KEY POINTS:
The national qualification has always had its detractors. But now even staunch supporters of the National Certificate in Educational Achievement have lost patience.
Mt Albert Grammar headmaster Dale Burden is one of those. He doesn't want broad-scale changes. But he does want a system that is fairer for his students.
He said he wouldn't want to return to the old system of School Certificate and Bursary, a "ridiculous" system under which 50 per cent of students were destined to fail even if the entire year group were Einstein clones.
"The biggest bonus about NCEA is it tells teachers, parents and students more about what they can do and how good they are at it.
"But when you get into the negatives, there are too many. It's like a jigsaw puzzle and the more pieces there are, the more potential problems."
The "buts" in NCEA are increasingly frustrating for schools five years after its introduction. Some say time is up.
As the grumbling continues, the Herald asked principals for their wish-lists and put them to Education Minister Steve Maharey, who is waiting for the New Zealand Qualifications Authority to present him with a list of changes to make to the system.
1 NCEA does not motivate students because there are no extra rewards for doing well.
No extra rewards go to students who get excellence or merit grades than if they just pass and get achieved. All grades are worth the same number of credits.
This offends principals who claim it gives no incentives to students to work hard.
Mt Albert Grammar headmaster Dale Burden: "If a kid goes and works hard at a job he'd expect to be paid more than someone who doesn't work hard. If he went and caught 10 fish then he would be paid more than if he caught five fish. But a kid gets excellence and doesn't get more credits for it."
Principals say this also leads to students "cherry picking" easy subjects and assignments. Last year about 25 per cent of students who entered exams did not sit them at all.
Kelston Boys' High School head Steve Watt said students with credits by internal assessment had little motivation to do well in the external examinations.
Mr Maharey said there were no plans to return to the old A to F grading system, but agreed students who sit difficult, more time-consuming subjects may feel they haven't been rewarded. He is considering offering more credits in difficult subjects and more to students who get excellence or merit rather than achieved grade. He was also in favour of bringing back the fail mark, by noting "did not achieve" on a student's record.
2 Dumbing down the system: schools are pushing students into the easy options of unit standards and subjects with a lot of internal assessment.
John Morris, headmaster at Auckland Grammar School, says unit standards - a less academic way to get credits, and traditionally used for practical or vocational subjects - are pervading academic subjects and artificially pushing up pass rates.
NZQA results statistics show 30 per cent of students got unit standards in 2004, which increased to 35 per cent last year.
"So overall pass rates go up because a lot of schools are doing unit standards, which are a million times easier to get than achievement standards. The sad irony here is that less able kids are getting more credits than more able students because it is the less able who do unit standards and the more able the achievement standards. "
Mr Maharey said NZQA was looking at the subjects in which unit standards were now offered.
"The concern is that unit standards originally started as entirely internal assessment and tended to be around areas of knowledge that were perceived to be more vocational. People have been saying if we carry on using unit standards that are somewhat comparable to achievement standards but are easier to do, then is that a good way to run the system?"
3 Internal assessment marks cannot be trusted because they vary so much between schools and are not checked well.
Most principals called for changes to the way the internal assessment system - in which teachers set and mark their own students' work - is checked.
Mr Burden agreed.
"Either do away with it or moderate it properly. It's difficult enough to get all the teachers in one department at one school to mark consistently."
NZQA has now introduced random sampling of students' marked work, as well as work chosen by teachers, to boost its checks and slightly increase its sample size from the original 3 per cent.
But Brent Lewis, principal at Avondale College, said this was still not enough. He calls for checks of at least 10 per cent of internally assessed work annually at each school to ensure teachers are giving the same grades for the same work.
He points to NZQA findings from moderation samples that 29 per cent of internal assessment grades were found to be wrong, that internal assessment grades were 29 per cent higher than external assessment, and in 10 per cent of cases the work set to get the credits was too easy.
Mr Maharey said no further changes were expected to the moderation process. "Having a random sample now addresses the concern people had that maybe once the system had settled in people might start selecting in a way that might be open to question. I am comfortable it is meeting the concerns on the problems with moderation."
4 Parents hate it and schools have to take the flak.
Mt Albert Grammar's Mr Burden said he was sick of doing NZQA's public relations work every time a story appeared in the media.
"For parents around the gin and Jag scene, schools are a popular topic of discussion and if you're your average parent, educated, who reads the paper, then NCEA is pretty much a byword for a disaster that you don't want to go near. It's viewed as third world and as a school we are being forever put on the back foot by what pops up in the media."
Lynda Reid, principal of St Cuthbert's College, also said many "myths" about NCEA went uncorrected.
"There have been opportunities to strengthen the public view of NCEA and they haven't been taken."
Mr Maharey agreed media coverage was a problem and he was concerned that only detractors seemed to have voices in the media.
"You cannot blame parents or employers for feeling concerned about this, given its recent history, and that they pick up the Herald and see the 12th cartoon for the year taking on the NCEA.
"So one of our jobs is to get these design changes in and then explain to parents and employers how the system works and how they can have confidence in it."
He said he was aware changes were needed, and he was committed to doing it as quickly as possible.
