Andrew Dickens: What should we do with NCEA?

So here we go again. A national conversation about whether NCEA is C.R.A.P

A damning Government briefing presented in June has raised significant concerns about the credibility of New Zealand’s main secondary school qualification.

It’s worried about the flexibility built into NCEA, including regarding what assessments students sit, means courses can be structured around those perceived to be “easier” to accumulate credits.

The briefing says the system encourages students to stockpile credits across often disconnected subjects at the expense of engaging in a “coherent” course that supports a clear pathway for their future.

The kids are also passing courses based on internal assessments. Many are avoiding external examinations. More than 250,000 kids students skipped exams last year.

The briefing says that the qualification is hard to assess if you’re an employer and it’s hard to compare it with anything internationally.

So Erica Stanford is working on proposals, and I’d like to know what you think she should do with the system.

This morning Mike Hosking asked Auckland Grammar's Headmaster Tim O'Connor what he would do: 

"I think you change it to an examination based system. We make it pretty simple. Here's a thought, we assess at against the national curriculum because currently in NCEA doesn't do that. So the primary mode of the system is examinations that would give benchmarking across the country. Every student whether you're in Invercargill through to Auckland. you'd know where you stood. And you can have some internal assessment in it because not all types of content, you know, are best under exam conditions, but these should be marked by NZQA. Teachers wouldn't mark their students own work, no, and they shouldn't receive their marks back before they get their externals back." 

Now, both my boys did NCEA and they’re literate and numerically great. It did not fail them

In fact my oldest had the choice of doing NCEA  or International Baccalaureate.

So, why did we go NCEA?

It’s because that boy was dyslexic and dyspraxia.  He cannot write well and his spelling is atrocious.

So a system that had a large quotient of internal assessment catered for his learning difficulty.

But the difference between his school and others is that the school made sure that the standards of IB were replicated in their teaching of NCEA

The concentrated on the basics, which is not just reading writing and arithmetic. They also included science and social studies. Social science, including history and not just New Zealand history, but the history of the world over the past 200 years in particular.

They didn’t include the so-called cheat courses like barista studies reasoning if you want to learn how to be a café worker you can enrol in extramural courses

He got a great education and has gone on to have double degrees and a thriving professional life

My point here is that one of the main problems of NCEA is not the system, but the way the schools teach it and the abdication of parental input into the student’s choices.

You can’t just sit back and complain that you don’t understand how it works as a parent. You have to educate yourself if you want your children to be adequately educated for their future and the chance to do even better than you did.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Kerry Wood of Morning's podcast from
News Talks at b.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Here we go again, a national conversation about whether NCEA
is crap because, as the Prime Minister said this morning,
education is the key and he's saying that changes to
NCEA may be profound nc EA. Who can remember what
that stands for? I can National Certificate of Educational Achievements.

(00:35):
Does that sound about right? NCEEA introduced into New Zealand
between two thousand and two and two thousand and four.
It replaced what we may all know school C, sixth
form certificate university entrants and then university bursary Level one
and level two. NCEEA Level one replace School C in

(00:57):
two thousand and two. It's twenty twenty five. It's been
twenty three years. NCEEA Level two replaced sixth form certificate
in two thousand and three. NCEA Level three replaced bursary
in two thousand and four. When it came out, we
had a big old debate about it, was it any good?
What's wrong with the old system? While it's unrolled. Over

(01:18):
the last twenty years we've had big old debates about it,
is it any good? Schools have moved to competing qualifications
that come from overseas international baccalaureate, the Cambridge Education system.
We've talked about this forever, but now we've got a
government who wants to talk about it. So a damning
government briefing presented in June raised significant concerns about the

(01:41):
credibility of our main secondary school qualification. It was worried
about the flexibility that is built into NCEA, which was
built in purposefully to make it, you know, flexible, because
not every kid is the same. That flexibility includes what

(02:04):
assessment students sit. It means courses could be structured around
those perceived to be easier to accumulate credits. This briefing
presented in June says the system encourages students to stockpile
credits across often disconnected subjects at the expense of engaging
in a coherent course that supports a clear pathway for

(02:27):
their future. The kids are also passing their courses based
pretty much on internal assessments. If they've done well during
the year, they look at the external exam and they
gain nas stuff it I don't need to do that
have already passed, and so they walk away from exams
more than two hundred and fifty thousand students skipped exams

(02:47):
last year because they were satisfied with their internal assessment result.
The briefing presented in June to Liminus says the qualification
is hard to assess if you're an employer, and it's
hard to compare it with anything internationally. So Ericas Stamford
is working on proposals, and here's this morning's talk, Baker,

(03:08):
I'd like to know what you think she should do
with the system. So this morning Mike Hosking asked au
con Grammar's head master Tim O'Connor what he would do.

Speaker 3 (03:22):
I think you change it to an examination based system.
We make it pretty simple. Here's the thought. We assess
it against the national curriculum because currently NCAA doesn't do that.
So the primary madive assessment is examinations that would give
benchmarking across the country for every student, whether you're an

(03:42):
Indocargo through to Auckland, you'd know where you stood and
you can have some internal assessment in it because not
all types of content are best under exam conditions, but
these should be marked by NZQA. Teachers wouldn't mark their
student's own work and they shouldn't receive their marks back
before they get their externals back.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Sound familiar is probably what you went through back in
the day when you were educated. There was no internal
assessment back then. I'll talk more about internal assessment a
bit later on. So what would you do with the
system as a parent, as an employer? What would you
do with NCEA? How would you change it?

Speaker 3 (04:24):
Now?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
Here's my story. Both my boys did NCEA and guess
what they both did great. They've both got degrees, they
have literate, they're numerically great. NCEA did not fail them.
And in fact, here's the story of my oldest boy.
My oldest boy had the choice of doing either NCA
or ib ib is the International Baccalaureate. So we as

(04:47):
a family chose NCEA. And there was a reason for it.
My oldest boy is dyslexic and dyspraxic. His problem is
he cannot write. He cannot spell bless. His handwriting looks
like a spider, a child spider. His handwriting looks like

(05:09):
a four or five year old. To be honest, he
cannot do this, but he's not stupid. So a system
that had a large quotient of internal assessment catering for
his learning difficulty appealed to us, and so we went
for NCEA. And the difference between his school and others
is that the school he went to made sure that
the standards of International Baccalaureate were being replicated in their

(05:32):
teaching of NCEA. They advised the kids, and they advised
us to concentrate on the basics. And those basics, by
the way, are not just reading, writing, and arithmetic. They
also include science and social studies. Social science including history,
and not just New Zealand history. My boys studied the
history of the world over the past two hundred years.
In particular. I used to read his textbooks because they

(05:55):
were interesting and they didn't include the so called cheek
courses like Barista studies reasoning. If you want to learn
how to be a cafe worker, you can go in
and roll the extramural courses. I'll talk more about that
later too. So that boy, my dyslexic, explexic, intelligent, beautiful boy,
got a great education. He had reader writers for exams.

(06:17):
When exams happened, he did most of his work on
a computer which had a spell check, and they didn't
worry about his writing. That boy who was written off
by other schools. They said, we'll have to put him
in a special class. That boy went on to have
a double degree and now has a thriving professional life.
My point here is that NCA offers flexibility, and flexibility

(06:40):
is good for those kids who need flexibility, but many
kids don't. And my other point is that one of
the main problems of NCEEA is not the system, but
the way schools teach it and the abdication of parental
input into the student's choices. You can't just sit back
and see what your kid chooses to study and complain, well,

(07:02):
I just didn't understand the system. You can't sit back
and say that. As a parent. You have to educate yourself.
You have to know how the system works. And then
you have to have a good old word with your
kids and convince them, and the schools have to do
that as well. And this is if you want your
children to be adequately educated for the future, and the

(07:24):
schools want their children that they're teaching to come out
adequately educated for the future. And the reason we want
this is so that the next generation is even better
than we are. So eight hundred and eighty ten eighty
is a number to phone. Erica Stanford's had some words
from bureaucrats saying it's a bit stuffed. She reckons she's

(07:48):
got proposals coming later. It's time for you to have
your say and let the politicians listen to what you
want and how you would change it.

Speaker 1 (08:01):
For more from Kerry Wood and Mornings, listen live to
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