Dialogue: New school qualification an untested compromise

Kings College headmaster JOHN TAYLOR says the principle of standards-based assessment underpinning the new qualifications system is largely unproven.

There is no doubt that the National Certificate of Educational Achievement has the meritorious aim of enabling greater numbers of young New Zealanders to succeed in gaining qualifications from their schooling in years 11, 12 and 13.

However, it is in danger of being total anathema to the needs of students at the upper end of the academic spectrum, as well as to the important extracurricular dimension of school life.

Secondary schools are being asked to endorse a major new assessment and qualification structure without seeing the completed overall design. As a result, the development of the National Certificate continues, compromise by compromise, with no clear result as yet.

It is frustrating that there is no guiding leadership, only a principle of standards-based assessment at the helm and one that is largely unproven on the world stage.

Our internationally recognised Bursary-Scholarship qualification could well be being drip-fed into oblivion. Hence the concern of a growing number of teachers and principals across the single-sex and co-educational spectrum for the retention of a strong, objective external exam backbone to any national structure.

Hence also the search by Auckland Grammar for solutions overseas, which would be a defeat for the New Zealand education system.

We are assured that exams will remain much the same under the National Certificate, but those responsible have not been able to produce a single sample paper to give any degree of comfort.

We are assured that there will be effective moderation systems to guarantee comparability of internally assessed results up and down the country. Yet the detail and the funding of that moderation, not to mention the anticipated loss of quality teaching time involved, is not clear.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that the "which school you went to" scenario looks as if it will be increasingly enshrined by the National Certificate.

We are assured that there will not be a greater workload (eventually) and that no further extra staffing need be available for all the extra record-keeping and administration that will be necessary because of the greater degree of internally assessed achievement standards. This is yet another major source of concern because it highlights another core issue.

Schools are already overstretched trying to provide quality all-round education inside and outside the classroom, against a background of increasing social and family disintegration.

Traditionally, good New Zealand schooling has included a well-focused course of study inside the classroom, and as much broadening cultural, sporting and social activity as possible outside it.

Because all indications to date point to a far greater workload for teachers as they mark and moderate far more internally assessed achievement standards, what will inevitably give way? Extracurricular activities, and the opportunities they present for many different talents and confidences to emerge.

The great merit of external exams is that they typically cover a defined body of content and skills which can be taught well, while also allowing teachers to coach, manage and produce those all-important extracurricular activities.

Britain's attempt to recapture lost extracurricular ground, once it had been lost, shows how difficult that is.

The National Certificate is a one-size-fits-all qualification system which does not suit the needs or the philosophies of all students or all schools.

A further issue relates to the learning styles of different students and of boys and girls.

It is far too easy, and no doubt perilous, to generalise, but boys tend to like specific exam or test targets and work well when these are clearly set and well enforced. Girls tend to be more organised and to work better at longer-running, internally assessed tasks that require more careful planning and self-discipline.

Hence a fully acceptable new qualifications system must allow for different learning styles and differences between girls' and boys' learning needs, rather than a one-best-way system which does not sufficiently cater for different school philosophies and styles of learning.

There also seems to be a reluctance to consider highly relevant evidence that standards-based assessment is not the answer and, in fact, may be already behind the times.

Professor Cedric Hall, of Victoria University, has good evidence to show that the emerging compromise is, in fact, producing the worst of both exam-based and internally assessed qualification systems. Why not look at schools such as Western Heights High School in Rotorua, which have successfully merged both the academic and the unit standards streams?

How much account has been taken of the experience of the all-embracing Victorian Certificate of Education in Australia, which has failed to differentiate student ability and has also demonstrated that excessive reliance on common assessment tasks has produced a lack of integrity (a good deal of cheating)?

There seems also to have been a reluctance to compare the National Certificate's one-best-way with the qualification structures adopted by the highest-performing countries in the recent third international maths and science tests - Switzerland, Singapore, the Netherlands and Korea. They all provide distinct pathways with separate courses for students of different abilities and interests, and they all incorporate high-stakes exams at the end of secondary schooling.

What is to be done when so much has been invested in National Certificate development to date? We must see exemplars of proposed achievement standards-based exams as soon as possible. We must know how the moderation processes will work. We must know what is going to happen at year 12, which has been in limbo for far too long.

Above all, the case for standards-based assessment must be far more convincingly argued by the Ministry of Education. Blind faith in the efficacy of it is not good enough when so much is at stake.

Alternative pathways and well-conducted research questioning the latest developments must not simply be dismissed as reactionary comments from those with vested interests.

The grand design of the National Certificate should be completed for full public and professional scrutiny before any final endorsement can be given.