Editorial: NCEA results bring closure after Covid-disrupted year

NCEA results were released online on Friday, January 21. Photo / 123rf

About 140,000 students and their families will have been "logging in" over past days to see much-anticipated NCEA results.

For many, it will provide closure to what has been an extremely challenging year, disrupted as it was by a coronavirus pandemic which forced schools to close and students to battle on with studies at home.

NZQA offered some concessions for hardship associated with the pandemic, such as an extra "learning credit" for every five credits students attained. These will be calculated later this month, once students' results from internal and external assessments are known.

This should provide some encouragement for those who have narrowly missed achieving their necessary credits or who are marginally on the cusp of making it. Although it may not be intended as such, it also acknowledges the sacrifices of whānau, teachers, schools and exam centre staff, who have all played vital roles in supporting students through this unprecedented year.

Just maybe, this experience has helped more people understand that education doesn't start and stop at the school gates. It is at its best when supported and continued in the home.

As reporter Simon Collins points out today, the first large-scale survey by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) in 1970 placed New Zealand 14-year-olds first-equal out of 15 countries in reading comprehension.

Sadly, it's since declined. The IEA's Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) has tracked our 9-year-olds among 18 countries that have been in every survey since 2001, placing us 10th in 2001, 13th in 2006 and 2011, and 15th — near the bottom of the pack — in 2016.

One of the many lessons we have learned from Covid-19 is we can all do more to help our young people achieve and be all they can be.