The Labour Party says the national testing of childen for numeracy and literacy is controversial and it will vote against a bill enabling it.
Legislation giving the Government the power to set national education standards is one of a number of bills being debated under urgency in Parliament.
Under the legislation, children will have to be regularly tested and assessed against national standards.
Schools will have to report to parents in plain language about how their child is doing compared with the national standard and with children of the same age.
The Government says the legislation will ensure that under-performing schools are able to be identified and given more support.
Radio New Zealand's education correspondent says most teachers, principals and assessment experts remain cautious about the proposed standards because of the lack of information about where the standards will be set.
They believe it would be a serious mistake to adopt an approach of setting one target level of achievement for each age or year of schooling.
The bill also increases the penalities for parents whose children do not attend school. It is expected the bill will be pass into law on Saturday.
