This Supplementary Order Paper amends the Education Amendment Bill. It prevents the repeal of section 60A and the amendment to section 61 of the Education Act 1989, and the amendment to section 43 of the Education (Update) Amendment Act 2017. Section 60A establishes curriculum statements and national performance measures – national standards. Section 61 requires a school charter to include the board’s aims in student achievement, including the assessment of students against any national standard. Section 43 amends new section 62(2) of the Education Act 1989 to require monitoring and reporting of national standards.

National believes it has been irresponsible of the Government to get rid of national standards without having a detailed system to replace it with. The Minister amended the national administration guidelines to effectively scrap national standards without consultation from parents in December of last year. We believe it is arrogant that the Government did not even try to consult with parents before it scrapped national standards.

Parents and students deserve to be treated better than this. The removal of the standards has been confusing and chaotic, with some schools trying to keep national standards while others develop new systems. We note that Treasury has previously recommended that the Government delay scrapping national standards until they had a new system to replace it with in order to prevent a gap in system-level information on how schools are performing. Under the changes, the Government has ensured there is no standardised reporting back to the Ministry of Education. This has resulted in real issues of accountability of reporting and understanding of the nationwide picture of achievement.

If parents have issues with their school, it is now much harder for the ministry to understand what is going on. We note the submitters who raised the importance of enabling parents to monitor their child’s progress and the ability to benchmark that progress. This legislation reflects the Government removing national standards provisions in law nearly 7 months after they scrapped the system via the national administrative guidelines.

National supports frequent, clear, and reliable reporting to parents. We also support reporting progression across all of the curriculum areas. However, we are concerned that the tools have not been adequately invested in to enable quality reporting. We believe there must also be reporting to the ministry to ensure we can ensure we have a nationwide school-level picture of achievement.