Hon Bill English
National Party Education Spokesman

22 February 2006

Scholarship: Labour is learning its lesson

National’s Education spokesman, Bill English, says students, teachers and parents will be pleased that NZQA was forced into making major changes to scholarship exams after last year’s fiasco.

“The 2005 results, released today, show that the range of scholarship marks are far more sensible than in the previous year. This turnaround shows that National’s exposure of scholarship discrepancies was worthwhile.”

But Mr English says there is still a way to go.

“Improvement is still needed to fix teaching and exam standards in a number of subjects that NZQA has identified as having ongoing problems. I hope they will work with teachers and students to ensure these problems are resolved.

"Last year's debacle showed just how much political pressure is needed before Labour will even acknowledge, let alone fix, any problems in our national secondary schools qualification.

“The changes that have been made to the assessment process have benefited students by ensuring a sensible examination process.

“The next challenge for Labour is to make further changes to NCEA levels 1 to 3 in order to ensure students studying for those qualifications are assured of a fair and valid assessment,” says Mr English.

ENDS

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