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:

I’m planning to do a series of frogblog posts on National’s plans to gut ACC, highlighting the devastating impact of each of them on people who have been injured and their families.

But before I even got to post the first one, ACC Minister Nick Smith has revealed how badly National has politically managed their pernicious proposals.

Green MPs and staffers were all geared up today to oppose the Bill to implement the ACC cuts, which National had intended to introduce under Parliamentary urgency – a far too frequent and undemocratic tactic of theirs.  But when the Parliamentary Order Paper appeared, the Bill to gut ACC wasn’t on it.

The reason, as Radio New Zealand reports – National can’t get the numbers, even from their own support parties!

Act won’t vote for it because it doesn’t go far enough towards the privatisation they want, and the Maori Party won’t vote for it because they have some serious concerns about the unfairness of aspects of it – particularly to those in their voter base.

So, who knows when the Bill will surface in Parliament.

As suggested at The Standard, National fudge the numbers for the ACC accounts so they can claim a “blow out” to justify their cuts, but they didn’t even bother to ensure they can get the numbers in Parliament to pass their legislation through its First Reading.

Anyway, I’m a somewhat more relaxed frog now than I was this morning, because, thanks to National making such a mess of it, I have a bit more time for getting the nasty detail of this pernicious Bill out to frogblog readers.

Watch this space – there is plenty more to come on National’s plans to gut ACC.

• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Vocational independence
• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Hearing loss
• Go to: Gutting ACC – it’s just not fair: Sexual abuse claims