8 December 2005
Hon Bill English National Party Education Spokesman
Maharey misleads over NCEA re-marking
National's Education spokesman, Bill English, says Education Minister Steve Maharey has misled the public over the
extent of the re-marking of this year's NCEA exam papers.
The NZQA's Monitoring and Marking Update, released today, claims that just eleven of the 335 NCEA standards have been
re-marked, but Mr English says the number is likely to be considerably higher than that.
In Parliament today, he questioned Mr Maharey on an email he has received from a marker saying that 'check markers are
hammered by the NZQA, and have to instruct markers to "tweak" results to ease more candidates up into the achieved
category and/or, if necessary, massage the marking schedule to ensure more candidates can achieve'.
A further email from a 'check marker' to a group of markers asks them to go back over the papers of students who failed,
to see if they can "push them up" to 'achieved'. It suggests that any sign at all of a student understanding the
question is sufficient to change the grade.
The check marker says the re-marking is required because the number of 'not achieved' grades is too high.
The email refers to examinations not on NZQA's list of those that have been officially re-marked, and shows that
re-marking has not followed the official process.
Mr English says concerns raised by this exam marker indicate there could be widespread, unofficial and secret re-marking
that is not part of the official process as outlined by Steve Maharey last week.
"Clearly, the political pressure from Mr Maharey to ensure the NZQA gets the 'right' results is so great that NZQA is
now heavying markers into passing students who would otherwise have failed, outside the official process.
"Steve Maharey must now come clean with the public and reveal the true extent of re-marking of NCEA exams, both official
and unofficial," says Mr English.
ENDS