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The RAINS P roject on National Standards: Reflections after the first year

The RAINS P roject on National Standards: Reflections after the first year. Presentation to QPEC forum 28 April 2012 Martin Thrupp. RAINS = Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards Follows much debate based on international experience

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The RAINS P roject on National Standards: Reflections after the first year

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  1. The RAINS Project on National Standards: Reflections after the first year Presentation to QPEC forum 28 April 2012 Martin Thrupp

  2. RAINS = Research, Analysis and Insight into National Standards • Follows much debate based on international experience • Actual research in New Zealand primary schools • Case studies of six diverse schools over three years • First report was published mid-March - highlights many issues being raised by the National Standards in and across the case study schools and also offers a lot of other relevant background. • Research falling between two stools? Need to consider long term gains.

  3. Multiple data sources including interviews (with senior leaders, teachers, parents, children, ERO reviewers), classroom observation, analysis of documents • Lead teachers helping with the research in each school • Case studies have enough depth to illustrate the effects of context and shifts in school culture • Not ‘representative’ but illustrate issues that many schools are grappling with • Commissioned by NZEI - the only research project to be investigating the New Zealand standards system in a wide-ranging way. • Maths Technology Ltd research on NS (funded by Ministry of Education) too narrow and instrumental.

  4. ‘Enactment’ rather than ‘implementation’ • Much ‘implementation-speak’ around the NS • To Ball and colleagues (2011) implementation is ‘a travesty of the policy process and a massive interpretational failure by researchers and policy-makers’ • Ball and colleagues focus on enactment: how policy is translated and reinterpreted by individuals and groups in different ways and to varying extents amidst the messy complexities and uncertainties of schools operating in diverse settings and against the background of other education policies and wider social and political contexts. • The NS policy is not being ‘implemented’ even where there is apparent compliance.

  5. The effects of school-specific factors (contexts) • ‘Tell me about your school and I’ll tell you about its response to National Standards’ • Perspectives and responses often ‘make sense’ when seen against context and are more nuanced than the debate over National Standards has suggested so far. • Each school’s school-specific factors cumulatively create more or less advantaged positionings within which the New Zealand standards system gets enacted (in one way or another) • Means that schools ‘contest’ or ‘comply’ with National Standards from positions of relative strength or weakness.

  6. The effects of performativity Looking for subtle changes in school culture with some more obvious ‘critical incidents.’ Seagull School choosing to reduce its target for student achievement compared to previous years in order to be more certain to reach it in the event NS data becomes public. Huia Intermediate limiting morning session to literacy and numeracy. Classroom data reported in 2012 & 2013.

  7. A selection of issues highlighted by the RAINS schools • Schools using the 4 point scale for reporting despite reservations • The reported responses of parents to the NS • Low entry levels, targets and ‘acceleration’ • Between-school comparability of judgements • ‘Other’ reasons why schools may support the NS • Principals’ complex reasons for ‘going with’ or ‘contesting’ NS • Processes and relationships damaged through rigid directives • Tensions around New Zealand Curriculum • ‘Rogue’ cohorts, transience and the reporting of NS results • Being ‘civilly disobedient’ and the use of 78J letters by the Ministry • The advantages/disadvantages of particular school types.

  8. What hill would you die on? • So then I went and saw [Ministry official] and he was saying, ‘is this a hill that you want to die on?’... He said if it had been national testing he could understand it being a hill to die on, he said for him that would be a hill he would have to die on too because he doesn’t believe in national testing. But he believes you can make National Standards work (Principal, Cicada School) • Contesting the NS • Deficit thinking and the politics of blame • Academics, advocacy/activism and academic freedom

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