A beginner's guide to the NCEA

What is the NCEA?

The National Certificate of Educational Achievement is a national qualification for senior high school pupils.

In 2002 it has replaced School Certificate for fifth-formers (Year 11). It will replace Sixth-form Certificate for sixth-formers (Year 12) next year, and Bursary for seventh-formers (Year 13) in 2004.

Under the old system, School Certificate and Bursary were largely externally assessed at the end of the year through national examinations. Students' final marks gave them a simple percentage and/or grade based on the exam (and in some cases, an internally assessed portion of study). Sixth-form Certificate was completely internally assessed.

What was wrong with this system?

Bursary marks under the old system were subject to scaling. In School Certificate, some of the marks a school's students received at the half-year indicative exams determined the range of marks available to allocate to that same group of students in their final exams. The range of grades available to students in Sixth-form Certificate was determined by that group's performance in School Certificate the previous year.

Critics of School Certificate had long argued that the qualification was good for ranking students but did not detail individual strengths and weaknesses. Also, over 40 per cent of students failed, leaving them with no qualification whatsoever.

How did the new system develop?

While changes to School Certificate and Bursary were being debated in the 1990s, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, established in 1991, was developing a system of "standards-based" assessment for non-academic subjects.

Standards-based assessment involves breaking down a subject into many parts and assessing different aspects of a student's skills, knowledge and understanding separately.

Steadily, "unit standards" for subjects as diverse as food hygiene, port machinery operation, pest control, and non-academic English were developed. Today there are 18,000 unit standards registered on the National Qualifications framework, and they are taught in high schools and other institutions.

All unit standards are internally assessed and a student either passes or fails - no grade is given.

In the mid-90s, a decision was made to extend the idea behind unit standards into the secondary school academic curriculum, and "achievement standards" were born.

These differ from unit standards in that they apply to academic subjects, are partly internally and partly externally assessed, and provide a range of grades as opposed to just pass/fail.

How did these standards become NCEA?

NCEA is based on achievement standards which have been set nationally. Each standard is typically worth two or three credits. Level 1 (replacing School Certificate) requires each student to gain 80 credits across a range of subjects. Eight credits must be taken in English or Maori and eight must be in maths. Although each school's requirements for what students need to study are different, most require science, maths and English in fifth form. Subjects such as drama and health can also count towards the qualification - there are 37 NCEA subjects overall.

All subjects are broken up into achievement standards. English, for example, has nine. Four are internally assessed - creative writing, speechmaking, media or drama presentation, and research - and five externally assessed at year's end - formal writing, book comprehension, short story comprehension, audiovisual text comprehension, and unfamiliar text comprehension.

How does this work in the classroom?

At the beginning of each achievement standard, the teacher outlines what is needed to gain a simple pass ("achieved" in NCEA jargon) or to pass with merit or excellence. Students give work to their teacher, who marks it and sends three samples - the worst, an average example and the best - to another teacher within the department for moderation, a process designed to ensure marks are consistent between teachers and schools. The Qualifications Authority asks for a selection of work from each school, generated by a random list of student names, for national moderation.

Will marks be consistent across the country?

Many teachers worry about the latitude they have in deciding grades and the inconsistency between teachers, departments and schools on what is considered "achieved", "merit" or "excellence". There is also debate over how many times a school allows a student to resit a standard. Government guidelines suggest schools may offer reassessment, meaning in some schools students can continue trying until they achieve a standard while others must take the first mark they get.

Aren't students still getting marks out of 100?

This was a last-minute political move by Education Minister Trevor Mallard to appease critics of the NCEA. Schools use a complicated formula to turn a student's credits into a traditional mark out of 100. This is unlikely to last.