KEY POINTS:
New statistics show 70 per cent of students would rather steer clear of exams and pick up credits through internally assessed work during the year.
The 2006 Survey of Candidates, run by NZQA after exams last year, also showed one quarter of students who entered externally assessed standards last year pulled out.
The move away from exams, and NZQA checks on how schools' mark internal assessments, is controversial. In Herald on Sunday investigations into the moderation process teachers, principals and students have said the system is "slack" and "open to abuse".
NZQA has consistently said its moderation procedures were fair but always under review. Last week it announced a trial of "random sampling" to check teachers' marking this year - as it was urged to do in a confidential commissioned report by David Rhoades, a government statistician, before NCEA was launched.
Bali Haque, NZQA deputy chief executive, and a former principal, said the pilot was "a way of looking at further quality assurance of our systems".
But the 89 schools to be sampled already know which subjects will be checked, giving teachers six months to ensure their marking is up to scratch.
Currently, teachers choose which work to submit for checking. They know in advance which subjects will be checked. Even when their marking is found to be incorrect, results are never changed.
In 2005, just 3.2 per cent of about two million standards were checked. Of those, 29 per cent were marked incorrectly. A further 10 per cent were invalid because the tasks set by schools were not appropriate. Moderators' comments about marking at two top Auckland schools included "incorrect, yet marked as correct", and "he has been marked correct for this answer, even though clearly wrong".
When NCEA was launched, it was agreed half of all credits would be externally assessed every year. But more students and schools are taking advantage of the loopholes in moderation.
* Directly comparing schools' NCEA results (see table at right) is difficult because of the way the statistics are collected by the authority.
Schools that offer Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) or International Baccalaureate (IB) often have lower NCEA pass rates.
This is because the students doing CIE or IB courses are counted in the total NCEA cohort - and show up as failing.
These schools are highlighted in the Herald on Sunday tables, and their CIE high achievers - those who came top in the world or in New Zealand - are listed below.
At any school, students who are kept back or are accelerated beyond their year level - for example, a Year 12 student doing Level Three - also skew the results.
The percentages we have provided relate to students at each year level who passed the corresponding NCEA level.
It is impossible to tell which results were gained through internal assessment and which were tested in national exams.
These details can be requested from schools.
