Fundamental flaws have crept in which, despite tinkering, have failed to maintain its credibility and utility. The flexibility offered by the NCEA has undermined its academic rigour.
The smorgasbord of standards available to students led in many cases to a qualification with no discernible career pathway. Credit-farming rather than a focus on the foundations of literacy, numeracy and science meant many students were ill-prepared for tertiary study or work.
Despite the best efforts of schools to explain the NCEA, parents, employers and overseas universities remained confused and distrustful of the qualification.
Alternative qualifications such as Cambridge and the International Baccalaureate replaced the void for some schools, creating the potential for a widespread two-tiered qualification system in New Zealand.
The increasing loss of a homegrown secondary school qualification in many of our schools seriously further undermines the credibility of the NCEA.
On the back of these systemic failures, Education Minister Erica Stanford’s decision to consult on scrapping the NCEA in favour of a new national qualification was an easy one.
In our enthusiasm to embrace this sea-change proposal for secondary schools, we ought not to fall into the same trap as the designers of the NCEA.
The devil will be in the detail for the new qualification. The NCEA, for all its flaws, had some redeeming features. We ought to aim to hit the “sweet spot” and not lose the best elements of the NCEA.
What we do need in this debate on the new qualification is:
- To avoid straightjacketing students early on into a vocational or academic pathway. This could also morph into secondary schools being labelled in the same fashion as vocational or academic schools.
- Written examinations are a useful and accurate tool for assessment. There are, however, other ways of assessing students that are equally valid and objective. These are often subject-specific, such as technology and the arts. The key is the standardisation of the assessment tool across schools.
- Giving a student a percentage mark and grade A–E is a reliable and an objective snapshot of their achievement. It has universal understanding. It does not, however, describe for the benefit of parents and employers what knowledge and skills students have acquired. This ought to be retained in the new qualification.
- Placing literacy and numeracy as the cornerstones of the new qualification is both necessary and desirable. Setting a high bar is laudable. The reality, however, is that many schools and parents will require considerable support to overcome the learning deficits of children, often caused by factors extrinsic to the school. The resources currently in place are insufficient for these schools. If not corrected, the new qualification risks failing whole communities who earnestly want the best for their children but need additional support.
- Creating a high-quality qualification system without a clearly defined curriculum and body of knowledge makes no sense. This approach completely failed in the various reviews of the NCEA. The curriculum rewrite which has started with real promise in English and mathematics must cover all subjects. It must also be done in sync with the new qualification.
My hope is that as we move forward from the NCEA system, we create a secondary school qualification that learns the lesson of the past, while embracing the need for change.
