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..

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How to announce new funding without providing new funding

Ann Tolley makes an announcement: $8 million boost for high-performing polytechnics

Tertiary Education Minister Anne Tolley has announced that 12 polytechnics and institutes of technology are to provide up to 700 new student places following an $8 million funding boost."This additional funding for 2010, part of the Government's Youth Opportunities package, will help these institutions cope with forecast enrolment growth"

Looks like the government is announcing new funding. But it is not new funding. Tolley made a similar announcement in August

An $8 million funding boost will help high-performing polytechnics and institutes of technology collectively provide up to 700 new places to help cope with forecast enrolment growth next year, Tertiary Education Minister Anne Tolley announced today.

"This one-off funding will be available to deal with expected increases in student enrolments in 2010 resulting from the impact of the economic downturn on youth employment opportunities," Mrs Tolley says.

It wouldn't have taken very long to write today's media release I`m sure. Just change "one-off funding" to "additional funding", to make it look like a one-off announcement of additional funding for polytechs that are not as high performing as they were initally made out to be - but still have caps on student numbers.

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