Over 700,000 New Zealand children are heading back to school this week and will no longer face National Standards after being ditched by the government, a move which the New Zealand Principals' Federation President says will "unlock and open our rich curriculum again".
It will scrap schools reporting to the Ministry of Education and parents will no longer receive report cards measured against National Standards.
The government made the decision last year, saying schools and parents had lost confidence.
New Zealand Principals' Federation President Whetu Cormick told TVNZ's Breakfast it will be a "year of oppourtunity" now that teachers no longer have to work with National Standards.
"We can unlock and open our rich curriculum again and get children back to learning what they should be learning," Mr Cormick said.
"The profession believes they don't need to be replaced at all. Prior to the introduction of National Standards we had a whole range of assessment tools which are still enforce in schools right now and they are used by teachers to help make their judgments.
"Those tools will continued to be used to inform our families twice a year in plain language as the previous government asked us to do around what their children are doing in reading, writing and mathematics as we have always done since the beginning of education. But now we are going to be back to focusing richly right into the arts, health and PE, technology and the social sciences.
"We've have got nine years onwards the movement to narrow measures to untangle so we've got loads of young teachers who all they know is the National Standards environment, new principals who they all they know is the National Standards environment.
Mr Cormick said he is confident Education Minister Chris Hipkins will help teachers across the country "untangle this absolute mess we have had over this last nine years, a failed system from the US and the UK."
"The data that we have presented over the last nine years was actually a waste of data, a waste of time.
"We haven't actually seen the improvement that the previous ministers envisioned that we would have and in fact over the past three to four years, there was no improvement. There was around a one percent just below or above one percent so minimal improvement so obviously it was a failed system and Chris Hipkins has recognised this."
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