Professor fails to finish NCEA exam

A former chemistry professor has labelled an NCEA exam a "disaster for students" after failing to complete the test himself.

John Packer, a former University of Auckland chemistry associate professor, science textbook author and bursary examiner, sat the level three chemistry paper but could not finish within the deadline.

Last night Professor Packer said it would be almost impossible for a good student who was sitting all standards to finish the exam, let alone achieve a merit or excellence grade.

"This is a blunder at least as serious for students as the scholarship debacle," he said.

The Government and the Qualifications Authority continued yesterday to try to isolate the scholarship issues, which have seen a fraction of the expected number of passes.

Professor Packer said he supported achievement-based assessment. However, it was unbelievable that the NZQA could introduce a national exam system "devoid of marks, any form of scaling to deal with inter-subject comparability, mistakes in papers, or papers proving too long or too difficult".

Professor Packer sat all levels of NCEA while researching an article for the Institute of Chemistry. He said the scholarship chemistry paper was "quite rightly very demanding" but the NZQA had made a serious error in having no way to compensate for more difficult or longer papers.