By DITA DE BONI
On the shop floors and manufacturing lines of the country's 300,000 or so businesses, huge numbers of workers with substandard literacy and numeracy skills labour away in jobs with uncertain futures.
Contributing to the knowledge economy will be almost impossible for many of these people. One quarter of the country's population aged 25 to 64 have no qualifications at all, only 35 per cent have a post-secondary-school qualification, and 20 per cent can barely read and write well enough to do everyday tasks such as writing a formal letter, filling out bank statements and reading the newspaper.
This, despite the fact that many New Zealanders have very good levels of literacy and numeracy, and our education system is considered one of the best in the world. The two groups coexist in New Zealand more than in other countries. We have many who achieve at high levels - more than, for example, Australia, according to OECD indicators - but many more who lag behind.
Next to Australia's short stubby graph, ours is long and skinny, scraping both ends of the achievement spectrum.
In education jargon, it's called having a long "tail".
The latest, $12.5 million initiative to shrink the "tail" of low-achievers, to boost morale and give the country a more unified education system is called the National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA).
The qualification is, in most cases, half externally and half internally assessed, replacing School Certificate this year, Sixth Form Certificate next year, and Bursary in 2004.
The Qualifications Authority says level 1 (fifth form) NCEA will "explicitly attest to its holder's literacy and numeracy" in part by awarding one of four grades - "not achieved", "achieved", "achieved with merit" and "achieved with excellence" - for each standard (topic) within a subject, instead of the usual "English - 51 per cent" mark which, the authority argues, tells employers and parents little.
The sheer number of options for each achievement standard within NCEA means within one subject - such as English - as many as 65,000 different report combinations are possible.
Business, which has a key stake in the argument as the recipient of graduates brandishing the new NCEA qualification, has mixed feelings about a system that will, on the one hand, give it a better indication of what kind of skills prospective employees have, and on the other, may make it harder for them to rank potential candidates according to clearly defined grades or percentages.
Business New Zealand, previously the Employers and Manufacturers Association, says it has been liaising with the Qualifications Authority to help explain NCEA and how best the qualification can assist the business sector.
Chief executive Simon Carlaw says the organisation's chief concern is that the number of school leavers with no qualifications is reduced, and it supports a target of "all leavers attaining Level 1 NCEA by 2005".
The organisation does not have an official position on external versus internal exams but "we think it essential that there be better linkages between education and training and between senior secondary school and the workplace ... The NCEA design permits schools to develop a range of programmes that link with industry training.
"We are doing everything we can, with our regional members, to make this a reality."
But other business organisations feel they have not been consulted about either NCEA's development or implementation, and are as much in a fug as the rest of the population about what it all means.
Auckland Chamber of Commerce head Michael Barnett said he was surprised that the chamber - the largest of 30 in the country - had not been consulted, and was amazed that neither the Ministry of Education nor the authority had given members a brief on the latest seismic educational shift.
"I was surprised because by not consulting with or at least informing us properly, it was perpetuating something that has happened for many years, where you've got education on the one side and business on the other and 'never the twain shall meet'.
"I think that business has, in the past 10 years, put its hand up to ask to have a hand in what's happening but it hasn't happened this time round."
To borrow a business analogy, NCEA should have been "marketed" to the general public, business and parents better "and explained in a language understood at all levels".
He feels the certificate may demotivate top students, a trade-off for motivating less able students, but either way "the fear is that members presented with these certificates in a couple of years' time will still think, 'What does this mean?'
"Much greater consultation is needed."
Chris Pickrill, the chair of Edanz, the Economic Development Association of New Zealand, agrees.
Representing 60 economic development agencies and units within local authorities, city and district councils, Edanz was also not consulted about NCEA and says overseas there is much more scope for business to be involved in education-system decisions.
He says there are pros and cons with NCEA. Some Edanz members have expressed the fear that the new qualification will take the competitive edge out of the school system and "real life, after all, is about success and failure".
On the other hand, what employers are looking for, he says, are "employability skills" as opposed to "generic" skills.
The NCEA is, of course, designed to deliver this. Throughout America, Australia, South Africa and Britain, national examinations, otherwise known as "norm-based" assessments, are being replaced in parts by achievement standards like those of the NCEA. Achievement standards, which cover academic subjects, and unit standards, which more often cover more vocationally based subjects, are the building blocks of "outcome-based education" - a new direction in educational policy that is causing infuriated traditionalists in all countries to claim education is being "dumbed down" and to call for an immediate return to national exams. The traditional view argues that external exams are fairer and more rigorous; the opposing view argues that external exams brand a large proportion of the school-going population as "failures" and consigns them to post-secondary school oblivion.
Edanz' Chris Pickrill agrees that a willingness to learn, good communication skills and an ability and interest in frequent upskilling are important. One of the aims of NCEA is to avoid labelling students "failures", thereby keeping them interested and enthused about learning.
But doesn't business itself have a role to play in enthusing its workers?
"Damn right. And I think business realises that we've abdicated our responsibility for that somewhat. But it starts before people come into the workforce and that's why there should be more communication all round."
One of New Zealand's largest technology and manufacturing companies, Fisher & Paykel, which recruits up to 300 people each year, confirms it was briefed by the ministry before NCEA was introduced and, in fact, took a role in a promotional video the ministry produced to explain the qualification.
But general manager of customer services and quality Brian Nowell says the company does not feel it is in a position to influence what is delivered through the curriculum and would train its staff - both qualified and unqualified - in any skills found lacking.
"We don't believe that anyone is purposely making a much lower or higher standard apply with NCEA than applied before. Essentially, we have to wait and see what the graduates of NCEA are like when they come through."
One company that has stolen a march on the NCEA in terms of achievement standards in the workplace is the country's largest meat processor. Richmond hires 1000 people each year and is the main employer at many of its 14 small-town sites.
Training and development manager Michele Hoskin has helped to ease "unit standards" into Richmond. Unit standards are credits gained as part of the country's National Qualifications Framework in subjects such as - in the case of the food industry - food hygiene and health and safety, and are taught at different levels at schools, polytechnics, private training establishments and in the workplace.
The expansion of unit standards to now cover roughly 18,000 subject areas has been the work of both National and Labour governments of the past 10 years, eager to upskill workers in preparation for the "knowledge economy".
So far Richmond is more concerned with unit standards relating to its workplace being taught in schools than NCEA, which deals in the more academically based achievement standards. Ms Hoskin says the company needs to do more to promote specific unit standard programmes in schools, so students study the basics of industry at an earlier stage before they enter.
But anything NCEA can do to raise morale in the people coming through gets a nod. School Certificate has been partly to blame for morale problems, she says, by branding people "failures" of the school system.
"Even some of our managers expressed how they felt about not passing School Certificate when we discussed achievement standards - it affects quite a few people," she says.
But does the provision of "feel better" education, such as that engendered by achievement standards, have a place in today's market?
Opponents say no, that the superior academic performance - and the implication is, economic performance - of countries such as Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore have strong, often centralised curricula relying almost totally on national exams and strong competition.
The Education Forum, which has constantly lobbied against NCEA and contains members such as Business Roundtable head Roger Kerr, charges that NCEA and its ilk ignore international "best practice" by dispensing with such exams and "blur the distinction between academic studies and those associated with vocational education and training ... "
Richard Bentley, former head of listed company Natural Gas and now on the Learning and Assessment in Secondary Education Advisory Committee that meets once a month to advise the Qualifications Authority on how best to introduce NCEA to schools, thunders a rebuttal to NCEA critics down the phone from Wellington.
"When you run a business you are happy to train people in specialist tasks, but you don't have the time or the money to teach them basic tasks like reading and writing. It sounds trivial but the reality is that people without these skills can slip through the net and it is not good for anyone.
"The idea that everyone has to race through school at the same time or you are a 'failure' is just bullshit ... learning has got to be a positive experience, and when you get large groups of people failing School Certificate each year you have to look at different ways of making sure that [positive experience] happens."
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