John Langley: NCEA system discussions are heading off the tracks

John Langley

I was invited to be a member of the Scholarship Reference Group, along with 11 other educators. The members of the group had a wide range of experience in education, and brought with them various perspectives on the assessment of students. That is as it should be.

The group came together quickly, settled into its work well and put aside any partisan leanings that individual members might have had. The result was a series of sensible and workable recommendations that will address present and future concerns of the scholarship examination.

The Cabinet also thought so because it adopted 25 of the 26 recommendations. In short, the group worked well as a unit and I was pleased to be a part of it.

What is less pleasing, though, is the way in which a constructive and positive exercise has been overshadowed by the comments of one or two members whose remarks have gone some way towards undermining that good work.

Unfortunately, this kind of action typifies the way in which "discussion" often occurs in education. I wonder what the 2005 year 13 students and their parents are thinking now? Instead of being reassured by the scholarships report, their anxiety is likely to have increased. That is sad and unnecessary.

The reality is that there is no one assessment system for schools which is "better" than any other. What you want to find out and describe about the student, their knowledge and skills must determine the approach used. Assessment in education, as in other disciplines, is only a framework we construct to determine either how a student's performance relates to his or her peers or, alternatively, what he or she knows and can do at a particular time.

The first is called norm-referenced assessment, the second standards-based assessment. Neither has the moral high ground; neither is more valid than the other; each has its strengths and weaknesses.

The scholarship examination was no exception. To a significant degree the two main purposes were in conflict from the beginning. On one hand, there was an expressed wish to maintain the integrity of the examination and of those who achieved the award. In other words, they needed to reach a particular standard, and that standard is in advance of level 3 of the NCEA.

If that is not so, one has to wonder why we should have it at all. How the scripts are marked can vary from subject to subject but a standard is required nonetheless.

On the other hand, the examination is also a mechanism for the distribution of money. This requires some kind of sorting mechanism to determine who gets the funding and who does not. Thus, the dilemma: the need for standards and the need to sort.

The Scholarship Reference Group addressed those two broad areas in a sensible and forward-looking manner. The recommendations sought to deal with the issues in the best interests of students. The group members were quite united in their approach and recommendations.

Those recommendations need to be tested and revisited, as is the case with all such systems. I am confident, however, that most will work well. If some are found wanting, they should be addressed as necessary. The issue should not be about what camp educators are in, but about what we need to assess and why.

Over a decade ago educators and policy-makers, after years of navel-gazing, made a decision, supported by various governments, that they wanted to move away from ranking students and towards a more descriptive means of assessing their achievement.

Such a decision has a cost. It is a huge job to replace a national assessment system with another based on a different philosophy. It was always going to be tough and it has been. It is not easy to define standards. Standards should not be broken into meaningless small pieces. It will take some time to get it right.

What we have is a huge perceptual problem. We have moved from one system to another in a short time and, as a colleague of mine would put it, the generals are in Leningrad but the troops are still in Brussels.

This does not mean that the generals are wrong, or that the troops are tardy, but rather that they need to communicate better and get the logistics into better shape. Right now the debate over assessment is heading off the tracks.

The fact is that you pick the horse for the course. It is not about taking doctrinaire positions, it is about what we need to know, what the students and their families need to know and how the results of the assessment need to be applied. That is what should determine the most appropriate method.

* Dr John Langley is the dean of education at Auckland University.