Can the NCEA be saved?

Krystle Barnes worries about how relevant her scholarship will be. Picture / Dean Purcell

Krystle Barnes was one of the lucky ones. She passed an NCEA scholarship exam and won a place at university. But the 18-year-old says she has been left with something on her CV that employers don't recognise, parents don't understand and no one has any faith in. Krystle is proud of her achievement but is worried she has a qualification that is little more than a political football.

She calls herself part of the forgotten generation. "I'm writing CVs and saying I got scholarship and then I think, 'Is anyone going to care?' Maybe it won't matter because, hopefully, I'll study and get my degree. But in years to come there will still be days when I'll look back on it and wonder exactly what it means."

The Avondale College student's ambivalence is typical of her age group. They were born in 1986 and three weeks ago went through the same nail-biting routine as previous generations.

Thirteen years in the classroom ended with the hopeful tearing open of exam results. Lives were changed and plans thwarted, futures were secured and hearts broken.

The difference was these were the children of NCEA. Each year from 2002, as incremental levels of the new secondary school qualifications system have been introduced, those born in 1986 have been the first to face them.

Proponents of standards-based assessment call them the bold frontline of the biggest change in education in half a century. Critics call them unfortunate guinea pigs.

Previous generations may remember their results day with joy or misery. Whatever it was, it was concrete. Last year's school-leavers have the uncertainty of the first entire record of learning documented by unit standards, achieveds and merits.

Their secondary education has been plagued. In 2002, the first year, teachers threatened to strike over "shoddy implementation" of level one. The results showed huge numbers failed. The following year criticism flared again over the non-reporting of "not achieved" results.

But this year's rows have been more embarrassing. A top scientist for her age failed scholarship, a student passed geography without a single lesson, and a class of graphics students aced all internal tests but failed external assessment.

The generation of 1986 have seen their school lives culminate in NCEA level three and scholarship exams with wildly varying results. It is an inauspicious end to the maiden voyage of NCEA.

Labour has tried to draw a firm line between levels one to three and the scholarship exam fiasco but the two are linked by the standards-based assessment philosophy.

NCEA has hit enough catastrophic icebergs to have sunk a lesser ship but the investment in time and money spent on it make a cumbersome beast to change course.

Some say it is already fatally flawed. Others argue it merely needs tweaking. Either way, once the political finger pointing dies, the children of 1986 will still be left with a qualification that is blighted, says president of the Auckland Secondary Principals Association, Brent Lewis.

"The arguments in Parliament are about holding people accountable for political damage, but they are not solving the problem. If we leave things as they are Cabinet will be meeting next year, and the year after, and the year after, and so on."

Like hundreds of other principals and teachers, Lewis has bent over backwards to introduce NCEA. He insists an entirely independent, preferably overseas, education team, should be brought in to review the system. He says that is the only way to restore some measure of faith in secondary qualifications.

It does not necessarily mean a return to the "norm-referencing" of School Certificate and Bursary, but is the only way out of the quagmire, Lewis says. "You can never go back, but nothing is here forever. If you have landed in a situation where it's a disaster you have to continue forward, but make changes."

That view is supported by many employers who insist a realistic workforce environment involves consistent comparison against other candidates. Kevin Eder, managing director of Tradestaff, a leading employment agency, said he received hundreds of calls over the past six months from employers struggling with the new qualifications.

"The NCEA system just doesn't prepare students for the realities of working life," says Eder. "It doesn't create an environment which supports the pursuit of excellence. It encourages a culture of mediocrity."

Eder says employers see the system as a failure that needs to be "addressed immediately before it does serious long-term damage to the country's workforce and economy".

But equally vociferous advocates think the problem is one of communication. Bali Haque, principal at Pakuranga College, says he is "sick of employers complaining. If they can't understand the standards, what's wrong with them? It's fairly simple and all the necessary information is readily available."

Haque believes without the scholarship debacle there would be no row over the other levels of NCEA. "It's been blown totally out of proportion and I don't think there's a huge crisis in levels one to three. NCEA is fundamentally right."

The scholarship problems are about the expected standards not being communicated to teachers who are left "shooting blind", and a lack of moderation. "Put those two things right and you're well on the way to reassuring the public."

Haque argues that scaling under the old system masked problems which are now transparent. That method ranked students against their peers rather than against an objective set of standards.

"The rogue paper, the rogue question and the problematic standard were always there. Now we can see them and that is an improvement." He believes any attempt to roll back the system would meet huge protests.

He is probably right. NCEA has the support of many teachers and it is unlikely there is any political will for a roll-back. Associate education minister for schools David Benson-Pope said this week: "Teachers wanted the NCEA, employers demanded it, National decided to introduce it, and Labour is going to make it work."

Opposition MPs are taking pot-shots, but only Act seems certain that NCEA should be dumped. National leader Don Brash said his party would review and overhaul the system. Labour, meanwhile, announced investigations into scholarships only, and the performance of the Qualifications Authority.

Raewyn Dalziel, deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Auckland, believes any review needs to involve the frontline staff. "Education experts need to to be involved in constant revision. You have to ask all the time, is it working and how do we improve it?"

Emeritus education Professor Warwick Elley has been an outspoken critic of standards-based assessment and bases his arguments on years of experience.

In his latest paper, Elley suggests a possible way forward is to create a hybrid system, combining standards-based and norm-referenced tests, with subjects split into one or the other.

History, maths, English and the sciences would be marked under the old system, while practical, cultural and vocational courses could remain under standards-based assessment.

Students would be given an option to study a mix from either group in Year 11, then given the option to narrow their choices in Years 12 and 13.

A Government-assembled panel has been given two weeks to report on how to improve scholarships for this academic year, and State Services Commission inquiries will deal with the blame game within the next few months.

"But how many more thousands have to suffer because of 'teething problems'?" asks Lewis.

"How long do we persist with something that is affecting our children's futures? What is acceptable collateral damage?"