Media statement
For immediate release
Monday, 14 March 2005
NCEA: United Future’s view
United Future leader Peter Dunne and the party’s education spokesman Bernie Ogilvy today launched their constructive
view of what should be done about the National Certificate of Educational Achievement.
“Opposition politicians,” they said “ have been quick to publicise problems with NCEA, but solutions have been slow to
emerge.
“There is no doubt that recent revelations have undermined confidence in the new system, yet most parties agree that
NCEA should continue. If it is to retain and rebuild any sort of credibility, then the current debate must move quickly
to focus on fixing the problems.
“United Future already has a track record on seeking to improve NCEA. After the 2002 election we initiated a select
committee inquiry into the implementation of the NCEA qualifications system.
“In the 2003 Budget we successfully lobbied for more money for schools and NZQA to implement NCEA, to overcome the
deficiencies identified by the select committee inquiry. In last year’s Budget we secured another $66 million over the
next four years for schools’ operations grants to help with implementation costs.
“United Future offers some specific, constructive, and common sense solutions to the problems besetting NCEA.
1. Introduce a minimum number of standards for each subject that must be externally assessed.
At present, it is largely up to subject teachers in a school to decide on the mix of internal and external standards
that they teach to, meaning that some students may sit no external assessment while others may have all of their
performance evaluated through exams. Establishing a minimum number of standards to be assessed externally for each
subject will ensure that more of students’ work is uniformly examined against the national standard. This would reduce
the workload of teachers, and create opportunities for reassessment without cutting into classroom time. It would also
help to discourage students from slackening off once they had passed most of the required number of credits during the
year, if they knew that they still had a significant number of credits to pass through external assessment. However, the
exams themselves must be also be set an appropriate level that is comparable between subjects, across standards within
subjects, and from year to year.
2. Improve communication between examiners and teachers and students on what each achievement standard requires.
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Samples of students’ work are periodically sent off to be assessed by an external moderator, to ensure that the task and
the achievement standards awarded are appropriate. However, the responses from moderators often indicate that the task
set by the teacher either does not adequately assess the standard or that the students have either been marked too
leniently or too harshly. This experience has been echoed in end-of-year exams, as students have struggled to meet the
standards imposed by examiners. There needs to be far greater clarity about what is required to attain each standard and
what differentiates each level of achievement, for the benefit of teachers, students and examiners.
3. Ensure that all assessment tasks provided by NZQA have been pre-moderated.
In some cases, teachers have used tasks provided by NZQA, or slightly adapted versions that have subsequently been
slated by moderators as being inappropriate. This is unacceptable, and tasks and exemplars that are specifically made
available for teachers’ use must accurately reflect the standard being assessed. Teachers who develop their own tasks
should also be able to submit them for pre-testing. There should be assessment tasks and exemplars available for all
standards, something that does not occur at present.
4. Increase opportunities for external assessment of students’ work throughout the year
In the interests of ensuring that more of students’ work is assessed against the national standard, the frequency with
which it is moderated should be increased. Following moderation there is currently no strict requirement for teachers to
adjust their marking accordingly, but the additional feedback that would come from more frequent moderation should help
them to adapt their tasks and assessment to the standard with greater ease. Teachers may also be more responsive to this
feedback if they know that the moderators work with these standards on a regular basis.
Moderators are generally practising teachers, who moderate in their spare time. To facilitate greater evaluation,
teachers could opt to step out of the classroom for a year to moderate full time. This could provide teachers with a
break in their career without endangering their continued registration, and would be particularly useful for those who
want to take time out to raise a family. Full time moderators would be able to communicate directly with teachers to
discuss their feedback, something that does not occur currently, which should also assist teachers to assess to the
standard. If there were sufficient numbers prepared to moderate full time, then it might be possible to move to a system
where some standards may be externally assessed during the year, as well as at the end of the year. This could help ease
the pressure on teacher workloads while helping to maintain the goal of a national standard.
5. Establish consistent policies on reassessment
One of the purported benefits of achievement standards is that they may enable students who have failed a standard, or
even those who have not performed as well as they would have liked, to re-submit their work and be reassessed. However,
there has never been a clear policy on under what circumstances this reassessment should take place. The ability to
reassess a standard depends on the time available for teachers to do so, and the nature of the task. There needs to be a
clearer and consistent policy across schools and subject areas regarding reassessment, to ensure that fairness is
maintained.
6. Ensure that the time allotted to complete externally assessed exams is appropriate to the number of standards that
students are sitting
A student sitting three standards in an external exam has the same time as a student sitting one standard, which is
clearly inequitable. The time allowed for exams should depend on the number of standards that students are sitting.
7. Ensure that student records of learning show those standards that students failed, as well as those they achieved
Individual records of learning only show those standards that the student actually achieves, and not those that they
attempt but fail. One of the advantages of NCEA is that it provides much richer information about what a student is
actually capable of, but in order to get a complete picture it’s just as important for prospective employers to know
what students can’t do, as well as what they can do.
8. Return scholarship exams to their previous format
Standards based assessment is designed to focus on individual achievement, yet the notion of a separate scholarship
examination system is to find out who the top students are for each subject, which requires their results to be compared
and ranked. In order to do this, and to account for some exams that may be harder than those for other subjects or those
in previous years, scholarship exams should revert to being norm-referenced and therefore enable results to be ranked,
and if necessary, scaled. This should not jeopardise NCEA assessment because the scholarship exams are separate, and
they more closely approximate the kind of assessment practices undertaken at university, where most scholarship student
are likely to go.
9. Review the appropriateness of the four levels of achievement standards, as well as the number of credits awarded to
each standard.
There is concern that the current levels of achievement (Not Achieved, Achieved, Achieved with Merit, Achieved with
Excellence) are too broad, and can capture a wide range of ability within a level (particularly Achieved). There is also
concern that students are opting for unit standards because they are perceived to be easier, yet the fact that they do
not offer awards in merit and excellence may mean that some students may be denying themselves the opportunity to
achieve at higher levels. In addition, the credits available for each standard should reflect the work involved,
particularly when compared across subject areas.
10. Engage in a public education campaign to ensure that parents, students and employers understand the NCEA system
The current debate surrounding the perceived deficiencies of NCEA is not assisted by a general lack of understanding of
how the system is supposed to work. Much more work needs to be done to demystify the system and simplify the language
used.
Ends