I have spent more than two decades involved in education research and policy, focusing on New Zealand’s school system. Yet even I struggle to understand my primary-aged daughters’ school reports.  

Parents have a right to know how their children are faring at school. Yet lack of national consistency in assessing basics like literacy and numeracy hampers the clarity of school reports. Often, the reports themselves are simply unintelligible. 

Last week, Education Minister Erica Stanford announced the release of the new Student Monitoring, Assessment and Reporting Tool (SMART) to measure students’ literacy and numeracy. Its main aim is to provide more nationally consistent information to parents. 

Crucially, SMART reporting will emphasise students’ progress over time. Never before have schools been required to provide parents with measures of students’ progress. The provision of progress information has been left to the discretion of schools.  

Now, there will be clear expectations on schools to measure and report students’ educational achievement and progress in a way that is consistent across the country and intelligible to parents. 

Reporting to parents is one purpose of educational assessment. Another, more important to education itself, is to provide feedback on learning. Assessment used for this purpose, known as formative assessment, is focused on future learning. It is one of the most powerful tools in any teacher’s kit. 

While the Minister’s announcement focussed mainly on reporting, SMART will also have formative uses. It will help teachers identify students who need additional attention. That includes students who have made less than the expected progress, as well as those who need to be extended. 

The tool is also intended to provide systems-level feedback. It will help to identify schools that need support. Last year’s budget provided for a massive increase of teacher aide hours, learning support and specialist teaching staff. SMART will help allocate those resources effectively.  

The provision of additional resources is one way in which systems level feedback can help improve learning. The other is accountability.  

Continued underperformance after the provision of support and time to improve should trigger a compulsory change in school leadership. Successful schools should be empowered to take over failing ones. 

Putting such a mechanism in place would be an immense political challenge. It would meet resistance. It would require revision of New Zealand’s 35-year-old doctrine of self-governing schools. 

Ultimately, though, educational feedback is about error correction. And sometimes the error is the leadership.