NCEA results not overstated, says Whangarei charter school

Raewyn Tipene, chief executive of the He Puna Marama Trust which operates Te Kura Hourua o Whangarei Terenga Paraoa, says charter school NCEA results are not overstated. Photo / John Stone

The way NCEA achievement is measured at partnership schools has come under criticism by the Labour Party but a Whangarei charter school is refuting claims that its results are "massively overstated".

Chris Hipkins, Labour Party's education spokesman, said partnership school NCEA results were "massively overstated" after a Ministry of Education report to Education Minister Hekia Parata noted flaws with the way the NCEA achievement of school-leavers was being measured.

"It's disappointing that we're not getting apples for apples comparisons but it's even more disturbing that many kids are leaving these schools without the qualifications the Government says every child needs," Mr Hipkins said.

The report says the school leaver performance targets in charter school agreements for 2014 NCEA level 1 and 2 were set at 80.9 per cent and 66.9 per cent respectively.

But charter schools were using different methods than state schools to measure the achievement of school leavers.

The report said charter schools look at the NCEA pass rate of students at each NCEA level who left school and the schooling system - for example school leavers who achieve NCEA level one, where as state schools used the recommended Education Count figures which are reported as 'leavers achieving NCEA level one and above'.

When the Education Counts figures, which are publically available online for all schools, were applied to Te Kura Hourua o Whangarei Terenga Paraoa, it did not meet targets in 2014.

But Raewyn Tipene, chief executive of the He Puna Marama Trust which runs the charter school, said NCEA pass rates from NZQA told a different story.

"I absolutely refute Hipkins' statements that our NCEA standards results are overstated. They are higher than the average school ... I am absolutely disgusted that he rubbished the efforts of our teachers and our Maori students purely for political mileage," she said.

NZQA 2015 roll-based pass rates for the school show 80 percent of Year 11 students achieved NCEA level one compared with 74.4 per cent nationally; 92.9 per cent of students achieved NCEA level two compared with 76.4 per cent nationally; 71.4 per cent of students achieved NCEA level three compared with 63.7 per cent nationally and 71.4 per cent achieved university entrance compared with 62.7 per cent nationally.

Roll-based pass rates capture all students on the roll for each year level, whether they participated in NCEA or not.

ACT Party leader and education under-secretary, David Seymour, said Labour was "cherry-picking" the measure that best suited its "union driven agenda".

Mr Seymour acknowledged there were flaws with the leaver base being measured, as they didn't capture students who remained in school, and said partnership schools were held to account through contracts which use both roll-based and leaver-based standards.