Morning Report: National Standards Deal?

I thought our National President, Frances Nelson, managed her interview with Sean Plunket with a great deal of aplomb. The idea that teachers want to block the release of assessment data to protect their own interests was heavily pushed by Sean and he became quite aggressive when presented with the possibility that the media could not be trusted to use testing data responsibly.

It's a pity that the corporate world, that dominates our culture, needs to operate with a high degree of self interest as this tends to cloud the fact that there are groups and organisations that can have altruistic intentions. No matter how patiently Frances explained to Sean the dangers of league tables and the potential misuse by media, he could not accept the fact that we were wanting to save the integrity of our education system and not just protect our own backs.

This needs to be a battle we fight intelligently so that these misconceptions don't become mainstream views.