Confused employers opt for school over grades

Many bosses do not know how the three-year-old national secondary qualification system works, say employers' groups.

This week, 130,000 students receive their National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA) results, by mail or on the NZ Qualifications Authority website from tomorrow.

Unlike last year, when the results showed whether a student had failed a subject standard, this year they only record a student's (A) achieved, (M) merit or (E) excellence grade.

Alasdair Thompson, of the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said because of a suspicion that standards of achievement differed between schools and from year to year, "many employers are placing more emphasis on what school job-seekers attended rather than on their NCEA certificates".

Drake International Christchurch manager Libby Hilder said she, and many of the employers her firm helped to recruit staff for, had no idea how to interpret the results.

Canterbury Employers' Chamber of Commerce chief executive Peter Townsend said he had been a school board trustee for nine years and still did not understand NCEA.

But NZQA group manager Kate Colbert said the results were a record of what a student could do, and it was "not important for an employer to know what was not achieved".

She said brochures explaining how the NCEA works were about to be sent to employers.

- NZPA