KEY POINTS:
National MP Katherine Rich painted yesterday's changes to NCEA as a wimpy backdown by Education Minister Steve Maharey and a cynical attempt to fell a "political albatross" before the election.
If so, good on Mr Maharey.
A backdown it may be, but it is one forced on him by history and five years of constant criticism about aspects of the qualification.
Not all schools were trenchant opponents of NCEA. Many liked it and had wanted to give it a fair shot. But all were fed up with requests for changes being ignored.
Mr Maharey yesterday finally showed he had stopped dodging the bullets. Asked if it was an acknowledgment the system wasn't working, he said: "I think it is, yes. We've got to be upfront about this."
One key criticism was that the system did not motivate students todo more than the bare minimum. Another was that some schools were abusing internal assessment by setting easy tasks or by markingtheir students too high.
Yesterday's announcements go some way to resolving both issues.
The changes fall short of providing concrete rewards for top students in the form of extra credits for "excellence" or "merit" grades compared with "achieved".
But having hard work recorded on paper as an "excellence" seems a fairer deal than simply lumping that person in with others who may have barely scraped through.
The best news for critics will be a meaningful boost to checks on internal assessment. It will require significant resources, and schools will be expected to answer for themselves more - reports on how each school's internal assessment marking stacks up will be available on the internet for all to see.
There are still knots to be untangled.
How, for example, will NZQA set the benchmark on whether a student has reached a "merit" or "excellence" across an entire subject area? There will also be standards that don't easily fit into any one core subject area.
And the jury is still out, and will be for some time, on whether NZQA can mop up unit standards. The review on unit standards and achievement standards must tackle concerns about some schools relying on unit standards to boost their overall pass rates and students getting the same credits for unit standards as their peers who sit in achievement standards.
The review must also consider whether unit standards are leaching into traditional academic subjects too much to provide an easy option for students, rather than sticking with the vocational areas.
But time enough for that. Let schools take what victories they have been given.
A more valid criticism to level at the Government is why it has taken so long.
Successive reviews have all said the same thing since 2001, when Government Statistician David Rhoades first said the system of moderation gave "no guarantee of fairness to each individual student".
Mr Maharey says the delay was because NZQA was so busy ironing out problems with the exam system that it had only recently found time to turn to the other problems.
That is little consolation to those students who have already gone through the system and come out the other end.
Mr Maharey could find little to say to them other than that they were lucky to have been able to do NCEA, even with its flaws, and he did not think their learning was interrupted.
Employers will surely long have doubts whether results from those years were credible.
And should a 2006 student with a record simply stating he or she had passed apply for the same job as a 2008 student whose records state "passed with excellence", who would be chosen?
