers and schools, so that they will feel compelled to “improve” their work efforts so their pupils will “pass the tests”.

There isn’t enough money, it seems, to invest more in teacher training and upskilling and in better classroom resources and smaller classes. These are the logical, proven ways of lifting standards throughout the country. So if we’re not prepared to take that path, then the next best way is to use sticks rather than carrots – make the “failing” teachers and schools known to us all, in order to make them feel bad and try harder.

This negative approach may work with a small minority of lazier teacher – just as it would with small minorities of lazier workers everywhere, even politicians – but it does nothing to positively motivate teachers and lift morale, which surely is the best long-term way of lifting educational standard overall.

This policy battle between certain politicians and educational experts and fieldworkers is really, then, a combination of a minister’s determination not to lose face plus a mean-spirited, negative attitude to ordinary educational workers who are trying to do their best with the resources available to them.