KEY POINTS:
Auckland Grammar's headmaster is calling for changes to the way data from the national exams is released.
The New Zealand Qualification Authority's school-by-school NCEA pass rates give a percentage of schools' total roll - meaning the results for institutions offering alternative exams tend to skew down.
Auckland Grammar head John Morris said the method lacked "integrity". He called for the pass rates to be calculated using the number of school students entered in exams instead.
The NZQA's deputy chief executive (qualifications), Bali Haque, said the organisation had repeatedly emphasised that the NCEA statistics should not be used to compare schools.
Mr Haque said the NZQA had been very clear the statistics were based on the July 1 roll - a base element common to all schools.
"NZQA has an ongoing project to review its statistics and their presentation and this will continue," he said.
Mr Morris wrote in a letter to NZQA head Karen Poutasi and the head of the Ministry of Education, Karen Sewell, yesterday: "In this modern high-tech age I cannot see why NZQA and the MoE (Benchmark Statistics release impending) cannot segment the statistical information they have available and ensure that the public and schools get the correct information."
Mr Morris said he had lobbied authorities for years on the issue but got nowhere.
His letter followed the release of school-by-school data last week.
Auckland Grammar's pass rate showed just 22.1 per cent of its Year 11 students got NCEA Level 1 last year.
But Mr Morris said 60 per cent of the school's students took Cambridge International Exams - so were not entered in NCEA.
For King's College, another decile 10 school that offers Cambridge, just 10.8 per cent of its Year 11 students got NCEA Level 1 last year.
* A symbol indicating St Peter's College, Epsom, offers Cambridge exams was incorrectly omitted from early-edition copies of NCEA tables in the Weekend Herald and omitted entirely for Sacred Heart Girls College in Hamilton. Also, it ran next to St Dominic's College in Henderson, when actually its Wanganui namesake offers Cambridge.
