NZQA hits back at claims of exam woes

Parents and students can look forward to "fair and consistent" secondary school exam results, the head of the Qualifications Authority said last night, as she mounted a defence against growing criticism of marking procedures.

Karen Sewell hit back at claims that markers have been forced to unofficially and secretly re-mark papers and meet quotas of pass and fail rates. The NZQA acting chief executive said she was confident that "only students who reach the standard will be awarded credits".

National Party education spokesman Bill English has led the criticism, saying marks have been rejigged to hide problems and avoid the embarrassment of wildly varying results that came out last year.

The authority insists monitoring and marking processes have been open and transparent.

"The difference this year is that when a sufficient percentage of papers has been marked, if the results are significantly different from the expected performance, we investigate possible causes," said Ms Sewell.

The authority is particularly angry about Mr English's attacks because it is doing what it promised after last year's fiasco. Check markers have been monitoring results on a daily basis and alerting the authority to anomalies.

Mr English told the Herald yesterday that he had been contacted by more markers, complaining they were forced to unofficially re-mark and meet quotas. He had heard from "six or seven" markers.

One English teacher had been told between 40 per cent and 50 per cent must fail and there must be at least 5 per cent of excellence results.

Critics argue this is the same as scaling, a practice that assures a certain number pass the exam, supposedly redundant under the National Certificate of Educational Achievement standards-based assessment model.

But the Qualifications Authority said there were no "quotas" to be met. The percentages were "tolerance bands", which act as warning lights that an exam needs double-checking. That measure was introduced this year to avoid the wild variability that plunged last year's results into controversy.

More than 135,000 secondary school students attended 114 different exam sessions at 409 centres. There are about 2000 markers working through 1.9 million papers. Of the 335 standards, 13 (3.9 per cent) have been re-marked.

Mr English said Ms Sewell was "clutching desperately to the official line" while experienced professionals told a different story.

"I'm backing the markers. If they say standards are being dropped to pass more students, I believe that's the case," he said.

Ms Sewell said the assumption that re-marking was focussing on standards where not enough students were achieving was wrong. Profiles of expected results were "not set in stone" and markers still had to apply experience and professional judgement.

"In some instances the marking schedule may not be sufficiently discriminating," she said. "It is likely that in some instances, the final results will not match the profiles. If that is the professional judgment of markers and panel leaders, then so be it."