NCEA supporters cheer as poorer schools catch up

Photo / Rotorua Daily Post

New Zealand's once-yawning gap in student achievement between schools in rich and poor areas has closed by almost a third in the past five years.

The improvement, reported in an annual "state of the nation" audit by the Salvation Army's social policy unit, was hailed by educationalists last night as proof that the controversial National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), introduced in 2002, was working.

But Secondary Principals Association president Peter Gall warned that the apparent improvement might be overstated because of the particular set of figures the Salvation Army chose.

NCEA pass rates are notoriously difficult to interpret because students can achieve credits at level one, for example, at any stage of their high school careers, not just in Year 11 (fifth form) when most students achieve them.

To get a clear fix on the trend, Salvation Army researcher Alan Johnson focused purely on students who "pass" level one, achieving at least 80 credits overall, in Year 11.

On that measure, the pass rate in "decile one" schools, drawing students from the poorest tenth of the country, has leaped from 30 per cent in 2004 to 43 per cent in 2008. The pass rate in the richest tenth of the country over the same period was static at 76 per cent, so the gap between rich and poor closed from 46 per cent to 33 per cent.

NZ Council for Educational Research chief researcher Rose Hipkins, a strong supporter of NCEA, said the result was exactly what she expected.

"It's wonderful. This is definitely worth celebrating," she said.

She said the closing gap was partly because the pass rates at the richest schools were already so high five years ago that they could hardly go any higher, whereas schools in poorer areas were way behind.

"When you are coming off a lower base you've got room to improve."

But she said schools in poorer areas were also able to use NCEA to motivate students better than with the previous School Certificate.

Qualifications Authority data shows that the gains vary widely. Pass rates have stayed under 30 per cent at some decile one schools, such as Southern Cross in Mangere and Otara's Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate.

At the other extreme, the most dramatic lift among South Auckland's eight decile one high schools was at the Catholic De La Salle College, where the level one pass rate in Year 11 soared from 28 per cent in 2005 to 64 per cent in 2008.

Principal Brother Steve Hogan said all decile one high schools in the areas had benefited from extra professional development under the former "Aim Hi" programme, based on recognising that students in low-decile schools learned at widely varying rates and needed to be treated individually.

Brother Steve said 99 per cent of last year's leavers achieved at least NCEA level 2 - far more than the average for schools even in the country's richest decile.

Mr Gall said the proportion of school-leavers with at least NCEA level 2 was a better measure of overall success in the new system. That measure confirms that the gap between rich and poor schools has narrowed, but by less than Mr Johnson's measure - from a 30 per cent gap in 2004 to 25 per cent in 2008.

The proportion of Maori school-leavers achieving at least level two rose from 37 per cent to 50 per cent, but the Pakeha rate rose from 66 per cent to 75 per cent, so the gap narrowed only slightly from 29 per cent to 25 per cent.

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