Karen Dobric: NCEA conspiracy theories don’t stand up to scrutiny

Former Qualifications Authority chief executive Doug Blackmur has claimed that the Labour Government may have approved changes to the original NCEA model, and that this is the source of today's controversy. His contention does not stand up to scrutiny.

No such development was indicated in my 24 interviews with key policy players and the reading of dozens of policy-related documents covering the period 1996 to 2000 during doctoral research on the policy adoption of the NCEA.

The NCEA model approved by the National-led Government of 1998, to which Professor Blackmur refers, was a document entitled "Qualifications for Young People Aged 16 to 19 Years", released in October of that year. It was often referred to as the Cabinet paper.

The document approved by the Qualifications Authority's board, as recorded in its minutes of July 2, 1998, was a paper known as the "Schools Qualification Reform Project". As the minutes state: "It was resolved that the board accept the Schools Qualification Reform Project paper as its policy position on qualifications for 16- to 19-year-old people."

A policy position meant that it endorsed the contents of the reform project paper in relation to the policy being developed for the Government. That statement does not refer to the Cabinet paper proper, which was not in its final form until October 1998.

What Professor Blackmur has not mentioned in his summary of the main points is that in the paper approved by the Cabinet on October 5, 1998, is point five - "excellence and merit recognised through a grading of achievement against standards".

That is a rather large oversight, given his claim that "the unit standards approach was reinstated (without authority?)".

In his Perspectives article, he used the words "might" and "may" with a tendency towards making the reader believe he was stating facts. He was not.

In addition, the Cabinet paper stated that: "It is proposed to report grades for achievement standards ... A possible grading system is A, B, C credit, D no credit."

It is clear through the acceptance by the Cabinet of the words "proposed" and "possible" that these matters were not finalised. What was finalised was that there would be grading against standards and that merit and excellence would be recognised.

This is, indeed, what has happened.

In the month before Professor Blackmur left his position as chief executive of the Qualifications Authority in June 1999, the Secretary for Education drafted the first of three papers "to address the details of Achievement 2001" (the National Certificate of Educational Achievement Paper 1).

The papers were to expand on the framework as stated in the Cabinet paper, which in itself was not detailed enough to implement policy in full.

Professor Blackmur was likely not aware of this because he was engaged with other matters.

This was May 1999. Professor Blackmur alludes to the Labour Government being concerned with making "changes to the original model". Labour did not take office until November 1999.

The facts simply do not support Professor Blackmur's conspiracy theories.

* Karen Dobric is a senior lecturer in the Manukau Institute of Technology's Centre for Educational Development. She is responding to the view of Doug Blackmur that the original thinking behind the NCEA was hijacked.