Thousands of students given wrong NCEA grades

Thousands of secondary students are being given wrong NCEA grades and industry insiders say teachers are "boosting" marks for favourite pupils or to enhance their school's reputation, a Herald on Sunday investigation has revealed.

Almost a third of last year's internally-marked work handed in for checking by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has been found to be marked incorrectly.

A further 10 per cent were said to be "invalid" because the tasks set were not appropriate.

Teachers are pushing up pass rates without fear of being caught, because they choose which papers are submitted to NZQA for checking.

Despite promises from the authority and the Ministry of Education that the system is improving - and that the discrepancies mean problem papers are being picked up - inconsistent marking is on the rise.

The qualifications authority has admitted that 29 per cent of last year's internally-assessed NCEA work sent in for checking was "not marked at the national standard": teachers had not stuck to the marking schedule.

The year before, 27 per cent were incorrectly marked.

Documents obtained by the Herald on Sunday show that teachers are given feedback on their marking, but students' grades are not changed - and most will never know whether they got the results they deserved.

It is understood that no school, or teacher, has ever been banned from marking because of the discrepancies.

Principals say the marking farce has reached epidemic proportions and blame an "appalling" lack of internal assessment checks.

In 2005 the authority checked just 3.2 per cent of about two million internally-assessed standards.

Students can now go through their entire school career, and gain university entrance, without ever sitting an external exam.

"If I wanted to, I could get my cat through just about any internal unit standard," said Rory Barrett, head of maths at Macleans College.

"They're not going to check. It's just so simple. I'm not saying we do it here - but you'd have to be an idiot not to."

Teachers choose which internal assessments to send for checking. Although they may have marked hundreds of papers, they have to send just eight of each achievement standard, and four of each unit standard.

Not every teacher's marking is checked every year because samples are taken from subjects, not classrooms.

The authority sends the schools feedback at the end of the year, after teachers have finished marking.

The Herald on Sunday has obtained documents sent to two top Auckland schools which show teachers' grades and those awarded by NZQA: the two sets are wildly different for virtually every subject.

At one school, 10 of 30 technology standards checked by the authority had been incorrectly marked, and only 11 of 24 physical education grades were correct.

Half the chemistry papers at one standard had incorrect grades and there were also variations in physics, English and biology.

Another school's moderation report, from 2003, said a girl's work was "incorrect yet marked as correct". A boy had been "marked as correct but is in fact wrong".

"He has been marked correct for this answer even though clearly wrong," the report said of a second boy, given an 'excellent' by his teacher, instead of only 'achieved'.

Sometimes students were marked too harshly, missing out on grades they deserved.

But most seen by the Herald on Sunday were well above what the authority would have given.

One teacher at a top Auckland school said he twice deliberately marked a boy higher than his actual score. He had bumped the boy's 'not achieved' grade to an 'achieved,' and upped a second grade from 'merit' to 'excellent.'

"He was a heck of a nice kid. He came and asked me if he'd really deserved to fail, and I thought to myself, 'am I going to ruin this boy's career over a stupid bit of nonsense?' I gave him another question, he answered that perfectly ... he showed he'd done a huge amount of work."

When NCEA was introduced, students were meant to sit at least half of their standards externally. That rule had been relaxed in the past few years, said Auckland Grammar School principal John Morris.

"Schools are looking at how they can boost their own results, and the easiest way to do that is by using the internal achievement standards as opposed to a balance of internal and external.

"It's obvious, and yet the people in NZQA and the Ministry just sit there and say, 'well, that's fine'."

Mr Morris laid blame on the "appalling" lack of moderation, rather than teachers.

"Look, all teachers want the best for their kids ... if it's better for them to do the internal assessed bits rather than external, they will do that."

Statistics show that since 2003, thousands more students have chosen internally-assessed subjects.

Last year, those at decile one schools took almost twice as many internal standards as those at decile ten schools. But even in the most elite schools, 37.9 per cent of NCEA work was internally-assessed.

Warwick Elley, Professor of Education, said his research showed that internal grades were often 20 per cent higher than externals: "There are so many discrepancies that it's hard not to feel sorry for the students".

Prof Elley said he would be surprised if schools weren't taking advantage of the lack of checking.

Trevor McIntyre, principal of Christchurch Boys' High School, said the system depended too much on the integrity of schools and teachers.

"It's open to abuse. I would like to think that all schools had a robust system in place and that all teachers are extremely professional, but it always comes down to interpretation.

"When there's some flexibility then the human factor comes into it."

Brent Lewis, principal of Avondale College, said most teachers would mark professionally. But the system gave schools a lot of freedom and the anomalies created huge injustices.

"Career paths and life opportunities are being shaped by these decisions ... this is a critical issue."

Mr Lewis said he would hate to see employers start to judge people by which school they attended, rather than their NCEA results.

"Where 29 per cent of the results are wrong, then the community starts to look at the professionalism and status of the school. It's imperative that NZQA resolves this matter urgently."

Even principals who were happy with NCEA had to admit there was a problem with NZQA's moderation.

Peter Leggatt, principal of Katikati College, conceded the system could be abused by teachers and that NZQA should "tighten up", and maybe change students' grades after they had been checked.

He said he had faith that teachers would act professionally, and that schools were doing their best for students.

Graham Young, head of the Secondary Principals' Association, did not realise that teachers or schools could now choose which work to send in for checking.

He said he was "surprised and concerned" to hear that 29 per cent of work moderated last year was found to be inappropriately marked. Mr Young said it would help the system's credibility if audit reports were made public.

But the Minister of Education, Steve Maharey, said it was important to remember that NCEA was "in its infancy", and there were still improvements to be made, "but the overwhelming view of the education sector is that the system has improved vastly over the last 12 months and is working well".

"It's in the professional interest of teachers and schools to be consistent with internal assessment ... "

It is understood that three schools' marking was so poor last year that they were warned the Ministry would intervene if they did not start to measure up.

Parents could ask schools for the results of moderation, a spokesperson for the Ministry said. Otherwise they went unpublicised.

Bill English, National's education spokesman, said NCEA was an ideological system in need of a pragmatic overhaul. "[NZQA] are very focused on their system and not on their students," he said.

"All of those students got the wrong results and it's not feasible to make their system work sufficiently well to be fair to students."

Mr English said internal marking needed to be norm-referenced against either general ability tests or results of external exams.

"None of these issues are new," he said. "[NZQA] won't concede any problems, and so nothing gets fixed."

When told that teachers were admitting boosting grades, NZQA chief executive Karen Poutasi said she was very concerned and demanded names so the problem could be fixed.

In an emailed statement, she said the 29 per cent incorrectly marked was evidence that teachers were submitting "borderline" work for checking.

"If serious discrepancies are identified in assessments, a greater number of standards can be requested for future checking - and this does happen.

"The checking of samples is only part of the moderation process, which also involves visits to schools at least once very three years.

"If a potential problem is identified, contact with a school is increased."

She said it was up to schools to change students' marks when discrepancies were found.

"It is up to each school to make decisions on the results of moderation ... it is the teachers themselves who have the knowledge of a student's progress in a standard - it may be that further work done by the student in the standard makes it inappropriate to change a result."

But principals said it was entirely impractical to re-mark an entire year's worth of work and that results were never changed.

Ms Poutasi confirmed students were getting to university without ever sitting an exam, despite a 1998 Cabinet Paper that indicated external assessment should make up about half a student's work.

Last year, 1224 students attained NCEA based purely on internal assessments, she said.

'Scamming the system' with internal assessments

Students spoken to by the Herald on Sunday said they "definitely" chose internal work because they knew they would get better grades.

They also chose subjects which are taught by teachers they got on with and made the most of a rule which allowed them to re-sit standards if they did not get 'excellence' first time round.

One boy from a prestigious Wellington school said he knew the system was "slack".

Emily, an 18-year-old from Hawke's Bay, changed schools and was shocked at the difference in marking. She said the first school was very strict about marking internal assessments, but at her new school students were encouraged to take internal standards and some teachers regularly gave generous grades to favourite pupils.

Ashley, 18, now studying computing, said students at his Hastings school "absolutely" saw internals as an easy pass. Students taking lots of internal assessments were teased, he said, but everyone knew how to "scam the system".

How NCEA works

The system was introduced in 2002.

There are two kinds of credits which students can achieve.

Unit standards are assessed internally: students are given either 'achieved' or 'not achieved.'

Achievement standards can also be assessed internally. Students are given either 'not achieved', 'achieved', 'merit', or 'excellence'.

Schools choose whether students do internally-assessed work, exams, or a mixture of the two.

Students are able to get enough credits to enter university without ever sitting an exam.