Tim O'Connor: Auckland Grammar Headmaster discusses potential NCEA changes

There is a growing belief that NCEA should be abolished and replaced all together.  

The Government is signalling that big changes could be on the cards - including the potential to ditch NCEA level one entirely.  

Auckland Grammar Headmaster Tim O'Connor told Mike Hosking that there should be a simple examination-based system, to give benchmarking across the country. 

He says NZQA would mark everything, so every student knows where they stand. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Concerns over in CEA. Our government's got this briefing paper
got made public over the weekend and basically it tells
us what every parent already knew. There are issues around
credibility into internal assessments, the stockpiling of credits, all that stuff.
Tim O'Connor is the headmaster of Auckland Grammar and is
back with us. Tim, very good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
To you morning mate.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Would this be the belief of most people that there
are major issues always have been within CEA?

Speaker 2 (00:23):
I think so. I think most educationalists across the country
would understand what the problems are. In fact, I think
most parents understand what the problems are.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Is this the flight to Cambridge and all those sort
of things that we've been seeing in the ensuing years.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Well, I think it should be a prompt for the
Minister of Education to actually abolish INCAAA as we know
it right now and put a new system in places.
A great opportunity. Finally, we have the Education Review Office
and MGQA agreeing, you know, things like there's no care
learning required to achieve subjects within the qualification time for change?

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Yeah, do you blow it up or do you reform it?

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I'd well you would keep it called nca unless, of
course you wanted to call it School Certificate and University
Entrants or something innovative. 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

(01:26):
currently NCAA doesn't do that. So the primary made of
assessment as examinations that would give benchmarking across the country
for every student, whether you're an 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
you are best under exam conditions, but these should be

(01:49):
marked by NZQA. Teachers wouldn't mark their student's own work,
and they shouldn't achieve. They shouldn't receive their marks back
before they get their externals back.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
It's almost like when I went to school in the
late seventies early eighties. That almost sounds like the way
we did it then.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Tim well, like the core foundational knowledge that we need
in the science of learning haven't changed, and they should
point the direction that we need to take right now.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Again, my wife and I were talking about this ironically
over the weekend because our kids have all gone through
NCEA and all that sort of stuff, the bearing degrees
of success. But if you look at this generation with
their open classrooms, what snow we don't like those? The
lockdowns of COVID plus the NCEEA. Oh, by the way,
all the NCAA you've just done, we don't like anymore.
How much damage do you reckon we've done to a

(02:35):
generation of kids.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
Oh? Significant damage. I mean we see New Zealand's results
in the OECD. They clearly show that they don't like
reporting those. But there is significant damage. Look at the
number of students who are arriving at university thinking that
they have direct entry into courses who don't actually have

(02:58):
university entrants because they've earned NCAA Level three, that they
haven't actually earned the prerequisites to enter a basic course.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Amazing, all right, to appreciate it as always, Tim O'Connor Auckland,
Grammar Headmaster. For more from the My Asking Breakfast, listen
live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,
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