Time for Minister to get off the fence

23 March 2007

Time for Minister to get off the fence

Education Minister Steve Maharey’s criticism of the Cambridge exams is all very well, but he needs to turn recommendations for NCEA improvements into action, PPTA president Robin Duff said today.

“The Minister has uttered some fine words about what is good about NCEA, but public support for it will be slow to increase unless there is political will to address clearly identified design issues that encourage some students to cruise.”

But Mr Duff strongly rejected calls for an independent review of NCEA because the issues had already been identified. “It’s like pulling the tree up all the time to see if the thing is still growing and it would largely confirm the difficulties we already know about and delay the solutions.

Mr Duff felt that there was a greater knowledge and understanding about the NCEA, and more support for it, but it was being undermined by media coverage about a few schools running a dual system of Cambridge and NCEA.

“This is neither healthy nor fair. It falsely implies there is more challenge in Cambridge and that NCEA is somehow inappropriate for challenging our students.

“Furthermore, if Cambridge is running in tandem with NCEA, it would seem to me that we may be supporting the use of public funds for a private examination.”

Mr Duff said there was an unspoken assumption in the debate over NCEA and Cambridge from some quarters that the old system of percentages and scaling was a better measurement system.

“I don’t think we should turn back to a system that was often fairly random in its assessment of students and told very little about what they could do. NCEA enables teachers the flexibility to tailor learning to meet students needs and to recognise all aspects of a student’s achievement.”

“But we need a Government firmly committed to making the NCEA as good as it can be.“

ENDS

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