Trustees, parents need to understand NCEA

Trustees, parents need to understand NCEA

“The National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA) is now well established as New Zealand’s national school qualification and has achieved many of the objectives it was designed for” School Trustees will be told at their Annual Conference in Christchurch next weekend.

During the last three years, there have been a number of changes to NCEA to address concerns expressed by parents, teachers and students. One of the many seminars at the Conference will be hosted by Bali Haque, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority’s Deputy Chief Executive, Qualifications. Bali is responsible for overseeing the implementation of a range of improvements to NCEA and for running national examinations for 140,000 secondary school students each year.

“Boards of Trustees need to understand the rationale for the NCEA system and the recent changes. Then they can maintain an active partnership with the principal and staff while they explain those changes to their parent community. They also need to know enough to work effectively with the principal and staff while monitoring and measuring how well the school is meeting their achievement goals for students”, says NZSTA President Lorraine Kerr. “With the recent triennial trustee elections, we have a lot of new trustees, so this sort of professional development is especially relevant right now.”

The New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA) Conference is at the Christchurch Conference Centre from 9 -11 July.

The theme is “Boards as leaders: Challenging achievement outcomes”.

ENDS

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