Kerre Woodham: Hard-working kids deserve better than last year's NCEA fiasco

I remember studying for School C like it was yesterday. Twenty-five chapters of Caesar's Gallic conquests were memorised for one last-gasp effort to get through my Latin exam before being dumped from my memory cells forever. Same with science and maths. Once I'd spilled out what I needed to know to pass, that was it. Gone forever and good riddance too.

And that was the last of the exams until I enrolled at uni as a mature student. Oh, there were school exams, but I got UE accredited, as did most of my friends, so we never had the stress of external exams once we'd got through School C.

The kids today have to work so much harder. If their school is conducting NCEA properly, the young ones are constantly being assessed. My daughter is in the middle of level 2 exams and I'm in awe of how much work she and her friends have done throughout the year.

I hope the boffins at NZQA will match the commitment shown by so many teenagers and ensure the students are marked fairly and evenly. We don't want a repeat of last year's debacle. Our kids deserve better and so do the people who will eventually employ them.