Sacrificing the most vulnerable children in our education system to a corporate cover-up?

A few days ago I wrote at length about the fiddling of e-asTTle results in order to make it seem that children’s achievement against national standards had magically increased due to the ‘government’s wonderful education policies.’

I note that NZ First Education spokesperson Tracey Martin has highlighted this in this press release ‘Is the Ministry Manipulating National Standards Results?’ and I also note that the media has ignored this, as they have ignored past press releases on this topic. Not surprising, I guess, that the print media are ignoring this, as they will be gearing up for their pointless league table exercise in a couple of months.

Not to be overlooked is the similar fiddling with the other key standardised test, STAR, where the inconsistencies first became apparent in late 2012.

There is no doubt that something has gone awry with these two tests, and the finger of suspicion points right at the Ministry of Education. That spotlights the role of Hekia Parata which then turns the suspicious finger back on the Ministry and one very senior manager related to the Minister….. all hypothetical of course…..

Issues with one test could be accidental. The same issues with both tests points to a conspiracy to defraud children, their parents, and the public of New Zealand. How immoral can this government get? Political agendas ahead of children?

Adding together e-asTTle, STAR and the forthcoming PaCT database (where the decreed levels defining achievement can be easily adjusted as needed to ensure desired proof of achievement), we really do end up with the stance that National will take in next year’s election campaign.

Topping all this at the moment was yesterday’s debate Education Amendment Bill debate in Parliament, where the major topic was charter schools. It didn’t take too long for National MPs to pull out this McKinsey & Co. report that I discussed in a previous blog. Bingo. There it is, out in the open, the proof that the education strings of this puppet government are being pulled from overseas.

The contrast between the National and ACT ideologues (noting that the Maori Party who hold the deciding votes, did not speak), and the well researched, well expressed speeches from the opposition parties was extreme. Dianne Khan outlines this very well in her blog ‘Cross party resistance to charter schools.’

Returning to the farce over the STAR test results, this blog by Kelvin Smythe; “There is Aaron Gilmore then there is NZCER’ provides further details. Kelvin advises that the New Zealand Listener will be publishing an article that makes use of damming information obtained through OIA requests.

As they say, watch this space.