National Standards: A New Frontier of Control in Teachers’ Work?

Abstract

The National Government is in its second parliamentary term of implementing a policy package of National Standards into New Zealand primary schools. For better or for worse, the Standards will impact on the learning of children. They
will also impact on the work of teachers. Whilst the first matter is important, it is the second that is considered here. The state maintains a fundamental interest in controlling and directing teachers’ labour. The Standards policy package will intersect the structure of control currently in place. It may replicate the contemporary arrangements that are mediated through arms-length school-based decision making and conceptions of teaching. It could also be constructed in a manner that permits greater incursion by the state into teachers’ work. The implementation of the policy package has not gone uncontested and it seems likely that this resistance is not yet over.