Peter Lyons: Hasty solution fails students

The NCEA scholarship debacle illustrates a number of interesting aspects of public sector reforms as well as attitudes to education in New Zealand. It also exposes the myth of our supposedly classless society. It was not until bright middle-class students became affected that the matter of NCEA credibility took on political urgency.

Public sector reforms such as the school qualification change-over are interesting phenomena. Unlike the business sector there is no actual bottom line in the public sector. A business owner who makes a poor strategic business decision is likely to go out of business. In the public sector those who initiate reforms are usually long gone before the bankruptcy of their ideas becomes apparent.

In the case of NCEA, and particularly standards-based assessment, many of the top education officials and politicians involved in the initial stages have long since departed.

Public sector reforms are also susceptible to the bandwagon effect. It is an astute career move for public servants to hitch themselves to a high-profile reform to ensure rapid promotion, regardless of the desirability or credibility of the reform itself. The problem of the bandwagon effect is that the reform soon becomes a self-perpetuating juggernaut of individuals preaching the required orthodoxy.

Public sector reforms quickly develop their own jargon so that those leading the change can expose the ignorance of those opposed to it. Anyone who questions the wisdom or logic of the reform is labelled as ignorant or resistant to change.

I had first-hand experience of these phenomena while working as a lecturer in pre-service education for commerce teachers in the mid 1990s. I put my name down as a moderator for Unit Standards, thinking I'd rather be a perpetuator than a victim. Unit standards were meant to replace the old school qualification system until NCEA came along.

NZQA must have been short of disciples because I was quickly flown to Wellington for a training course and put up in a luxury motel with complimentary mini-bar. Reforms can be enjoyable at times.

The induction course was run by NZQA and was like a cross between a Christian evangelist meeting and an Amway seminar. We were the chosen ones. Those who opposed the change were reactionaries who hadn't seen the light.

In New Zealand the bandwagon effect of public sector reforms combines with another feature of our society to ensure that large scale changes are frequently ill-considered and under-debated.

This is the lack of a significant local academic community. Larger Western democracies usually have a substantial academic community that acts as a critic and sounding board for major changes in society. This gives a defence against poorly conceived changes, particularly those advocated by government officials and politicians.

Recent examples of such changes in New Zealand include the Muldoon Think Big projects of the 1970s, Rogernomics from the 1980s and numerous health and education reforms and initiatives over the past few decades. Health, education and social welfare are particularly susceptible to dubious reforms because they are big budget areas. They provide wide open spaces for bandwagons to travel in.

New Zealand's size makes it difficult to support a significant number of academic experts in different fields. Kiwis are also wary of academics. This is probably the result of New Zealand's colonial heritage, with practical skills regarded as of greater value than intellectual ability.

This leads to another local phenomenon, which is the cult of the visiting overseas expert. We import overseas academic experts on whistle-stop tours to tell us what is best for us.

Because we pride ourselves on our pragmatic approach to problem-solving, we underestimate the power and effects of ideas. We assume major changes have been well thought through and there is some omnipotent being overseeing the change to ensure a smooth process and a successful outcome. This is not the case.

In reality, many public sector changes are driven by constantly changing officials and politicians who think up hasty solutions when major problems arise. These quick-fix solutions often create problems further down the line.

The NCEA scholarship exams were a quick-fix solution to providing for those school students who needed more of a challenge than that offered by the three main levels of NCEA. The problem is that these scholarships are a contradiction in terms. It is impossible to use standards-based assessment to come up with winners of a limited number of scholarships because any student who meets the standard should get a scholarship.

This is an excellent example of a shoddy quick-fix solution to the more fundamental problem, the need to have a qualification system that caters for, and extends all students across all subject areas. The system needs to be credible, transparent, portable and relatively easy to implement and administer.

So why is this assessment issue so important for New Zealand? Because an assessment system in our schools that lacks credibility will quickly demotivate students and teachers. It may also lead to poor subject choices and ultimately poor career choices.

A quality assessment system is fundamental to a quality education system. The assessment debate is also fragmenting our schooling system, with many private schools opting for overseas examinations. This further undermines the credibility of NCEA.

This credibility problem needs to be sorted urgently.

* Peter Lyons Lectures at Foundation Studies at Otago University and manages Cumberland Court, which is part of Cumberland Hall.