Dialogue: We'd better make up our minds on qualifications

The National Party has announced that if it is re-elected, it will dump the National Certificate of Educational Achievement, the system of national qualifications due to be introduced into senior secondary schools next year.

National argues that the certificate as proposed is not the same certificate as it initiated while in government.

This announcement demonstrates the shambles of public policy over the national secondary school qualifications. The national certificate was to have been introduced this year but was deferred for a year by the Labour Government.

It has been the subject of considerable controversy. On one side are those adamantly opposed to the proposal, including the Education Forum, prominent educationists such as Cedric Hall, and a number of leading principals from a range of schools.

Others are positive. They include the Qualifications Authority and the Ministry of Education, who have developed the system, and significant numbers of teachers and principals.

But the fragmentation of the curriculum and the learning bite philosophy that underpins the national certificate are educationally flawed. There is no clear indication that it will be any better than the system it is intended to replace.

Decisions about educational policy should be made by those who are closest to the part of the sector involved. Apart from some educationists, the universities have tended to leave the secondary school system to make its own decisions about the qualifications system.

However, that is no longer possible. The qualification system affects every child, every parent, every teacher and every employer. It is the essential underpinning to the country's educational and economic health. Political parties cannot play political football with something so important.

Education qualifications have several essential characteristics. They must be soundly constructed, easily understood, durable, portable and relevant.

It is debatable whether the standards-based qualifications under unit standards and the proposed achievement standards are soundly constructed. This is a debate that has been vigorously prosecuted by experts in education. Whether national educational qualifications are easily understood, durable, portable and relevant is a debate that all can enter.

The national certificate is not easily understood. Most people find the system incomprehensible on first explanation. Last year, the Qualifications Authority mounted a roadshow to explain it to the community. The lack of understanding about the system is still said to be enormous.

Educational qualifications have to be durable. If they are not, students are left with an ephemeral qualification that lacks credibility. The experimentation with school qualifications over the past two decades has damaged the system. The unit standards introduced in the 1980s seem likely to vanish within a few years. What happens when the students who hold those qualifications try to explain them to employers in the future? The indication that the national certificate may not endure throws the whole system into uncertainty.

Educational qualifications have to be portable so that students can move anywhere in this country and overseas knowing their qualifications will be recognised and accepted. They are a passport to further education and to job mobility. This is important for our own students and crucial for our international students. What student will wish to come here to study if the qualifications are not recognised anywhere else in the world?

Educational qualifications have to be relevant to the students who study for them, to potential employers, to institutions of higher education and to the community. They have to reflect the learning achievements of the students and they have to indicate how well the student has performed.

Much of the debate about the national certificate has revolved around these issues. It is inconclusive and such uncertainty does not bode well for the system.

Secondary school qualifications are the prerequisite in most educational jurisdictions for entry to higher education.

Lately, the Qualifications Authority has asked the universities to respond to a preliminary consultation on models of a common university entrance standard that might apply when the national certificate is introduced.

I was one of three representatives of the vice-chancellors' committee on the working party that developed the consultation document. We were involved because if a new system of secondary school qualifications is introduced, there must be a smooth and transparent path from school to university.

As the national certificate was thought to be the agreed, if contested, basis of our future national system of qualifications, a common entrance standard had to be derived from it.

Decisions on this matter are now urgent for universities because if the national certificate is introduced next year, students entering the fifth form must know what will be required to enter higher education when they leave school two or three years later.

A national system of secondary school qualifications is too important for the kind of policy changes we have seen in recent years. The Government and the Opposition must urgently get together with respected and sensible voices in education and decide where we are headed.

If they do not, we are destined for educational chaos at the very moment when there is a consensus on the importance of education to our social and economic future.

* Raewyn Dalziel is the deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at the University of Auckland.