Te Puke High School’s provisional NCEA results above national achievement levels

NCEA assesses the range of knowledge and skills a student has, says Te Puke High School principal Alan Liddle.

Te Puke High School principal Alan Liddle says provisional NCEA results show the school continues to be above the national achievement statistics at all levels.

The figures are not yet public.

“These are currently provisional results - further down the track, NZQA will give us confirmed results, and that’s generally what we work on,” he said.

“Then I’ll go through a pretty thorough analysis and report that to the board.”

Alan says he expects the confirmed results to be an improvement on the achievement levels of the provisional results.

“There are quite a number of students, particularly in Year 11, who were pretty close to getting over the 80-credit line, so they are just going through recounts at the moment. So the expectation is that [the percentage] will be higher than what it currently is.”

He says the figures are a little bit lower than normal for Level 1.

“But for Levels 2 and 3 we are pretty close if not slightly higher than what we’ve had. But we are always higher than the national statistics.”

He says the long-term trend at the school continues to be upwards.

Much is sometimes made of university entrance results. However, nationally, 70-80 per cent of students do not go to university.

“It’s pretty stable here but the reality is there are lots of opportunities for kids to go in all different directions.

“As a society, we probably need to open up our minds to what success looks like, and rather than just a single figure thing [such as NCEA achievement percentages], if a student is doing really well on a particular pathway to a trade, for example, and they get into it and get an apprenticeship, that’s a great success.

“I just get concerned when I see these lists in the paper of a single figure that denotes a pass rate. It doesn’t tell you much in terms of where kids are going for their futures.”

He says it is also unfortunate that some people criticise the NCEA system.

“It gets bagged, but when you look at the detail and the amount of work the kids have to do these days to achieve the standards, there’s a lot of work there. It’s a shame that it’s seen in a negative light, because it’s actually assessing the range of knowledge and skills that a student has.”