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The New Zealand Qualifications Authority has secretly decided to start randomly checking schools' internal NCEA marking - a swing away from the current, controversial system, where teachers choose the work to send for moderation.
Documents obtained under the Official Information Act say a pilot project, involving 89 schools in September this year, is just the first step.
"This pilot will be expandedin future years, and randomisation will be a regular feature of the moderation system for NCEA," said an internal "discussion paper".
Officials have slammed the current moderation process - in 2001, government statistician David Rhoades said it gave "no guarantee of fairness to each individual student"; and four years later a State Services Commission report again recommended random sampling to "improve the validity of moderation".
When asked why random sampling wasn't introduced earlier, deputy chief executive of NZQA Bali Haque said: "The positive is that it's happening now." Steve Maharey, Minister of Education, has promised to announce changes to the design features of NCEA in the next few weeks.
