NZQA faces financial crisis following blowout, says English

The Qualifications Authority (NZQA) is facing a financial crisis as a result of a budget blow out, National education spokesman Bill English claimed yesterday.

Recently released NZQA figures showed it ran up an $8 million deficit between last July and the end of January.

It had budgeted for a $2 million deficit on total spending of $52 million.

NZQA said it had overestimated the number of foreign students who would sit the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and the original budget had "clerical errors". Mr English said the figures showed students had no confidence in NCEA qualifications.

"Clearly NZQA did not expect such a big drop in foreign students. However, I suspect these figures also show significant numbers of secondary students are not sitting NCEA and won't until it's fixed," Mr English said.

"There is no way NZQA can claw back the $8 million shortfall in the last five months of the financial year, so Labour will either have to bail out the organisation or subject it to another round of restructuring and redundancies."

- NZPA