Katie Holland: Students worthy of praise

Katie Holland.

Hands up if you don't really get what NCEA is all about?

I admit my hand is up along with, I would suggest, a majority of people over a certain age.

Merits, excellences, endorsements ... it's all very different from the days of School C where you passed or failed and that was that.

NCEA results were released yesterday to students logging on to the NZQA website, again a far cry from the days of anxiously waiting by the window watching for the postman.

Having watched a snippet of a Nigel Latta TV programme this week on the pros and cons of NCEA, I took away that it is a fairer way of measuring students' performance and abilities over the course of an entire year rather than everything hinging on one final exam. Which seems fair enough.

Tertiary providers and employers for whom high school results matter know what the different results actually mean. And parents who care about their children's education will presumably also have made some effort to wrap their heads around the notion.

For the rest of us, I recommend nodding wisely and enthusiastically exclaiming your congratulations when a friend or relative rattles off their child's results.

In all seriousness, local teenagers put in a lot of hard work in 2015 to achieve the NCEA results they needed.

So, to students who got good results yesterday, well done. To those who were disappointed, chin up, and don't give up on your goals. There is always another way.