National Standards misleading comments

I'm not a political animal and I really do like my job thank you John but I just have to vent my frustration at the reporting of the national standards issue in the press. Today's Christchurch Press has a photo of John Key and Anne Tolley opening a new school under the banner Key prefers to 'work with' rebel schools

The first sentence says

Schools rebelling against the new national standards will have to explain to parents why they are prepared to allow children to leave school without adequate literacy and numeracy skills.

Now really! (if this is actually what you said John) This is just such political emotive nonsense. Schools already have many systems in place for identifying and communicating student achievement. The emotive suggestions that we need national standards to help us identify the underachievement are just patently wrong. Key's statement also suggests that schools are doing nothing about inadequate literacy and numeracy. Again... wrong wrong wrong. Schools work tirelessly and teachers care passionately about raising achievement. There is also an implied suggestion that we need the standards to identify schools that are failing. No. We have a school review process for that through the education review office. But it has just occurred to me that maybe with the cuts to the education budget this might be the new strategy. Scrap the Education Review Office (ERO) and just let schools be judged through published league tables of academic achievement. Lots of money will be saved. Great idea.