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Anne Tolley's comprehension standards

Anne Tolley is at war with teachers of over National Standards. She has welcomed a report (as opposed to actually reading it) from the Education Review Office which shows that 80 percent of primary and intermediate schools are already making good progress with implementing National Standards.

Except the report doesn't say that.

The report actually says that less than half of schools have a plan in place to implement the National Standards. In fact 80 percent of schools are not well prepared to implement National Standards. Those schools that are, are ready because they are merely continuing with what they already do. The report says that only 15 percent of teachers and four percent of school trustees understand National Standards, and at least a third of schools hadn`t even thought about how to moderate teacher judgments to ensure consistency of student achievement against the standards.

Tolley thought it was "extremely encouraging" that 75 percent of schools have taken advantage of external support in trying to understand National Standards. What's not so encouraging, however, is that those conducting the external support haven't answered teachers' questions.

Still, she is encouraged that " the vast majority of schools are working hard to implement National Standards in a professional and positive way."

Except there is no evidence that they are..