In November 1999, then Prime Minister Jenny Shipley told a business and community breakfast in Dunedin about National’s plans to pilot national testing for 9- and 11-year-olds.
Such testing would "flush out the strugglers, so we can give them more help. More importantly, all parents will know how their children are really doing".
National’s strategy was to make sure every New Zealand child could read, write and do mathematics by age 9, she said.
"We want to reach this goal by 2005?", her published speech notes say. It is not clear if the question mark is a typographical error.
According to Dame Jenny, teacher unions had kept parents in the dark by blocking any moves that put the spotlight on teacher standards, but National would not tolerate the unions’ agenda of "centralised state control at the expense of children’s education and parents’ rights any longer".
Fighting talk. The pilot never went ahead because later that month a Labour-led government took power. By the time National was in control of the treasury benches again in 2008, its testing plans had metamorphosed into the National Standards which set out the levels primary pupils should reach in reading, writing and maths.
Schools had to report to the Ministry of Education on how many pupils were at, above, below or well below the national standards, at each year level. Ethnicity and gender were recorded too.
The system was also supposed to improve parents’ understanding of their children’s progress.
Concerns about the programme included the unreliability of the data and whether gathering it led to improvement in pupils’ achievement. It was scrapped by the Labour-led government after the 2017 election.
Now, education minister Erica Stanford has announced from next year there will be phonics checks for pupils after 20 weeks at school and then 40 weeks, and twice-yearly progression monitoring on reading, writing and maths for children in years 3 to 8.
It is all part of National’s plan to have 80% of year 8 students at or above the expected curriculum level for their age in reading, writing and maths by the end of 2030.
Ms Stanford has insisted the tests could not be used to create school league tables, although it is hard to see how this would not be possible through use of the Official Information Act.
Parents who may feel they do not always receive reliable information about their children’s progress will welcome Ms Stanford’s bold assertion this will give them "certainty on how their child is doing at school".
While some teachers have welcomed the announcement, others have raised concerns about the risk of time being spent teaching to the test rather than focusing on learning, the stress for pupils, and the narrowness and reliability of the information gleaned in such tests.
Is there also a risk that emphasis on testing assumes all children learn, or should learn, at the same rate?
It is difficult to see how a phonics test after 20 weeks of schooling for a child who might have arrived at school with little exposure to books will tell a teacher much they did not already know.
What has not been made clear is what will happen if whatever data produced indicates some schools have huge needs for extra assistance.
All Ms Stanford said in her media release was further work was being done to "review the types of targeted and tailored support we make available for those who need additional help".
We would be surprised if schools could not already give the minister chapter and verse about what help they need.
The bustling Ms Stanford may have some way to go to convince those who feel the new plans are little more than National Standards wearing an Emperor’s new clothes, and that money spent on this might be better spent elsewhere.
