National standards need review - NZPF

Photo / Greg Bowker

Recent debate supports the call to have the national standards reviewed, New Zealand Principals' Federation (NZPF) president Peter Simpson says.

His comments follow the decision by Auckland Grammar school to offer its students Cambridge exams instead of internal assessment.

Headmaster John Morris said the move was backed by the board of trustees, the academic committee and most parents.

He said the school was confident the change was in the best interests of its pupils.

Education Minister Anne Tolley has backed the school and said boys responded well to a competitive, exam-based environment.

Mr Simpson said debate raised the issue of NCEA being a choice of qualifications for secondary schools to offer, and not a compulsory programme of study, he said.

"According to Minister Anne Tolley, one of the strengths of national standards is that they are supposed to scaffold to the NCEA qualification. Her stated aim is to lift the number of students leaving school with NCEA qualifications."

This aim made little sense in a context of allowing NCEA to be an optional qualification and made even less sense that Ms Tolley would insist that national standards must be compulsory when they are designed to link up with a qualification that was not, he said.

"It is contradictory that the minister wants national standards to be implemented right across the board when NCEA does not even have to be the focus at the secondary level."

Ms Tolley earlier said she supported an education system that gave schools the flexibility to offer students different options in order to help keep them engaged.

- NZPA

*This story has been amended from an earlier version to clarify NZPF want national standards reviewed, not NCEA.