NZ Herald head of data journalism Dr Chris Knox solves a tricky NCEA level 2 maths problem. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by James Bentley
James Bentley is the headmaster at St Peter’s College in Epsom.
THREE KEY FACTS
Before the Covid pandemic, an increasingly higher proportion of state secondary school students were leaving school with NCEA Level 3.
That trend is now in reverse post-Covid, with achievement levels dropping to where they were a decade ago. Less than half of those leaving a state school in 2023 had NCEA Level 3.
As we approach the end of the school year, our 400 or so secondary schools will spend another summer break wondering what is happening with our national qualification – the NCEA.
In my view it is time to accept the inevitable and end our experiment with aflawed system that has failed to improve the educational outcomes for far too many of our nation’s teenagers.
Established as a replacement for School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary, NCEA is a vastly different qualification from its predecessors. Structured on standard-based assessment, New Zealand became one of the first (and still only) nations to shape its entire national secondary school qualification on this form of assessment.
Percentages were gone and replaced with the grades Excellence, Merit, Achieved and Not Achieved. Instead of one overall grade for a subject such as English, you might have five grades for that subject, with it now being carved up into various topics, to be assessed in different ways and at different times throughout the year.
It is also unique in that traditional subjects have their assessments mixed in with vocational subjects. Meaning it is possible that one student may have NCEA Level 2 from subjects such as chemistry, art and geography while another may have gained the qualification through assessments as diverse as signwriting, learning to drive or the preparing of mocktails.
'It is not unusual for a student to undertake 20-30 assessments each year.'
Students also take a lot of assessments. One of NCEA’s strengths is its ability to assess a student’s knowledge in different ways, whether it be an essay, a project or a film clip.
However, as schools see the advantages in this for their students, it is not unusual for a student to undertake 20-30 assessments each year.
All these need to be taught, marked and peer-marked, therefore it is little wonder that senior teachers complain about having little time to teach their subject. It can also put enormous pressure on our teenagers, who struggle to get everything done by the deadlines set, leading to increased anxiety and stress levels for many of our students.
With the sheer volume of in-school assessments, many students have passed their level of NCEA long before exam season rolls around. It can be disheartening to see how many students choose to forgo testing their knowledge and skills of a subject in an external exam.
All these quirks of the system could almost be tolerated if we were seeing a tangible improvement in the education achievement outcomes of our teenagers.
Yet the opposite is happening, with failure rates steadily increasing across all year levels.
Since the introduction of NCEA in 2002, many schools have chosen to offer alternative qualifications to their students. With the ongoing concerns with NCEA, the number of schools exploring this will only increase.
The review into NCEA began in 2017 and is now into its third government with no real end on the horizon. Timelines have been pushed out, reports written and discussed, all in the hope of making the qualification stronger and more palatable to the education sector.
NCEA is now 22 years old and yet far too many of our students are leaving school without the necessary skills and knowledge that we want for all our young people.
