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Students sitting NCEA outside the northern regions last year were treated fairly, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority says - despite Auckland students getting far more excellence endorsements than the rest of the country.
Thousands of students in Auckland, Northland and Waikato skipped exams at the end of last year after being made eligible for unexpected event grades (UEGs).
Those grades recognised the class time they had lost in 2021, particularly Auckland which spent four months in lockdown.
In lieu of external exams, schools were able to collect other evidence that students had met the required standard during the year.
Teachers reported pulling out all the stops, many working long hours close to Christmas to help get students over the line.
That appears to have paid dividends for Auckland. NCEA attainment data released this week shows 25 per cent of year 13s who sat Level 3 got an excellence endorsement, up from 16 per cent in 2019 and 20 per cent in 2020. Similar excellence endorsement levels were seen in years 12 and 11.
Northland and Waikato year 13 students also saw more modest increases of 1-2 percentage points in excellence endorsements compared to 2019.
However many other regions saw lower marks than 2019, with Canterbury, Gisborne, Marlborough and Wellington's Level 3 excellence endorsements all falling 1-2 percentage points while Nelson dropped from 18 per cent to 12 per cent. Some regions - such as Otago - climbed slightly.
Andrea Gray, deputy chief executive of the NZQA, told the Herald students outside the northern regions would have been treated fairly and assessed against the standard.
She said NZQA had written to schools in December to ask how they arrived at their unexpected event grade figures "to make sure that we could stand by them and schools could stand by them".
Schools had reported back that they'd changed how they collected evidence of achievement, she said.
Asked whether differing approaches to UEGs meant some students had it harder than others, Gray agreed there were differences even between northern region schools.
Internal assessments typically garner higher marks than external assessments, Gray said. Those schools that used mock exams to derive their UEGs saw "broadly similar" outcomes to what might have been expected with external assessment.
NZQA deputy chief executive Andrea Gray. Photo / Supplied
However schools that took a more internally-assessed approach to gathering evidence saw marks falling somewhere between the typical internal and external assessment mark.
Those schools had had to use a wider range of methods because of the circumstances their students and their communities faced, she said.
"It would be fair to say we did see some differences in those results." But she had seen nothing to suggest those schools had done things wrong.
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault told RNZ nobody had had a "free ride" and students deserved the grades they received.
He believed the good marks in Auckland, Waikato and Northland were due to schools continuing to teach and assess students after exams began, with students and teachers likely putting in extra effort.
Gray said with the pandemic continuing, NZQA was "definitely" looking ahead at what interventions might be needed for 2022.
"We've said to schools, look, we're recognising that there is disruption happening this year as well. But because the nature of the disruption is different, schools shouldn't assume that the same response from NZQA and the Ministry [of Education] will occur."
NZQA's full annual statistics report will be out in June.
