Exam heat switches to Mallard

The heat over the scholarship debacle has shifted from the Qualifications Authority to Education Minister Trevor Mallard with accusations that he tried to cover up a major problem with the exams.

Yesterday, as the controversy refused to go away, NZQA chief executive Karen Van Rooyen apologised on national television for the distress caused to scholarship students.

But it was Mr Mallard who faced increasing pressure over the shambles which has seen hundreds of New Zealand's best students fail to gain scholarships.

At the centre of the cover-up allegations is a statement Mr Mallard released on January 26 announcing the scholarship awards had been extended. At the time he knew there was a high failure rate and variability between subjects, but nowhere in the statement were the problems acknowledged.

The statement was issued almost two weeks before the Government finally admitted there was a problem and announced the replacement "distinction" awards.

National Party education spokesman Bill English said the January 26 announcement was an attempt by Mr Mallard to cover up the problems.

Mr English said if concerned parents and students had not continued to apply pressure the situation might not have been brought to the public's attention.

But Mr Mallard denied this and said his announcement to extend the scholarship awards implied there was a problem.

When he asked the Cabinet to extend the awards on January 25 he had not known the full extent of the problem.

He said he knew there had been a low pass rate but did not know about the variability between subjects.

He was only informed about that later in the evening of January 25.

The next day he met officials and it was then he discovered a major problem with the scholarship exams - there had been no moderation between subjects. Moderation is a process to ensure there is a similar of level of difficulty across subjects.

Mr Mallard told the Herald last night that because there is moderation between subjects at NCEA levels 1, 2 and 3, he had wrongly assumed that scholarship was also moderated.

He went ahead with the January 26 announcement because the Cabinet had signed it off.

It is now known the authority first told the Government about problems with scholarship pass rates on January 14.

Three days later, the authority sent the minister's office another email with a table showing the variation between subjects.

But that email did not explicitly warn of a problem and the ministers were not told for another week.

Yesterday, at Parliament's education select committee, Ms Van Rooyen was asked why she had not raised the alarm earlier.

She said the authority was conducting an internal inquiry to establish the reason.

This review is in addition to the two Government-ordered inquiries announced on Tuesday.

It is understood Ms Van Rooyen is under pressure to resign, but yesterday she was adamant she would not.

Ms Van Rooyen appeared before the committee with the NZQA chairman, Professor Graeme Fraser.

They were given an opportunity to present their side of what had happened.

There were moments of tension between Mr English and Ms Van Rooyen when the MP tried to get to the bottom of whether the authority had been warned about potential problems with the scholarship exams last year.

Professor Fraser said NZQA was told last Thursday that the Government wanted to review the scholarship process, and said: "I can understand why the Government wanted to be reassured about the process."