A Cautionary Tale
Martin Thrupp, Springer International Publishing, 2018 Lester Flockton
Professor Martin Thrupp has proven himself to be a researcher of integrity who is committed to uncompromised truth when investigating and responding to Government education policies and associated policy machinations. There are few of his ilk in our country, so he is particularly well qualified to document the sad story of the John Key Government’s National Standards which they made law under urgency shortly after assuming office towards the end of 2008. The Search for Better Educational Standards is a documentary, a critical analysis, and a warning for the future, written in an informative style that is easy to read and follow. It has arrived hard on the heels of a change of Government and the ridding of National Standards, but this in no way diminishes its importance and relevance for all who care about education policy in New Zealand. There are serious lessons to be learned from the book about the imposition, political tactics and consequences of costly and wasteful policies that fail to achieve genuine benefits for children’s learning and teachers’ teaching across The New Zealand Curriculum. The first of the ten chapters in the book paints an excellent picture of New Zealand and its education system. This succinct account of social, political, economic and educational contexts provides valuable background to the introduction of National Standards. It should be as informative for the seasoned educator as for those who might benefit from knowing how our system has become increasingly and insidiously politicised. In turn, the next chapter discusses global pressures in education that clearly influenced government politicians and their advisers towards joining the cult of managerialism and the spurious rhetoric of needing assessment to raise standards. Subsequent chapters variously cover National Standards research, the contested manner in which the standards were developed and introduced, and issues around the production, quality and use of National Standards data and associated target setting. Challenges of attaining reliability of OTJs (Overall Teacher Judgements) receive some attention, although this is not well counterbalanced by exposing myths and mindsets that standardised tests give superior reliability of judgments of what children know and can do. Thrupp’s own research, RAINS (Research, Analysis and Insights into National Standards) occupies a relatively large part of discussions around schools’ reactions to the standards, their different interpretations in how they were implemented and used, and their responses to demands from the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office. Chapter 5 of the book is titled “Neither National nor Standard”.
Interestingly this was a line frequently used by Chris Hipkins during national election debates in 2017, and it seems to have caught on with a number of teachers. Thrupp argues this position from his RAINS research, having found that the standards were actually “very local when enacted”. This localisation cannot be denied, however the claim that National Standards were “neither national nor standard” is open to debate according to perspective. Arguably it is only half true because in fact they were national. Every State and State Integrated primary school nationally was required to implement them and to measure student achievement in relation to standards defined and published by the Ministry of Education. The point here is that yes, they were national, but practices of implementation and assessment most certainly were not standardised. Indeed, the only way to achieve this would have been through rigorous, inflexible national standardised testing! Even the Ministry of Education’s PaCT tool could not guarantee standardisation of reported measures. The concluding chapters include one on the politics of research, and another giving international responses to the book from three reputable academics. The politics of research in New Zealand, particularly in respect to Government education initiatives, is a matter of very considerable concern because so much of it is sponsored by the Ministry of Education itself and conducted by “on-song” academics. Thrupp notes the “setbacks” in doing independent research when pursuing “politically challenging lines of argument”, and “the tensions between being a researcher and an activist”. It is not hard to believe that the system only wants to hear what it wants to hear. In the international commentaries, Australian Professor Bob Lingard notes that global education policy discourses touch down in given nations, and “So it is with the Kiwi Standards, as Thrupp’s analysis unequivocally demonstrates and illustrates”. English Professor Meg Maquire comments that “One of the troubling issues raised by this book is what foregrounding these sorts of accountability may be side-lining: issues such as poverty, exclusion and various oppressions such as racism”. American Professor David Hursh cautions that “New Zealand and the US are at crossroads in their education systems. If some policymakers have their way, education will be reduced to statistics and algorithms. People will be marginalised as numbers take precedence over people”. It’s that unabating thirst for data in the mistaken belief that it is the paramount cure all and key to success. The title of the book might suggest that it is about a way forward, yet it doesn’t suggest what better educational standards could look like or how the search might be tackled. Nor does it
tional Standards
critique or comment on the validity of the standards themselves, which arguably are a significant part of the problem, although those involved in devising them are bound to deny this. What the book does do, however, is make crystal clear that unless we are genuine “learners” from the authoritative account Thrupp has provided, then the better way might prove elusive, or worse still, an illusion. There is a banquet of food for thought in this book to the point that those who partake will be professionally nourished. It should be mandatory reading for those politicians and their officials who were responsible for mandating and pushing National Standards, and absolutely prerequisite reading for all who will be engaged in the search for better educational standards.
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