Peter Lyons: If quality teachers vie for roles, education wins

In recent years the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has increased the portion of NCEA marked in schools.

Opinion

There is a dark secret in education that is seldom acknowledged: There is no perfect system of student assessment. All systems from examinations to internal assessment to norm-referenced to standards-based assessment are inherently flawed.

Until the 1990s New Zealand operated an assessment system in our secondary schools that could be described as norm-referenced. Students mainly sat national exams at schools and were scaled and ranked against each other. This system consigned a large portion of our population as academic failures from as young as 15. Such labels tend to be self-fulfilling and often lifelong.

From the 1990s our schools moved towards a system of standards-based assessment. Students would be assessed against objective standards of knowledge and skills. If they achieved the standard they would pass. It was likened to our system of issuing driver's licences. You either met the standard or you didn't.

This system sounds fair in theory but runs into problems in practice. The problems relate to having objective and clear standards of achievement. Those who are teaching the students, or setting the assessments and marking them, need to be in total agreement about the required standards to be met. This is easier said than done.

In 2002 secondary schools introduced NCEA which is a standards-based model of assessment. It was based on various levels of attainment from "excellence" to "merit" to "achieved" to "not achieved".

The problem of this system was soon apparent. It relied on teachers and assessors being consistent in how they interpreted and marked the standard that was to be met for each level. It had the added problem that the difficulty in standards for physics or economics or geography at each level had to be roughly the same. It failed to solve the quest for a perfect system but served to expose other aspects of the assessment riddle.

Meanwhile, some schools balked at the concept of standards-based assessment. They opted for overseas qualifications such as the Cambridge International Exams (CIE). While these systems may have appeared superior they still suffered from the dilemma of assessment imperfection.

Students who sit these exams are scaled against those sitting the exam in other parts of the world. Their results are largely determined by how well they do against others sitting the exam in countries such as Malaysia or Kenya. The mark they receive may have little relevance to their mastery of the subject.

Students sitting CIE do not automatically get their scripts back, unlike NCEA. This reduces the transparency of the system. Several years ago my top student failed his final exam in Cambridge economics. He and his family were devastated but it was up to them to appeal. They did and several months later he ended up with a mark of more than 90 per cent. There was no apology.

In recent years the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has increased the portion of NCEA marked in schools. This was likely a cost-cutting measure that throws the need to ensure consistency back on schools and teachers. It assumes that a teacher in Invercargill interprets and marks with the same rigour as a teacher in Kaikohe or Taupo.

All this would be largely academic if the stakes surrounding student assessment weren't so high. This Government has introduced national standards into our primary schools. The idea is to measure student and school performances at this level.

Given that jobs and school reputations are on the line there will always be immense difficulty in ensuring standards are properly interpreted and applied in each school or classroom.

The riddle of assessment has implications for measuring teacher performance. If teacher performance is to be based on student assessments it is likely to be subject to numerous rorts and manipulations. It is also likely to narrow the focus of teaching to ensuring assessment results rather than broader learning.

Competition between schools is largely a zero sum game for improving overall national education outcomes. Competition for entry to teaching by high quality applicants would make a real difference.

Peter Lyons teaches economics at St Peter's College in Epsom and has taught NCEA and CIE.