Audrey Young: NZ Qualifications Authority boss passes with distinction

You would never have known that the two visitors from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority appearing before the education select committee yesterday were fighting for their professional lives.

Chief executive Karen Van Rooyen arrived at Parliament like a boxer to a prize fight, accompanied by six of her "cohorts" making their way through the large media contingent.

By the time she and the urbane chairman of the board, Professor Graeme Fraser, had finished being examined by MPs about the scholarship exam debacle, they were being warmly thanked and farewelled, even by chief protagonist Bill English.

It had been so convivial that New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who had snuck down the back perhaps expecting a bit of blood sport, stayed only for 20 uneventful minutes.

He shared a joke on the way out with Paul Jackman, the Qualifications Authority's relatively new public relations man, who is a familiar face to those at Parliament. He was once media adviser to Mike Moore before becoming a long-serving PR man to Don Brash when he was Governor of the Reserve Bank.

His PR colleague, also relatively new to NZQA, is another familiar name around Parliament - Heather Church being the wife of the Prime Minister's chief press officer, Mike Munro.

Both PR staffers would have helped coach Karen Van Rooyen on what to expect and they would have been pleased with what they saw at the committee.

Except for one testy moment with Mr English over what warnings she had given Education Minister Trevor Mallard, she showed no sign of being under siege.

She was prepared and courteous.

She welcomed the two Government-ordered reviews and said NZQA was also conducting its own.

She explained how they would decide which students would get the Government's "Clayton's" scholarship - the scholarship you get when you haven't got a scholarship - though that was not the term she used.

She produced charts that showed a discrepancy in pass rates between subjects under the old School C exam, unscaled - not as pronounced as the scholarship exam but discrepancies nonetheless.

And, music to Mr English's ear, she said that NZQA did not make the policy about when the scholarship exam should have been introduced, it simply implemented policy.

Mr English went easy on her because she is not his target. His mission was to get as much information as he could about what Mr Mallard knew and when, which he successfully used in the House in the afternoon to put Mr Mallard in the firing line.

Karen Van Rooyen left the room confident enough with her performance to go on live television last night, while the minister was forced to work the Press Gallery to defend himself against claims he covered up the extent of the exam failures.

To media questions about whether she should resign, she tartly answered no, a signal that she plans to put up a fight.