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Otago Daily Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Otago Daily Times
More detail needed on NCEA change
The big bang announcement this week about the reformation of secondary school qualifications was warmly received by many, but some are questioning the lack of detail. Before the news release about the future of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), Education minister Erica Stanford and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon were clear any change would not be tinkering, but they also said all options were on the table. That is not quite the way it looks. A discussion document out for consultation over the next six weeks does not suggest all options are on the table. Rather, that the main decisions on what to do have been made and anything which happens now will just be tweaking. Those fed up with trying to understand the 20-year-old qualification with its plethora of achievement and unit standards and mix of internal and external assessment, and who wondered how well it was serving pupils and the wider community, may just be pleased something is being done. The NCEA was originally brought in to address the lack of flexibility in the old School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary set-up and too much emphasis on external examinations, a system which set up many pupils to fail. However, there have been longstanding concerns NCEA allowed too much flexibility, with some subjects not being covered fully by pupils; that the pick 'n mix of standards made qualifications incoherent and incomprehensible; that there was inconsistency between external and internal assessments; and too many teenagers were avoiding external assessment. The discussion document setting out the programme for change to the new government says pupils who are currently Year 9 in 2025 will continue to receive secondary school learning under the old curriculum and will be assessed under NCEA Levels 1, 2, and 3. The changes, which will be phased in over the next five years, will replace NCEA with a Foundational Award in Year 11 concentrating on numeracy and literacy, a New Zealand Certificate of Education in year 12 and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education in Year 13. Percentage pass rates and A, B, C, D grades are back for the year 12 and 13 qualifications and pupils working at this level will also have to take a minimum of five subjects and pass four of them to gain the qualification. Internal and external assessments will apply. The discussion document also proposes working with industry to integrate Vocational Education and Training subjects into the senior qualifications, involving "using Industry Skills Boards (or others)" to help shape such learning, but the thinking on this does not seem well advanced. This will also mean the current 11,000 skills and unit standards available under NCEA will be reduced. The plan is that the skills boards can take the best of these, and create new ones, to create packages "highly relevant to industry and workforce and provide pathways towards tertiary qualifications". This may not suit all of the pupils who have previously relied on unit standards to gain qualifications and there are fears the loss of flexibility could go too far, disadvantaging some pupils. While Ms Stanford has been working with a 13-strong professional advisory group comprising current and former principals described as having technical expertise and deep knowledge of the sector, the wider teaching fraternity might have expected to be involved before now. The government's relationship with the post- primary workforce is not in a great place, with its previous pay equity claim being scuppered by the recent law change, and a miserly pay proposal on the table. Ms Stanford will need to take teachers with her in what looks likely to be a hectic few years where they will be coming to grips with a new curriculum while they are still assessing against the old one. Already it seems the introduction of the refreshed curriculum is going to be slower than previously indicated, and there are concerns it will be hard for teachers to comment on the new assessment set-up without that work completed. Nobody would doubt Ms Stanford's passion and enthusiasm, and her ability to get things done, but there is not enough detailed information yet to give these changes an A grade.
Otago Daily Times
24-07-2025
- General
- Otago Daily Times
Testing times for NCEA
Many who have struggled to get to grips with the unwieldy beast which is our main secondary school qualification will be pleased it looks set for a major overhaul. The National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) was brought in about 20 years ago to replace School Certificate, University Entrance, Sixth Form Certificate and University Bursary. Scholarship exams remained. The change was designed to allow recognition of more than just academic subjects. There was also a concern the school qualifications were too dependent on external exams. In the case of School Certificate, sat in year 11, a pupil who might have been working well and passing tests throughout the year but who failed the end-of-year exam would have no qualification to show for that year. The School Cert exams had been around since the 1940s. Until the early 1990s they were set up so raw marks were scaled to ensure only a certain percentage of pupils passed each subject. The NCEA, with its three-year levels, plethora of unit and achievement standards and mix of internal and external assessments, also involved a new way of recognising passes. It replaced percentages and A, B, C, D and E grades with achieved, merit, and excellence (and not achieved) grades and a number of credits for each standard. Credits can be gained through internal assessments during the year and at end-of-year exams. It has long been criticised. Parents and prospective employers have found it hard to get their heads around it, the workload for teachers has been immense, and there are concerns the flexibility offered means a pupil can gather disparate credits which do not add up to a coherent core qualification. There have been concerns too many pupils are turning up at universities without the required entry qualifications and having to undertake foundation studies before they start their tertiary study proper. Officials are concerned at what they describe as the "increasingly problematic imbalance" between internal and external assessments. Last year only 22% of the results came from external exams. There have been an increasing number of "no shows" at the end-of-year external exams, where pupils have been enrolled for exams but not turned up. Last year, there were more than 250,000 instances where students did not turn up, presumably because they already had enough credits to pass. The impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the authenticity of internal assessments is also an issue. Some changes have been made, including the recent introduction of online literacy and numeracy tests which must be passed in order to achieve NCEA. But these have proved controversial because too many pupils are failing them, and the alternative of completing extra literacy and numeracy credits is only going to be available for a couple of years. Some schools have opted out of offering the level 1 certificate in favour of other international qualifications. Just how any revamp might be handled and when it might happen, is unclear. But both Education Minister Erica Stanford and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have been keen to emphasise it will not be tinkering, and all options will be on the table. Reaching consensus on how the qualification system best accommodates those subjects which are not suited to exam assessment and ensures a diverse range of learners are catered for may not be easy. Changes are coming thick and fast in the education sector and, as much as many might see the flaws in the existing set-up, enthusiasm for more major change now might be muted. Women schoolteachers, who make up the majority of the post-primary workforce, will still be smarting after the scuppering of their previously lodged pay equity claim as a result of the controversial law change earlier this year. Ms Stanford says whatever changes are made will need to be "very well communicated, very well staged and very well resourced". Mr Luxon has stated: "We're going to open it up and we're going to fix it and do it once and do it right". A bold claim, and one he will be hoping does not come back to haunt him.
