Latest news with #NCEA
Scoop
19 hours ago
- Scoop
Survey Launched For Kiwis To Tell Own Story Of Internet Harm
Not content with advancing a new bill to filter the internet for anyone under 18-years-old, internet safety expert and public speaker Rob Cope has just designed a survey for Kiwis to share personal stories of harm they've come to online. The Wellington Dad says the results will truly illustrate the stark reality of what 30 years of unfiltered internet looks like for people under 18 years – as well as how it shapes them. The Digital Harms Survey is totally anonymous and accessed through the Our Kids Online website – the name of Cope's organisation and that of the documentary he made in 2020. It is tailored for three distinct groups: for victims and survivors; for professionals working with young people such as teachers and practitioners; for parents and caregivers. 'We speak to parents every week and already captured their sense of awareness about keeping their kids safe online with a survey of nearly 5000 parents – the results weren't good, with less than a quarter of parents aware of the dangers at their children's fingertips every day,' says Cope. 'But I realised last year that we need to also document the range of online harms happening in our homes, as well as the age it is occurring.' What is Cope asking to hear about ?Anything from stories where tamariki and rangatahi have had a lucky escape from being seriously harmed online, to stories where lives have been permanently impacted, he says. 'We've got adults now in their twenties who, at just 11 years old, stumbled across violent porn while innocently searching for something else — and were drawn into what can only be described as sadistic. The trauma still shadows them today. We've got families across Aotearoa are quietly grappling with the fallout. One child's 'gaming friend' turned out to be a predator. Another is battling panic attacks after seeing gore videos shared at school.' According to the Office of Film and Literature Classification's latest report, Content That Crosses the Line, New Zealand children are being exposed to livestreamed suicides, videos of animal cruelty, violent memes featuring real beheadings, and unsolicited nudes — all before they've even hit their NCEA year. 'I've been meeting with politicians on every side of the fence, this last four months, to get support for The New Zealand Child Internet Safety Act: Protecting Minors from Harmful Online Content. I've also been asked to make a submission for Parliament's Select Committee in coming weeks. So, a survey containing anonymous qualitative and quantitative data will truly show the need,' says Cope. He reiterates that this harm is preventable through policy change and that this is necessary because many parents are themselves at a loss. The majority of them will have fostered a belief that ' If it was really that bad, the government would've done something by now' says Cope. But he adds that this passivity has, sadly, harmed the youngsters we wish to protect. Under his proposed legislation, routers and phones would automatically filter harmful content for those under 18, while adults remain free to browse as usual. 'We hope to get at least 1,000 responses to the survey in coming weeks and I believe this will really create some traction in parliament. If there is one thing I ask of New Zealanders this month, it is to fill out this survey, tell your story, make your voice heard.'
Techday NZ
a day ago
- Business
- Techday NZ
ShadowTech25 inspires over 1,200 girls to pursue tech careers
Over 1,200 secondary school girls across New Zealand are taking part in the ShadowTech25 initiative, which provides direct exposure to careers within the technology sector. ShadowTech25 is organised by TechWomen and connects Year 9 to 11 students from more than 80 schools with employers across the country. Over a two-week period in August, participating students spend a day inside a tech workplace, receiving hands-on insight into professional opportunities within the industry. The aim of the programme, according to TechWomen Executive Director Yvonne Gill, is to encourage more young women to consider technology as a viable and rewarding career option. Gill stated, "ShadowTech25 is all about sparking curiosity, breaking stereotypes, and helping young women see themselves in the tech world." Activities for visiting students include team introductions, interactive workshops, workplace tours, and listening to career stories from women already working in the sector. These experiences are designed to provide a comprehensive picture of life and potential pathways in the tech industry. Building on prior success Feedback from last year's ShadowTech programme indicated that every student involved gained a greater understanding of what tech careers could offer. According to the data shared by TechWomen, 70 percent of last year's participants said they could see themselves pursuing a technology career after the event. Organisers say the aim is to build on that momentum and make further progress in shifting perceptions about careers in technology. Yvonne Gill reiterated the central objective of the programme, saying, "Our goal is simple – to inspire more girls to pursue education and career pathways into tech. Tech is New Zealand's highest-paid and most in-demand industry, and we need a diverse workforce to keep it thriving." She highlighted the broader significance of gender diversity in the sector: "At TechWomen, our mission is to grow the proportion of women in New Zealand's tech sector, because we know that when we have diverse perspectives and voices in tech, we create better solutions, drive innovation, and build a more equitable future for everyone." Industry context While New Zealand's tech sector remains a significant contributor to the country's economy, there are ongoing challenges regarding female representation within the industry. Research cited by TechWomen, specifically Digital Skills Aotearoa: Edition 3 , shows that women hold only 29 percent of the country's digital IT workforce positions. The gender imbalance is also reflected in education, with only 40 percent of NCEA technology students and 24 percent of IT graduates identifying as female. Gill commented on the importance of early exposure in addressing these disparities: "Initiatives like ShadowTech are critical in addressing this issue. By giving girls early exposure to what a tech career really looks like, we're showing them that the industry is exciting, rewarding, and absolutely for them," says Gill. National reach In 2025, the ShadowTech25 initiative will involve more than 60 host organisations and will take place across nine locations: Wellington, Waikato, Christchurch, Nelson, Palmerston North, Auckland, Tauranga, Dunedin, Timaru, and additional regions. The schedule runs from 5 August through 14 August, with each region hosting on a specific day. Support for ShadowTech25 includes contributions from organisations at various levels. Gold sponsors are Deloitte and Westpac. Bronze sponsors include AWS, CyberCX, TechStep, and Tuatahi First Fibre. Other supporting organisations are 2degrees, the Ministry of Education, Ricoh, Visa, and WellingtonNZ. Yvonne Gill expressed gratitude to programme supporters, stating, "We're incredibly grateful to all our sponsors and participating organisations who are helping make ShadowTech25 our biggest and most impactful programme yet." ShadowTech25 demonstrates industry collaboration to provide real-world experience and tackle the persistent gender gap within New Zealand's technology workforce.
The Spinoff
a day ago
- Politics
- The Spinoff
‘So many issues' but ‘alright, I guess': What students actually think of NCEA
It turns out young people have opinions about things that affect them. Last week, we shared a Now You Know explainer video on the future of NCEA after prime minister Christopher Luxon announced it was getting a 'fundamental overhaul'. The Education Review Office thinks NCEA Level 1 'needs substantial reform' and parents are pressuring schools to ditch the qualification altogether. But what do the people actually doing NCEA think? They don't seem to be asked very often, so we took it to the comments section. Here's what we learned, in their own words. Comments have been lightly edited for clarity. Language classes are OK, except when people are using Google Translate to complete their internal assessments. Moved from the US 10th grade to year 12, so I have a somewhat wider perspective. In short, teaching and learning was minimal, while memorising and copy-pasting were rewarded. The standards for an Achieved are on the ground, while Excellence requires an insane amount of effort. At my school, English was not required past year 10 (still needed reading/writing credits though), and many kids didn't know how to write, some probably couldn't read, either. Music and languages in particular, I think, were alright. However, language courses could move a LOT faster (although the internal assessments were pointless as most students could Google Translate their work). It's great that NCEA gives students choice about their subjects and assessments but that is about the only good thing I can say about it. / Student who finished NCEA in 2023 A key theme was that not a single human soul in the comments understands what is going on with NCEA Level 1. And also, for the love of God, students want us to stop changing their assessment standards mid-year. I did the new Level 1 NCEA last year and there were so many issues since teachers didn't know what they were teaching. There are many things we didn't learn due to there not being enough time to learn everything in the curriculum, so going into Level 2 we have missed out on many things. With the new Level 1 system it was still changing throughout the year, and the way assignments were supposed to be marked was changing whilst doing them. It was not planned out well, and they had not finished the new system halfway through the year and were still altering it, making it even harder to manage. / NCEA Level 2 student Found last year was alright with credits but NO TEACHER KNEW WHAT THEY WERE TEACHING BECAUSE OF THE SYSTEM CHANGE AND THE LACK OF RESOURCES GIVEN TO THEM! This year was alright, I guess. A lot of overload in a way: one class with three assessments for one thing I'm doing, and I'm finding it hard to get credits but I've passed (for now) all my assessments. / NCEA Level 2 student I think that lots of the new standards are repetitive and aren't actually clear on what is needed to achieve highly. For example, 1.2 English is basically a repeat of the CAAs [Common Assessment Activities] we have to sit, and it seems to me teachers haven't actually been able to give their own feedback on the course. It is also apparent there's a lack of communication from NZQA to teachers. I think there's also a bit of a disconnect between Level 1 and Level 2 which is going to stitch up my year group. / NCEA Level 1 student A lot of students told us that once you've passed NCEA Level 1, you are totally unprepared for Level 2, so good luck with that. Level 1 was fine, very easy and I only had three exams. But now the jump to Level 2 is huge, and I have 11 exams this year / NCEA Level 2 student I HATE level 2 😭✌️ / NCEA Level 2 student I took L1 [Level 1] last year and my chem teacher said the new Level 1 Labour introduced doesn't even align with Level 2 chem. She said once you hit Level 2, it's like restarting. / NCEA Level 2 student Some students think that NCEA has some redeeming qualities. It's going great right now in the first year of NCEA but if there were anything I would have to change, most likely the wording of the standards. Even one of my teachers said that it was 'pretty vague' / NCEA Level 1 student As someone currently doing Level 2, I don't have any major issues with NCEA. My main issue is that it doesn't necessarily feel like we want to do the assessments (whether because we're forced to write about specific subjects or are only assessed on subjects the teachers know well). Admittedly, getting students to be passionate about learning isn't easy. In conclusion, I think that the current use of NCEA is fine; however, in the future, we should find a way to move into a qualification system that is better suited to doing what the students want rather than what the teachers want. / NCEA Level 2 student Some people were just happy we showed an interest in what they had to say. I personally find it alright, but I know a lot of my friends are struggling. The system definitely needs change, and it's great to have someone actually care about our opinions for once. / NCEA Level 2 student
RNZ News
a day ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Dropping NCEA level 1 'overwhelmingly positive' so far
Westlake Boys' High School on Auckland's North Shore established its own programme called 'Elevate' when it walked away from level 1. Photo: Google Maps As the government mulls what it is going to do about NCEA level 1, a school that dropped it two years ago has no regrets. Education Minister Erica Stanford is promising an announcement shortly about the future of the secondary school qualification. Westlake Boys' High School on Auckland's North Shore established its own programme called 'Elevate' when it walked away from level 1. "We felt that having our own course meant that we could keep the students longer, headmaster Paul Fordham told Morning Report. "We had situations where students were studying NCEA level 1 and when they left for their external examinations, only had one or two exams to sit across a three-or four-week period, which meant they were they were missing out an opportunity to engage with their learning." He said the results from its own programme had been "overwhelmingly positive so far" with good feedback from teachers and families. "It's still quite early on - we don't necessarily have the historical data to support how things are going academically, but the signs are positive across year 12 and 13 that the students have prepared well for level 2 and 3 NCEA." Some changes had to happen with the qualification, he said, but it needn't be "baby out with the bathwater". NCEA had good elements, such as a broad curriculum that gave students a chance to develop skills in lots of different areas, he said. However teachers marking their own students' work wasn't rigourous, or consistent across the country, he said. It's about consistency and and having a universal standard for the whole country. "Ensuring that the value of external examinations at the end of the year is high, and that the way in which we structure the programme to have increased weighting on those will be a positive change. Education Minister Erica Stanford Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii The first place to look would be at the best examples of top-performing schools and how they were serving their students, Fordham said. Stanford said on Monday the announcement on NCEA, planned in the next weeks, followed an the Education Review Office report the previous government's rollout of NCEA level 1. "Because we do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past and we know we need good implementation time frames, good professional learning development and great resources. "We are very focused on making sure that those things happen."
Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Schools in literacy crisis, advocacy group warns
By John Gerritsen of RNZ Schools have told advocacy group Lifting Literacy Aotearoa they are struggling with record numbers of students with poor literacy. They say teens are wagging classes and schools are blowing their budgets on extra lessons because they are unable to cope with tough new NCEA reading and writing tests. A snapshot of school experiences gathered by Lifting Literacy showed some students were so far behind in their learning their teachers did not know what to do with them. Lifting Literacy said the situation was a crisis and the government needed to develop a five-year plan to help schools help teens learn to read and write. Principals and teachers from 29 secondary schools responded to an informal Lifting Literacy survey. Their comments revealed the introduction of high-stakes NCEA literacy and numeracy tests called "corequisites" had coincided with the worst-prepared cohort of teenagers some schools had ever seen - thanks to Covid. "It's an enormous issue. We have an increasing number of students who are very limited in both reading and writing," wrote one respondent. "Each year students who come to us at Year 9 are showing increasingly low literacy levels and increasingly high learning needs. The impact is huge," said another. The respondents said teachers were struggling to teach classes that ranged from the barely literate to high-achievers and schools were "scrounging" for funding. "Most high school teachers do not have qualifications to address this," said one respondent. "Pressure has fallen on high schools with little or no support," said another. "We are now operating in planned deficit budgets to fund the high level of need and high stakes for students due to NCEA changes," said one principal. Several respondents said their schools bankrolled literacy catch-up classes and training from the Kahui Ako scheme that gave some teachers release time for specialist work with other teachers in their school or across groups of schools. An English teacher from a large, low-decile school who RNZ agreed not to name, said that arrangement allowed her to work with four classes of Year 9 students who could not read. She said the school would have to cover the cost itself next year because the government axed the scheme in its May Budget. Despite the relatively high numbers of struggling Year 9s, the teacher said her school's current Year 11s had entered the school with the lowest level of education of any Year 9 cohort before or since. "They're the ones that are really struggling with the corequisites because they're expected to pass but as they're failing their identity of their ability is dwindling," she said. The teacher said teaching teenagers to read was often "quite a quick fix", with most requiring only three or four "structured literacy" lessons to learn how to decode words by learning which sounds went with each letter. "Teaching kids how to read and read longer words, which seems to be the biggest problem, that's quite a quick fix," she said. "Teaching younger kids takes a longer time, teaching these older kids, even kids who really struggle and some of them who are dyslexic, once they're shown a certain way some of them are off within three or four lessons, they're gone," she said. "Some might take a lot longer, but the majority of them in high school there's nothing wrong with them other than they haven't been taught that A-U is an "or" sound or O-U-G-H can have 6-7 different sounds, or how to split up longer words," she said. She said the government could achieve great results if it funded similar programmes across the country. Another teacher who worked with others across a major city said secondary schools had been left in the lurch. She said teachers were having to figure out themselves how to help their students. "We have a cluster of people who are all working in the literacy space and we're working together and sharing our ideas and sharing with each other because we've got no support from the ministry and no guidance," she said. Janice Langford provided structured literacy training for primary schools, but recently started working with secondary teachers because of the need. She said English teachers were being asked to do the work of specialist literacy teachers and they were not trained for it. Lifting Literacy Aoteroa chair Jennie Watts said in five or 10 years, improvements the government was making in primary schools would flow through to secondary. But in the meantime, students were not getting a fair deal. "There's an urgent gap. We can't let those kids, the kids who are struggling right now and the ones who are about to hit secondary school, we can't just let them fall through the cracks. She said secondary schools needed a five-year strategy including training and funding to improve teens' literacy. It should introduce a new optional literacy subject separate to English, and remove the co-requisite numeracy and literacy requirement for NCEA. Watts said the government should also provide funding for literacy lead teachers, targeted intervention for the students who needed them, and resources aimed at teenagers.
