I heard the National Standards piece on Morning Report. The Ministerial Advisory Group seems a good move. The debate was about whether the Minister should have categorised it as independent. She will get independent advice from this group so it might have been wiser just to say that it is a Ministerial group, but all the evidence is that they will not be shy in giving their own thoughts – John Hattie’s remarks prove that point. The opposition spokesperson, Mallard, was quite careful to make his remarks about the process not the people. It is a minor snafu of selling the move, but move on to the substance please.

But! But the reasons given by the Minister for excluding teachers and principals from the implementation group might have been better expressed. Her claim was that the group was advising on technical issues of implementation and therefore practitioners should not be included. Well, no. Excellent practitioners ought to be included precisely because it is about implementation. And that doesn’t have to mean union nominated people. Politically, she could have disqualified clear opponents and I think most people would have let that pass. She could have hand picked some people who were mostly pro-standards but worried about the detail – which appears to be where a lot of the opinion resides. But to say that principals and teachers don’t have the deep knowledge to help implement the standards was a mis-step. Not so minor. I wonder who is in her office helping her craft her political strategy.

Dave, are you happy if people make comments of a general nature in response to your news updates – not that I’m intending to go off track much. I thought about adding a comment to my earlier post but then thought it better to have a more up to date comment here. And I’d rather share here with a slect few than enter the swamps of political blogdom.