NCEA just doesn't add up for pupil

Kathy Webb
Yvonne Maungaati thought she was seeing things when she read her son Kiri's NCEA results last week.
The credits awarded in each of his six subjects added up to 80 - enough to pass Level 1 - but his final tally was only 78, which means he hasn't got Level 1 after all.
His results state that he has met all the literacy and numeracy requirements.
Mrs Maungaati couldn't believe it. She added up the credits subject-by-subject, again and again. Then she called in the boy across the road in their small street on the outskirts of Flaxmere, and asked him to add it all up.
In fact, everyone who adds up Kiri's credits gets the same tally - 80. He got 17 in accounting, two in biology, nine in English, 12 in history, 35 in maths, and five in PE.
After a phone call to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority last week, Mrs Maungaati was still confused.
He's a bright boy, she said yesterday. Last year he came top in fifth-form accounting and won a Vice-Chancellor's scholarship to Massey University, and he didn't deserve to have his year's work thrown into doubt.
Daniel Murfitt, deputy principal at Flaxmere College, shed light on the problem today.
The college has a policy of giving its pupils maximum opportunity to gain the credits they need for their NCEA level certificates. It does this by having pupils sit subjects in two ways - through internally assessed unit standards, and through external-exam achievement standards.
The only result possible in a unit standard, apart from failing, is "achieve", whereas the external-exam achievement standard gives the pupil a chance to demonstrate higher ability by earning a "merit" or "excellence".
Both results will be recorded on a child's record of learning, but only one will be counted for the purposes of tallying up credits for a subject.
In Kiri's case, he sat the same area of learning in maths - "solve right-angled triangle problems" - as both a unit standard and as an achievement standard, but he can't be rewarded twice for it, so two credits were deducted from the tally on his record of learning.
Mr Murfitt said NZQA needed to do more work on clarifying the records of learning, so parents and pupils could understand exactly where their credits were coming from.
In Kiri's case, the maths subject had two different numbers and names, which made it hard to spot duplication of credits.
Mr Murfitt said it did not matter that Kiri had not yet completed Level 1. He would probably do a unit standard within a few weeks of returning to school this year, and his marks would be sent off immediately to NZQA. He could have his Level 1 certificate in his hands by the end of the first term.
There was going to be a need for a general shift of mindset and understanding, he said. The records of learning issued each January were just that. They were not necessarily definitive "results" of a year's work. Pupils could be working across all three levels of NCEA at the same time, with none of them complete, Mr Murfitt said.
Mrs Maungaati said yesterday she was thoroughly disillusioned by NCEA.