Editorial: Openness needed in re-marking

Is the new school examination system fatally flawed or suffering teething pains? The admission that some of this year's NCEA papers are being re-marked to accord with expected results is not encouraging. This is exactly what was not supposed to happen in a brave new world of "standards-based assessment". NCEA was to be awarded to all who reached objective standards, not to a predetermined percentage of pupils for the sake of consistent results.

The re-marking looks like an attempt to avoid a replay of the embarrassment last year when unexpected scholarship results unnerved a Government led by academics who see little wrong with revising students' marks to produce a consistent spread of results in all subjects, every year. And they may be right that there is no other way to iron out the problems of a paper that is unusually difficult or easy, or a marker too hard or soft. But if, in the end, there is no other way to "moderate" the standards of papers and marking, the Qualifications Authority should be open about it.

National's education spokesman, Bill English, says he has been told the NZQA is quietly ordering the re-marking of many more exams than it has let on publicly. The authority says that after 50 per cent of papers had been marked it decided to remark 14 of the 335 standards, which does not sound too serious. Education Minister Steve Maharey explains that a Japanese exam, for example, was re-marked because pupils had not answered questions in the way expected in the guide given to markers.

"So they got nothing for it," he said. "But when you look at it they actually clearly understand what they're doing - it just wasn't anticipated in the marking guide that young people may do that."

That statement offers an insight to the rigidity of marking required by an attempt to assess students against consistent objective standards. But the fact that the authority needs to check results against an expected "profile" of marks shows it is not altogether confident of the standards-based method. Mr Maharey denies that "profiling" is little different from the infamous "scaling" that was done under the previous system. But the main difference appears to be that NCEA has a more laborious way of going about it. Scaling simply adjusted the spread after all results were in; the NCEA involves checking and re-marking as they go along.

The problems appearing for a second year reinforce the contention of critics who say some kinds of knowledge simply cannot be measured by consistent objective standards.

The exam reformers set out to produce a seamless system of assessment that would erase old-fashioned distinctions between academic and technical subjects and allow learners in all fields to amass credits of their own choice at their own pace, towards a single national qualification.

But the sort of objective standard that can be applied to motor mechanics, say, or mathematics cannot be applied to written essays. The danger is that, in trying to force arts and humanities into a form suitable for consistent objective assessment, pupils will be taught to think and write to a formula that would restrict intelligent development. There never was a need to remove distinctions between subjects. Trade training too has suffered from the attempt to put all learning into the same institutional pattern.

Standards-based assessment is as well suited to some subjects as it is ill suited to others. It would be as unfortunate to abolish the new system entirely as it would be to keep it across the board. Once the authority accepts that one size does not fit all, the NCEA will be on the road to repair.