NCEA Scrapped

Regular visitors to my blog will know I am very critical of New Zealand's secondary education system of awarding qualifications. Known as NCEA, it is very flawed and ended up being a dog's breakfast of feelgood claptrap mixed with unicorn kisses and rainbow hugs.

Well, it is being scrapped, and not before time. This should have happened 20 years ago.

But, the devil is in the details as they say, and what replaces it really matters. What I expect will happen, is the system will be dumbed down even more. That's so that the government will be able to trumpet how they've restored things, while hiding they've actually got worse still. Basically, things have got so bad, that the system had to be scrapped as too many students were failing even basic literacy and numeracy assessments.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/568958/ncea-changes-some-aspects-like-a-step-backwards-in-time-principal

The government's plans to replace the NCEA system are on a tight timeline and will require a lot of support, say teachers.

After more than 20 years as New Zealand's official secondary-school qualification, the government has pulled the pin on the NCEA.

The National Certificate of Educational Achievement will be gone by 2030, replaced by a basic literacy and numeracy award at Year 11, and the Certificate of Education and Advanced Certificate of Education at Years 11 and 12.

'Achieved', 'not achieved', 'merit' and 'excellence' will be replaced by marks out of 100 and letter grades A, B, C, D and E.

The new certificates would be standards-based, like the NCEA is, meaning every student passes if they demonstrate the required knowledge or skills, but they would have to study at least five complete subjects and pass four of them to get their certificate.

This year's Year 8s would be the first cohort through the new system, starting with the foundation award in 2028, which might look a lot like the current NCEA literacy and numeracy tests.

New Zealand's Falling Standards In Education

Here we go, another move is being made to have New Zealand dumbed down yet again. Now, the suggestion is to scrap the first year of NZ's NCEA; a qualification roughly equivalent to the UK's GCSE's and generally taken by students at the age of sixteen.

The below quote says to me, that teachers are shoving through students by simply making stuff up. In NZ, teachers are no longer subject to rigorous inspection, rather they are 'peer reviewed' which means there is a strong motivation to look good in front of colleagues.

I believe the current proposal to drop NCEA Level 1 is an admission of failure. There are so many students now functionally illiterate that they fail even the lowest level test, or they leave before sitting. So, the Ministry of Education have to scrap it to save face, rather than address the real problem, which is; that teachers no longer teach, and schools are simply places warehousing children to keep them dry while the parents work. Parents are now the ones doing the teaching, teachers grandstand all day long, do nothing and stand around complaining about literally everything.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/534796/ero-calls-for-ncea-level-1-to-be-overhauled-again-or-dropped

Last year, students were almost twice as likely to achieve an excellence grade on an internal assessment than an external assessment," ERO head of assessment Ruth Shinoda said.

NCEA Review

I see from the latest announcement that NCEA is going in the opposite direction to the one I suggest. The proposal is to do away with exams at the Year 11 (5th Form) level. Oh dear, that would be bad. I agree with the Auckland Grammar head when he says "We are going to be going into a deep, dark place..."

This is not going to end well folks.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12059594

New Zealand Education Crisis

The new Labour government of New Zealand is owned by teachers, nurses and social workers. That said, teachers in NZ have been having a lot to say; they want more money.

Fine, give them more money. But along with that extra pay do the following to avert the crisis and have NZ rising in the rankings again. Failure to do these things will mean collapse of the education system. That's right, collapse, and by that I mean widespread illiteracy and innumeracy or worse, a failure to know how to think.

The first step would be to merge the Education Council, Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office into one agency under the one roof. And give it teeth.

Then when that's done, make all teachers subject to objective and peer assessment. This would be done by ensuring that new teachers pass exams. Then while teaching they must conduct research and publish those papers. These results would determine rates of pay. Think this is too tough? What about accountants and lawyers? They're subject to professional examinations and when on the job they must function in certain ways to get the money. If teaching is a profession, why are they not subject to similar rigour?

Then pay more to teachers who stay in the classroom, and less to those who leave the classroom to administer. The flaw in the NZ system is it provides strong incentives for teachers to not do any teaching. To advance within teaching, teachers must get out of the classroom. Stop that happening.

Then scrap all school boards of trustees. Instead have schools run in groups managed by asset managers on a regional level, the board for which may be elected, but having each and every school with its own elected board of trustees is a nonsense. In effect it hands the day to day operation of schools to teachers. Teachers teach, they're not facilities managers.

Then lastly, bring back the three hour exam for most subjects. Replace the current NCEA system. I'd describe NCEA as delivering curriculum in a modular fashion. The problem with modular snippets is the student does not learn a subject end-to-end. Why have a student assessed on, say, 25% of the subject at hand before half way through the course? Until the student knows how all the parts fit together, they cannot be reliably assessed. The current assessment model disadvantages slow learners, those that may take all year to know a subject. What NCEA does is deliver failure early, and hence a large number switch off. It's the current NCEA system that promotes failure. This is hard to understand and denied by NCEA promoting apologists but this is the reality and the government has got to realise that NCEA does not work.

Oh and just in case you missed it, what I'm saying needs to be done is a re-creation of the Department of Education, Boards of Education and School Certificate. That was before Labour wrecked education with its Tomorrows Schools of the late 1980's, early 1990's, followed by more reform which effectively threw the baby out with the bathwater. From then on it was all downhill.

English in New Zealand High Schools

Daughter number two is about to complete high school. She is a capable student, and she reads with great alacrity. She's not a bad writer either, I like her stuff.

So we were talking about how things have gone at school, as you do, and you know what? What she hasn't studied is truly surprising.

She hasn't 'done' any Shakespeare to date. That's not just this year, that's ever. Nor has she done Christopher Marlowe or Ben Jonson. She had seen T.S. Eliot mentioned in a book she got out of the library, so she had heard of him, and she'd read in a Bernard Cornwell book of Anthony Trollope propping up the leg of a table. She said she recognised the reference as I had recommended him.

She has not heard of Rudyard Kipling, Dylan Thomas or William Blake. No Alfred Lord Tennyson for her. Oh no.

Has Russia ever had an empire? Oh dear, the naivety. Yes child of mine and they have literature too. Lots of it.

What she has spent a lot of time on is writing ugly, no, very ugly creative writing pieces for her NCEA. The teachers train these children to emulate drivel like The Luminaries and The Bone People. I call this creative writing class pitiable and largely worthless crap. But like tame seals they have to do it or get a low grade. Gone is economy and elegance. We'll have none of that the teachers say.

This is bad folks. A very very poor state of affairs.

Nigel Latta on Education

Nigel Latta on Education

I really enjoyed Nigel Latta's TV documentary on the gap between rich and poor so I was looking forward to his piece on NCEA ( TVNZ series 1 episode 2 Nigel Latta ). Oh dear, not so good. I have written him a letter outlining my concerns. The text you can read below...

NCEA

I've got three daughters, the eldest has been through High School and is now finishing up her BCom on the way to being an accountant, then the middle child is doing NCEA level 1 this year, the youngest being still at Primary School.

Observation - the NZ secondary education system is broken. I'm talking about State schools here, as I have knowledge of them as a parent of children attending State schools.

Basically, NCEA is flawed. Several problems as I see it:-