Students left in lurch by late change

By JON STOKES

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is under fire from a teacher whose class opened their history exam papers to find they had studied the wrong subjects.

Glenfield College history teacher John Watson said most of his year 11 students were unable to do a quarter of the NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) exam last year because of course changes. The topic the students had studied was not in the exam.

Glenfield College student Sarah Fink said she was "quite stressed" on opening her exam paper.

"I was confused, there wasn't anything in that topic that I had been taught."

Her attempts to bluff her way through failed, which was also the case for more than 75 per cent of the class who received "did not achieves" for topic 1.6.

Ms Fink received excellent and merit grades for the other sections of her history assessment.

Mr Watson said he was shocked to learn that the New Zealand Qualification Authority had pulled the course material for Tangata and Whenua - Effect of population movement on Maori society 1946 -1998.

"All of my 21 students were affected, the overwhelming majority couldn't do anything for that part of the exam."

The exam required the completion of four sections, worth four credits each. The Glenfield students could complete only three.

Mr Watson said he contacted NZQA immediately after he learned of the issue, to seek an explanation and to request that his students were either internally assessed or were able to resit that part of the exam on the subject they had studied.

In a letter to Glenfield College, NZQA manager Chris Winstanley said the school had been notified about the topics removal from the end of year exams in September last year.

Mr Watson said this was the case, but that the notification came just six weeks before the exam, when he was well into teaching the subject.

"I assumed, as it was in September, that the information was for the following year (2004)."

Mr Watson said up until that point all other NZQA material had listed the subject as current.

"The result is blatantly unfair and inept. You can't change course material that late in the year."