Editorial: Assessment not just for students

The secondary teachers' union has welcomed one Auckland school's decision to abandon international examinations and offer only the NCEA. The Post Primary Teachers' Association would like to ban schools using the International Baccalaureate and the Cambridge exams entirely, believing they undermine our homegrown educational credentials for school leavers.

It is concerned that schools offering the alternatives tend to imply the national qualification as not sufficiently challenging and lacking credibility. But it also blames the Government for using the NCEA to set national achievement targets as a measure of the return on educational investment. The union says the targets encourage "credit farming", by which it means schools siphon students into courses that offer the most credits, though they might not be the courses the students need most. A paper circulated by the PPTA claims students "seek out courses which are perceived to deliver the most credits for the least effort".

This is a concern if true. But it seems not to have occurred to the union that its portrayal of "credit farming" in the NCEA also reinforces the very perceptions it resents. The public should be insisting the PPTA's members - who are professionals, as it often reminds us - do their utmost to encourage students to take courses that let them reach their educational potential.

Perhaps the union's dislike of Government targets may have more to do with the fact the Government is National and the union has no desire to help it get credit when students hit its targets.

In fact, the Government gets little credit in this regard. The targets do not attract much public attention. Most people will not know its main educational target is an 85 per cent pass rate at NCEA Level 2, let alone whether it has been achieved.

The targets have been given to state servants as a focus for their work and a measure of their performance. Departments pay attention to them but the public by and large are not interested until a target is missed.

As a political device, they hold more potential benefit for the Opposition.

Without a national achievement target, how would the PPTA suggest the performance of the eduction system be checked? President Angela Roberts wants the NCEA not only shorn of a target but to have less "moderation", the method by which the consistency of its marking is checked. She also wants to reduce the influence of universities on its required standards.

Labour's education spokesman, Chris Hipkins, agrees with the PPTA's position. "Rather than obsess about statistics, the Government should be focused on ensuring every school student is engaged in meaningful learning," he said.

How exactly? Meaningful learning surely produces measurable results. National achievement rates are one measure and international examinations are another.

They may not suit the teachers' union, but don't they serve the public interest?