Supporting Success in Education

National Standards discussion

Cloverlea Primary School, Palmerston North has 1x Librarian, 5x Teacher Aides and 1x Office Manager.

From our teacher aides the following comments were made:

Most of the children who are identified as "under achieving" will already be in small group programmes with Teacher Aides, targeted to their school/strategy levels. It seems that these children will now be targeted to solely focus on their age group national standard, in some cases much higher than their learning level. These children could become "learning looses" as well as "under achievers" and Teacher Aides could become frustrated trying to teach children way above their school/strategy level.

Discussion begun by Dianne Jordan on behalf of Teacher Aides.

Tags: Nat-stan-disc

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ann Hoglund on March 18, 2010 at 2:59pm

Hi Dianne
Yes it certainly opens a can of worms doesn't it, all the more important for Support Staff to be very aware of how all this will affect them and also letting the teachers in your school know that it will affect you and that you are behind the teachers in their call for a trial. Well done for collecting the comments from your school and posting them.

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Permalink Reply by Sharyn Gibbons - Wellington on March 19, 2010 at 8:31am

Many thanks for your contributions Diane. Are you able to explain a bit more about what you mean about 'learning looses'? I think I understand where you are coming from but just wanted to be accurate.
Sharyn

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Permalink Reply by Dianne Jordan on March 19, 2010 at 12:35pm

Hi Sharyn,
I think the teacher aide, who made the orginal comments, was meaning that students already struggling would be worse off. Pressure to perform would put them under more stress and they could just give up. Teacher Aides, like teachers, get close to their students and really want them to succeed and really feel for their students when they are stuggling.

Dianne

Sharyn Gibbons - Wellington said:

Many thanks for your contributions Diane. Are you able to explain a bit more about what you mean about 'learning looses'? I think I understand where you are coming from but just wanted to be accurate.
Sharyn