by frog
I have hesitated to use this image, even though it has appeared on several sites already over the last week.
But today’s confused and confusing effort by Anne Tolley in Parliament persuaded me to go there.
Here is Education Minister Anne Tolley responding to a Parliamentary Question this afternoon:
Hon ANNE TOLLEY: It is not “my” method of inter-school moderation that is at stake here. What we have put in place to examine the implementation and monitor the implementation of the national standards over the next several years, to be carried out by the Ministry of Education, is a contract that will evaluate and monitor the implementation, including between-school differences if there are any. Also, the Education Review Office will have direct responsibility for examining the basis on which teachers are making their judgments. The Opposition members cannot have it both ways. On the one hand they argue that if we use assessment we run the risk of teachers teaching to the test; the minute that we allow teachers to use their judgment and their relationship with the students, then the members opposite start worrying about inter-school moderation. We want to have professional judgments from professional teachers about the progress that students are making against the standards. This Government is determined to address the one in five students whom the previous Government left to fail in our education system.
…
I am perfectly happy to answer; I just really wanted to point out that we were heading off down a different track from the primary question. I say to the member he is concerned about inter-school moderation, but, actually, the national standards, at their heart, are to address inter-school moderation. Currently a large number of assessment tools are used by schools, and no one standard applies across them. That is what national standards are. So the existing assessment tools will remain in place, and the national standards will go right across all those tools, so that it will not matter which school a child goes to, or which assessment tool a particular school uses, because there will be a standard that is national. That is the essence of national standards, so the inter-school moderation is exactly that. Parents will know, whichever school their children attend— Well, it just shows that you do not understand— It just shows that you do not understand what national standards are—
What a load of waffle. Does anyone have any idea what she is trying to say? Can she say anything sensible without having John Key hold her hand?
And does the pained expression on John Key’s face in the image above indicate he is calculating whether he should cull her from the flock completely? He has already relieved her of much of her Ministerial responsibility.
He must surely now be seriously contemplating, given her repeated ineptitude, whether she is the Minister of Education he wants to have on board come the 2011 election.
Update: Watch the complete disaster of Tolley’s response to what started as a patsy National question unfold:
Published in Society & Culture by frog on Wed, February 17th, 2010
Tags: anne tolley, Education, incompetence, john key, national standards
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
What are people on the East Coast doing voting for her..? I thought it would be Labour/Green/Maori party heartland down there, or are their more farmers in the region than I thought..?
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I have hesitated to look at it!
What a harpy!
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Just like Turia and Whanau Ora. We don’t seem to be able to get any clarity from her as to how that is meant to work either.
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But you can hear the muttering…”What the hell, we’ve cut all the ACE grants, and boosted private schools, we’ll soon whip those teaching unions into line…”
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Will be interesting to see if she can do any better there than she did in Parliament.
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I know what each of those words means. I have absolutely no clue what is being moderated between the schools.
Somebody find me a National Party (or Education Department if it is that) jargon to English dictionary….
Hmmmm…. might be fun to write one of those Frog.
BJ
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What’s John fantasizing about?
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and her biggest problem? She can’t lipread Bill English when he’s not in the room…
This is all National Education policy that Bill has been frothing over for ten years on his way up from the back benches. Give a man a BA, he’ll want to tinker with education eventually.
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oops, I broke that link.
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/02/18/campbell-mallard%e2%80%99s-big-day-and-low-budget-films/
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Hmmm, is that true about this being one of English’s babies..?
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I think he wants to nibble her baubles.
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I’ve updated this post with the video, so you can watch the complete disaster of Tolley’s response to what started as a National patsy question unfold.
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there have been other summers,
summers more fair, and of fairer days.
Some summers days are a disappointment
all too many this summer, this term.
Can a thousand flowers of spring bloom,
in the time of the all too moderate summer?
Is the autumn of our discontent,
the fruit of a misspent summer?
Shall I compare him to King John,
and his band of cheerless men
as the broken English.
They have come to kill Robin Hood
to take from the poor
so they can give to the rich.
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That’s pretty damn good, SPC!
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I don’t see the resemblance between Anne and the darling buds of May.
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Don’t see much resemblance between that John and The Darling Buds of Anne either SPC. Our own “King John” must surely be rapidly tiring of Queen Anne’s incompetence:
The bit that worries me is the crusade to stuff our eduction system that our own Queen Anne is on at the moment.
Our own King John has a duty to resist it.
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S’ok, ‘fly.
I read the book, me mum’s old copy, and I remember the prose going purple where Pop Larkin held forth.
Wasn’t quite as well done on the telly, they rather over-emphasized shots of the marvellous young Miss Jones. Welsh beauties will do that to directors…
Toad, I like the analogy.
My, we are becoming erudite and literate in this discussion, must be the antidote effect
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Katie – the Bates books were true magic – perfik!
The maid-for-tv, a pale reflection (Zorro showed her up for the vacuum she can’t fill)
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Let’s hope Anne is the last of a line of bad English teachers.
I would not want her running the school at the end of my street, let alone being in charge of the Education Ministry of the Crown.
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The fact that the MOE and ERO are supposed to be independent from one another yet are both currently operating with Tolley as Minister is what is freaking me out!
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