KEY POINTS:
Forty per cent of senior students at Auckland Grammar School study for and enter NCEA qualifications, and consequently we want qualifications for these boys that are robust, challenging, motivating and fair.
Hence I am totally bewildered and bemused by recent recommendations and directives from NZQA and the Ministry of Education that are patently leading us down the path of mere credit accumulation and credentialism in qualifications rather than the challenge of qualifications that must be gained by hard work, ability, and on merit.
At the Principals' Nominee Seminar run by NZQA in Auckland, a meeting at which NZQA instructs senior teachers on developments and policies, yet another flag was hoisted by the NZQA presenters to signal the move to increased internal assessment over the next few years.
Comments such as "we all know that internal assessment is more reliable than external assessment" and "we would be happy if, in time, everyone passed" signals strongly the future direction of NCEA.
Schools are also admonished for entering students into courses they might fail - "predictive failure" is the NZQA jargon - again discouraging us from providing our students with the sort of academic challenges that stimulate and stretch intellectual function.
Add to this the encouragement from NZQA to teachers "to broaden strategies used to collect evidence of achievement to enable opportunities for the recognition of a student's best effort". This translated means "look for any reason to pass a student", and it is easy to see that intellectual challenge, striving for excellence, hard graft and learning how to cope with failure are no longer essential features of our national qualifications.
When we combine these policy comments and directives with the recommendations from the Ministry of Education paper released in December last year, there is a clear intention on the part of the ministry to move to allow schools to totally internally assess all achievement standards so that pass rates are uniformly high.
The key recommendation of this ministry paper states: "That consideration be given to all external achievement standards being also available as internal achievement standards so that schools have a choice of assessing internally or externally."
If this recommendation is implemented this will inevitably result in a qualification that will, by virtue of its assessment regime, be second rate and lack comparability because not all schools will be totally internally assessed. Given pass rates for internally assessed standards are much higher than those externally assessed, there will be no national standard possible.
Unfortunately, there has always been a view in the ministry (and NZQA) that they alone have a mortgage on wisdom in these matters, and outsiders have nothing of value to contribute. I have witnessed this so many times, especially during the 1990s when I was on the Principals' Lead Group, again between 1999 and 2002 when I was a NZQA Board member, and in the same era as a member of the Leaders' Forum.
It was even displayed in meetings with regard to the debacle over the Scholarship examination in 2004. The NZQA and ministry staffers were the only ones around the table not prepared to see that, perhaps, they just might have got it wrong. And that if they were going to commit to a competitive, elite exam for top scholars, then it was absolutely essential to rank students, and the only certain way to get sufficient discrimination between students to ensure accuracy and fairness in this ranking was to have marks.
Thankfully, with some forced last minute input from university assessment gurus, the ministry reluctantly accepted the need for marks in Scholarship.
This latest policy flag is a strong indication though that these same bureaucrats are continuing to search for an assessment and qualification system that suits the prevailing philosophy of laissez-faire and school-centred assessment, and will only lead to more schools looking at adopting international qualifications.
If the directives we have been given and the recommendations of this ministry report are carried through in full or in part, then our senior assessment programme will become even more of a huge shambles.
This will undoubtedly lead universities to introduce their own entrance exams or do what the University of Auckland has had to do and make previously prestigious courses like law open entry because NCEA does not allow them to discriminate the best scholars.
It will make which school you went to much more important (not something any sensible person wants); it will remove any remaining vestige of national standards; it will worsen the de-motivation that is already apparent among many senior students.
It will teach students the "wrong" values regarding the need for hard work; it will dissipate essential rigour by the introduction of watered down new curricula and smorgasbord-style approaches to assessment; it will be easier for students to opt out of things they dislike or tasks that require some hard work and focus.
If our education bureaucrats have any vision, any thought for future generations of students and teachers, any feelings for those boys and girls who continue to underachieve even in the brave new world of NCEA, then they need to provide us with a qualification system that stimulates, intrigues, motivates and challenges our students and provides them with a qualification that is credible, internationally recognised and equivalent, regardless of the school one attends.
* John Morris is the headmaster of Auckland Grammar School.
