Teachers told of NCEA worries

By STUART DYE

Teachers believe they will get the blame if the NCEA founders, says the secondary teachers' union.

They have become "bedevilled by the demon of compliance" to the point where the tail is wagging the dog, president Phil Smith told the Post-Primary Teachers' Association annual conference yesterday.

"Assessment must not drive what we do," said Mr Smith.

Critics of the new qualifications framework claim it is focused on assessment rather than teaching and learning.

But Mr Smith told the three-day conference in Wellington that the system was a considerable improvement on the old School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary.

It was easy to forget the limitations of the old system, especially the widespread student failure and lack of motivation it created.

When the NCEA worked effectively, it offered a wider choice of subjects and enabled teachers to do more effective assessment by taking into account the whole range of students' performance.

It was time to move beyond the philosophical debate and fix things.

But Mr Smith said teachers had to be allowed to return to the habit of using professional judgment and "stop worrying ourselves and our students with more assessment than is needed".

The problem was trying to restore faith in NCEA and trust in teachers' professionalism, which had been seriously damaged by the crisis at Cambridge High School and the focus on "auditing and outputs".

It was also being undermined by political point-scoring which diverted attention from the real issues.

Mr Smith said the Government needed to take teachers' concerns seriously and focus on ironing out the wrinkles in implementing the NCEA qualification.

"If their answer is increasing the compliance processes for teachers, while they continue to ignore the need to provide the sort of support promised at the outset, then we have a recipe for disaster."