NZQA confident of quick resolution of Cambridge High issues

4.00pm

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) says it is confident Cambridge High School's new management team will quickly resolve the issues identified in its recent report on the school.

The damning report said the school had been using untrained teachers to assess students and help them gain Level 1 National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Action NZQA took over the report set off a chain of events at the school, including the principal's announcement of her resignation.

NZQA group manager secondary education Kate Colbert said today the authority's relationship managers were working closely with the new management.

Ms Colbert was making available the full text of the report, from a National Monitoring Assessment (NMA) of the school in June.

It resulted in NZQA ordering the school to immediately stop assessing Level 1 NCEA under what the school called Achievement Recovery. Students enrolled in Level 1 had achieved a 100 per cent pass rate under this system.

Principal Alison Annan subsequently announced her resignation, and Education Minister Trevor Mallard appointed an acting principal and two limited statutory managers to run the school.

Board of Trustees' chairwoman Diane Grantham also resigned from the chair, although not the board, citing work commitments.

Another trustee also resigned from the board.

Ms Colbert said today she had had "very positive feedback" from the school.

The school's board and senior management were determined to provide the best possible assessment systems for students.

"There is a willingness to work closely with the authority to move forward. Our aim is to ensure that the students can focus on their studies."

NZQA staff would meet with the new management every fortnight to assist in implementing the recommendations in the report.

There would be a formal NMA assessment of the school in October.

Ms Colbert said NZQA's role was to check management systems schools had in place for assessing national qualifications. Allegations of bullying and a conflict of interest at the school did not fall within the role of NZQA and were being dealt with by other agencies.

Background information released today with the report said: "One of the main areas of concern during the June visit was the school's Educational Recovery activity - a means by which the school tried to make sure that every student entered for qualifications achieves them in that year."

The Achievement Recovery activity had failed to meet NZQA accreditation requirements in a number of areas. There was no formal policy, rationale, or goals; there was no programme of learning; no trained teacher was available to help the students; there was no formal process for identifying students for Achievement Recovery; and quality assurance of the assessment in Achievement Recovery was negligible.

The information also showed the school had fewer students enrolled for Level 1 than usual.

An NZQA spokeswoman said today it was worth noting that not all year 11 students at the school took Level 1.

While 100 per cent of those enrolled passed, only 82.4 per cent of year 11 students were actually enrolled, she said.

A decile 8 to 10 school, comparable to Cambridge High, would normally have 95.5 per cent year of year 11 students enrolled .

NZQA has recommended to Cambridge High that its goal should be that every student leaves school with a meaningful National Certificate at a level appropriate to their abilities and learning.

NZQA has also required that the school's assessment procedures document be rewritten by the start of the 2005 school year to provide more professional guidance for staff, and to be more logical and systematic.

It has also recommended the school establish an annual review of assessment policy and procedures, better information for students, a clearer policy on appeals, and clearer guidelines for teachers when students miss an internal assignment.

"The report notes that there are some sound and highly professional practices in place with the faculties and departments which have the potential to contribute favourably to the current and future reviews of school assessment policy," the background information said.

The authority also said there was no evidence that the issues it had identified were happening in other schools.

- NZPA