Dialogue: Exam-based education system has had its day

Auckland principals MARGARET BENDALL, LYNDA REID and GAIL THOMSON challenge Auckland Grammar's belief that a new local qualification certificate will be so bad that it must use a Cambridge University exam.

New Zealand's qualifications system no longer meets the needs of secondary school students and will become increasingly inadequate as the pace of change quickens. The new qualification, the National Certificate in Educational Achievement, looks forward and will improve teaching and learning.

For many years our students have achieved outstanding results in national exams. However, at the same time our schools have been actively involved in designing, testing and evaluating aspects of the new system. We are, therefore, well able to comment on changes to the qualifications framework.

We are behind in the major task of developing in our young people an extensive, flexible range of knowledge and skills. We know we need young people who are personally responsible, confident learners, proficient in technology and capable of working independently or as part of a team.

They must be comfortable working in flatter business structures, project-oriented, quick to adapt to a rapidly changing knowledge base, outcome-oriented and able to engage in a number of jobs during their lives.

Career options in the future will demand that students have a much wider range of knowledge and skills than today's qualifications can recognise. The system, which is dominated by written exams, can measure and encourage only a narrow range of knowledge and skills.

In this context, it is a retrogressive step to suggest narrowing the system still further by transplanting from England an exam-based qualification that is seen by many British commentators as much too restrictive.

Debate on the new qualification has been characterised by assertions and misinformation. First, the change to a more inclusive qualification framework has been described as "revolutionary." This is incorrect. The changes are "evolutionary."

The new framework has been developed over more than 10 years by educators from a range of backgrounds. The national certificate incorporates the best of external assessment, including exams. It also builds on practices in internal assessment, providing greater credibility for important kinds of learning that cannot be assessed by written exams.

Changes to the qualifications framework have also been described as part of the Government's supposed ideology, in which equity rather than excellence is said to be the guiding principle. This is also incorrect. The policy governing the recent stages of the development was developed by the National Party and was endorsed, not initiated, by the Government. Excellence is catered for in the national certificate.

A movement to the new system has been said to represent a dumbing down of standards. In fact, schools like ours, which have used standards-based assessment over a number of years, have found that using established standards to guide teaching and learning has resulted in more focused and effective teaching and learning. This has led to improved levels of achievement, even as measured by today's exams system.

A key criticism of the changes is that we will be unable to detect plagiarism, a problem supposedly specific to the new national certificate. The issue is not new. There is already concern that rote-learned essays are submitted in Bursary exams.

Universities worldwide are facing the same problem of ensuring that course work is the student's own. Schools such as ours have been steadily developing and testing systems to manage internal assessment fairly. We believe that if the teaching profession focuses its energies, we will soon have effective strategies to ensure the authenticity of student work.

It has also been claimed that we will be unable to guarantee that standards are the same among all schools. It certainly is critical that an effective system is put in place to guarantee that standards, especially internally assessed standards, are applied uniformly.

Again, our schools and others have been testing moderation systems for several years and we believe professional teachers can achieve this standardisation.

The public accepts almost without question that universities can, with few transparent systems, manage the effective control of equivalent standards across campuses and within departments. There will be even more reason to have the same confidence in secondary teachers when our clearly defined and readily accessible systems are finalised.

The benefits of the national certificate will be many. A wider range of subjects will be included in senior school qualifications. The whole curriculum, rather than selected parts, will be assessed. The new qualification will be gained by students accumulating credit during their senior secondary school years, like a university degree.

This will motivate students more than the challenge of working for three separate and disconnected qualifications in successive years. Students will receive credit, merit or excellence grades for standards they achieve through both internal and external assessment. The national certificate includes external exams and will continue to provide a scholarship-level challenge for our most able students.

It can be developed into a disciplined, challenging, academically rigorous and inclusive new qualifications framework. For the first time, a wide range of standards of student achievement will be defined, transparent and accessible.

Student achievement will no longer be reported only as percentages, based on the half-win, half-lose model, in which actual standards are lost in the process of ranking students. The national certificate provides meaningful benchmarking of students against clearly stated learning outcomes - outputs, if you like. From the information provided about achievement, employers, teachers, parents and students themselves will comprehend what students know, understand and can do.

Like most principals and teachers, we will continue to support the development of the national certificate. After more than 10 years of development, the changes are long overdue for our young people.

* Margaret Bendall is principal of Epsom Girls Grammar, Lynda Reid of St Cuthberts College and Gail Thomson of Diocesan School for Girls.