Education Minister Erica Stanford says the testing will help teachers identify and arrange additional support for those who need it, right at the start of the child’s education.

“At the earliest opportunity, parents deserve to know how their kids are progressing at school and have confidence they are moving in the right direction,” Stanford said in a statement.

Labour’s education spokesperson Jan Tinetti however, has labelled the move “another backwards step for education”.

“National does not seem to have any care for students who are falling behind. They’ve scrapped one-on-one literacy support through Reading Recovery,” Tinetti said.

“Just making all students sit the same test to get aggregate data at an oversight level won’t help the kids that are struggling.

“It will only work if it’s followed through with interventions to pick up students who need a bit more help.

“We have not heard from the Government its plan for making sure that happens, instead it has made cuts to intervention programmes and did not give learning support any additional funding in this year’s budget.”

Dr Melissa Derby is a senior lecturer teaching early literacy and human development at the University of Waikato.

She said the checks will be an important tool allowing educators to remedy any issues a child may have as quickly as possible.

As it stands, Derby said there are a range of assessment tools teachers can use, but the timing and degree to which they are implemented varies between schools.  

“Some of these assessments may not occur until Year 2 or later, and by that stage, delays have already set in,” she told EducationHQ.

“Children start school with a huge variation in their oral language skills, and school entry oral language skills are a huge predictor of later reading and writing success.

“If children can’t hear the sounds in words, then they’re going to have trouble connecting those sounds to letters on a page,” Derby explained. 

The sooner struggling students can access support in their early literacy learning, the better their chances of acquiring crucial reading and writing skills she said.

But teachers union NZEI Te Riu Roa said standardised tests twice a year for children in primary school will not improve achievement.

“Adding in more tests for children whose learning needs are not being met is only going to increase the anxiety in those children,” president Mark Potter said in a statement.

Derby claimed there’s no evidence to suggest this will be the case.

“I think what causes anxiety for students is not being able to learn well and engage in the content of the classroom,” she said.

“And you can’t access learning and a whole host of amazing life outcomes post-school, without strong literacy skills. So this to me is an equity issue.”

The Education Minister has also confirmed that progression monitoring in reading, writing, and maths will be introduced for children between Years 3 and 8.

These will also be sat twice yearly to inform teachers about the next steps needed for a child’s learning.

Labour and NZEI Te Riu Roa have expressed concerns the Government is pushing a one-size-fits-all approach to education, and fear a return to National Standards.  

“We saw the standardised testing approach fail with National Standards under the former National Government,” Potter said.

“Standardising tests risks creating league tables that compare children and schools and encourages harmful processes like streaming. Children and school communities are not standard. To us this looks like National Standards in disguise.”

Derby acknowledged teachers must be considerate of students with different learning needs, but also said “our brains aren’t that different”.

“We all need to be strong in particular aspects of those foundational skills in order to learn to read and write.

“So the notion that teachers need to cater to absolutely every possible variant, that every single child is so different from one another, that there can't possibly be a general approach to something, that’s ludicrous, really.”

Stanford has promised the assessment tools have been designed to avoid the creation of league tables.

“It’s not our intention to pit schools against each other,” she said.