Hours before the Government was due to announce details of new education standards Education Minister Anne Tolley said some schools already had assessment standards, but half did not.
Setting national standards in reading, writing and maths was a National Party campaign promise and is due to come in next year.
Parents will be given clear reports on how their children are performing against the benchmarks.Details of the national standards are due to be released mid morning.
"Many schools have said this was 'just business as usual for us this was just good teaching'," Ms Tolley told TV1's Breakfast show.The standards were based on an Education Review Office report that said half of schools were not using assessment well and did not know who struggling students were, she said.
Teachers will need to know how a student reached an answer, rather than simply whether the answer was correct.It was about "digging into" how a student learnt, Ms Tolley said.
"We know that teaching has the most effect on a child's learning, good teaching, so if we can clear some of the other responsibility away from teachers a focus on getting them to teach well."If they do nothing other than teach our children read and write and do maths and be good socialised New Zealand people then they've done a really good job."
The Ministry of Education has told schools they will not get extra support for teaching arts, science and physical education next year.The money will go to support for the core subjects in the national standards.
Teacher unions are afraid the national standards will be used to compare the performance of schools through "league tables". The Government has said it will do all it can to stop that happening.However, the Principals' Federation and NZEI have said they would not attend the standards launch in Auckland today, as to do so would be to offer tacit support to a policy they did not agree with.
