They used to be called school inspectors, these days it’s the Education Review Office and the Government is planning a shake-up, promising that we’re going to know more about what schools are getting right and what they aren’t. 

And, when you listen to what the Prime Minister and Education Minister Erica Stanford have been saying, there’s going to be a much bigger focus on results. Which I get. But which I also think is very risky. 

I also think it’s pandering to parents who turn everything into a competition, even with their own kids. Because what the Government is doing could take us back to the times when kids were labelled bright or thick from a very young age.  

And I know the Government will say ‘oh no, no, no’ we’re going to look at the results these kids are getting and if they need extra help, we’ll be sending extra resourcing in so they can get over any hurdles and catch up with everyone else. 

Which is how a middle-aged politician thinks. Because middle-aged politicians are like me —and you, maybe— we’ve had life experience and we know that, just because you’re not as good at maths as some of the other kids in your class at primary school, it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. It doesn’t mean you’re a no-hoper and that you should stop trying. 

But tell that to an eight-year-old. Or a nine-year-old or a 10-year-old. And this is the stumbling block I have with all this extra testing of primary school kids that the Government plans to do. 

Don’t get me wrong, when our kids were going through school, of course I wanted to know if there were things they might have been struggling with. And, if you’re a parent, you’ll know that sometimes it can be very easy to get sucked into obsessing over every little thing. 

I’ll be honest with you. When I think back to some of the things I got fixated on when it came to our kids going through school - in hindsight, it was ridiculous. 

Which is why I would tell parents with young kids now to take a bit of a chill pill and not agonise over everything. Because, what I’ve come to realise over the years and through personal experience —both as someone who went to school and as a parent who’s had three kids go through school— is that school is just a stepping stone. 

And marks, when it comes down to it, don’t mean much in the bigger scheme of things, especially, when a kid’s at primary school. 

I’ve come to the realisation that school doesn’t define a person. It doesn’t decide whether they’re going to make a go of life or not. 

But the Government feels a little bit differently about it than I do. Which is why it’s doing the changes with the curriculum but also making these major changes at the Education Review Office. 

It wants the review office to focus more on the basics.  

I was on a school board in Christchurch for six years and, during that time, we had a visit from the school inspectors. They’re done every few years. 

And it was almost like it was back when I was a kid - when I remember the old school inspectors turning up and the teachers suddenly being very friendly and putting on a real show. 

These days, though, they look at more than just what’s going on in the classroom and in the playground - there’s a whole lot of data for them to trawl through. And it’s this data that the Government wants the Education Review Office —or the school inspectors— to pay more attention to. 

But I don’t judge a school just on the basics. Reading, writing, maths. Those things.  

I judge a school on the type of people it turns out. I judge a school on the citizens that walk out the gate each day. I judge a school on the way you feel when you go there for an event. I judge a school on whether you get the sense it’s just going through the motions or actually walks all the talk in the brochures and on the website. 

That’s what I judge a school on. 

And, maybe, one day, the Government will be able to point to better marks in this and better marks in that. But that won’t tell me a thing about how well-prepared these kids are for life, and all the things that life throws at us. 

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