KEY POINTS:
Schools are awarding students NCEA credits for simple tasks such as knowing how to apply for a benefit, having a conversation or simply turning up to school on time.
A Herald on Sunday investigation has also revealed credits awarded for doing the washing, gift-wrapping a present or buying groceries.
The NCEA unit standards were written by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, are internally assessed, and are often given more weight than mainstream subjects such as science or maths.
Hundreds of schools are accredited to assess the standards and they are available to all students at those schools.
One of the standards appears on students records as "Work and Study Skills: Demonstrate Care and Timeliness as an Employee" - but to get it, pupils simply have to attend school on time and behave for 20 consecutive school days.
Other credits are awarded for:
* role-playing applying for a benefit
* keeping healthy
* holding a conversation with a friend
* gift-wrapping an item
* choosing appropriate clothing
* doing the washing
* working with a group
* istening
* buying groceries
* understanding friendship
* asking about or ordering goods or services, face to face or over the phone.
In 2004 Cambridge High School was slammed for "credit-cramming" to boost pass rates - but it used legitimate standards such as "Interpersonal Communications: Participate in a team or group to complete routine tasks", to do so.
The school made students pick up rubbish as their "routine task". That standard is still available to schools.
The qualifications authority said on Friday that the standards uncovered by the Herald on Sunday were from a special Supported Learning section and that this would be marked on students' records. But yesterday it admitted the credits were mainstream and not differentiated on NCEA records. Bali Haque, deputy chief executive of qualifications, said level one was "absolutely basic" and the delivery of unit standards was "a developing process".
"There's no doubt that you will find anomalies.
"The intention here is to recognise the learning that people have done, and give them credit for it."
Haque said the situation "is not perfect" but he had faith that teachers and schools were not exploiting the system to boost pass rates.
"It is better to offer people those sorts of simple, unsophisticated qualifications than not to - as long as people understand the purpose."
Graham Young, head of the Secondary Principals' Association of New Zealand, said the NCEA system put pressure on schools to accumulate credits - and the easiest way to do that was to encourage students into internally assessed unit standards.
"There are some very low-level unit standards which are extraordinarily easy to pass... For people with above-average or average abilities to be using those unit standards is absolute nonsense."
Gilbert Peterson, spokesman for the Employers and Manufacturers Association, said the titles of particular standards meant nothing to employers faced with "a big grab bag of assessment".
"It's going to cause bewilderment and confusion, quite frankly.
"Getting credits for doing the washing or talking to your mate is just amazing. Any businessperson reading this would be quite appalled. We're absolutely sure of that."
Haque said he was confident employers would recognise the standards as basic, and that they were not misleading.
Level one students have to collect 80 credits to pass the year. Eight of those have to be literacy, and eight numeracy. Students are free to choose which standards they attempt. The number of credits given for completing the tasks range between two and four. Yet some mainstream standards - such as understanding atomic structure and fission reactions, giving a speech in French, or using geometry to solve problems - are worth only two credits.
John Langley, dean of education at the University of Auckland, said the other standards were meaningless.
"I turned 51 last week and I still can't gift wrap a parcel - and actually, it doesn't matter."
Langley said the authority needed to look at what the NCEA standards were and how they were applied.
National's education spokesman, Bill English, said the "easy credits" demotivated students. "Take someone who's struggling with maths and works hard to get four or five credits - and then they see their mate getting three credits for holding a conversation... That's something that children learn when they're 2, 3, 4... It hardly seems credit material."
