Week 6 Research: NCEA Breakdown (Opinions of a teacher and a student)

The National Certificate of Educational Achievement, or NCEA, is the current system of educational assessment in New Zealand, although some schools teach alternate assessment programs.

A Teacher's Perspective:

"NCEA is a failed experiment. It is meant to be a standards-based assessment, but the standards are norm-referenced so that if the teachers do a better job, the pass rates do not change."

"I know of one standard in mathematics where a skill that was excellence in the first year, is now an achieved skill."

"The standards themselves are poorly written. There is not enough detail in the standards for a teacher to know exactly what skills are required for each level of achievement, and so there can be up to five other documents that have to be read, in conjunction with standard, to provide the necessary clarity."

"While the external assessments are consistent throughout the country, the internal assessments have almost no National Standard at all. There is a massive disparity in the standard of work required by different schools, particularly in, but not confined to, some of the new statistics standards."

"NCEA does not allow an assessment that uses skills from multiple areas of a subject to make a practical assessment that allows a student to show genuine problem-solving skills."

"This artificial breaking of my subject into chunks that stand independently is an absolute travesty of what mathematics is meant to be about. It means that in new subjects, like agribusiness, standards must be 90 per cent different from any existing agriculture or economics standard, even though the subject is a combination of the two."

"Why is the system continuing unchecked and unchanged? Because staff at NZQA have greater vested interest in maintaining their personal beliefs, over the vested interest of the teachers who want to give their students the best possible skills and qualifications to succeed in the world outside of school."

"I am not aware of any other country where the curriculum arm of education (the Ministry of Education) and the assessment arm (NZQA) are two separate entities, each with their own bureaucracy and highly-paid executives, competing for money and passing problems between them without either taking responsibility."

Gracie, Graham. “NCEA is a failed experiment.” Reader Report, Stuff, 6 Jul. 2015. http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/would-you-give-ncea-top-marks-or-put-it-bottom-of-the-class/12147257/NCEA-is-a-failed-experiment-teacher-says

A Student's Perspective:

"Firstly, more attention needs to be paid to grade boundaries, where a student can achieve with a high-merit that at any other school would be a low-excellence. Secondly, it is too easy to gain the necessary credits for a merit or excellence endorsement through so called "drop-out" subjects, such as flax basket weaving."

"Aside from compulsory subjects such as maths, English and possibly general science, students have free reign to determine what subjects they will study during NCEA."

"Other than subjects that are the basis of apprenticeships, most assessments will be achievement standards. This means that subjects such as Maori arts and drama, or traditional basket weaving can give students more easily achievable merit or excellence credits than in say physics or chemistry."

"I believe this gives the students who take these subjects a huge advantage over those who take more traditional subject choices. This is the reason I think we are seeing so many students achieving NCEA, especially the rise in merit and excellence endorsements given at all levels."

Durrant, Matthew. “A student’s perspective of NCEA.” Reader Report, Stuff, 8 Jul. 2015.  http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/would-you-give-ncea-top-marks-or-put-it-bottom-of-the-class/12162673/A-students-perspective-of-NCEA