N.C.E.A. - my views

I warned you some time in the past that I would write about N.C.E.A., so if you aren't in the mood for a political debate, feel free to skip this blog...

NCEA is a poor assessment tool.

The main reasons for this are:

1. The system was poorly implemented - when introduced, only 4 days of training were provided for teachers to come to grips with the new system through workshops - and the facilitators of these workshops seemed as lost as the teachers.

2. Internal standards are anything but "standard" - in every department of every school, teachers constructing their assessment tasks are virtually reinventing the wheel MANY times over - there are very few standards with assessment tasks that moderators have "approved" - and in many cases in the early years the standards displayed on Te Kete Ipurangi (basket of learning) were DIScredited by the moderators.
So, if teachers can't use standard tasks, and get "hit on the head" when they create their own ones, we are all in the dark, and standardisation is a figment of our imaginations - and THEN people actually try to coax STATISTICS out of "results" - go figure!

3. The system rides on the backs of the underpaid and overworked secondary teachers - not only do we teach, we now have hours and hours of paperwork to fill out to meet compliance requirements - stuff we were not trained to do, aren't paid extra to do, and are berated for not doing well by MOE, NZQA and, apparently, "the media" (and the PPTA didn't fight this workload issue nearly hard enough when it came up).

4. Why do we have assessment at a national level?
Many reasons, but officially surely it is to measure individuals against some standard criteria, and be able to compare the achievements of one to another.
NCEA fails to do this, due to its lack of standardisation.
It could be argued that we don't need national assessment at all (there are very civilised countries where it doesn't happen)...
BUT if we buy into national assessment, let's get robust exams happening, where students know what they are expected to do, teachers know what they're expected to teach (for the exam), and tertiary institutions/employers have a set of results that actually stand for something.

5. Some may say "but achievement standards facilitate flexibility of assessment". No. What they do is impose a different set of assessment criteria on the teacher's process - in fact, they clog up the system and make it very difficult for a teacher to get his/her class through a course without saying "this is towards achievement (or unit) standard so and so" - in fact, our courses have become MORE rather than LESS proscribed in these post-school c. years.

6. Communication between NZQA and the "normal" classroom teacher is appalling. Mostly we hear of things through memoes, which may or may not be passed on by our NZQA liaison officer...there are no meetings, elusive consultation/review processes, and rumours of changes to be made.

I believe more and more that we should scrap this inefficient and iniquitous system, and bring in a robust set of exams...Then teachers could get back to teaching, students to studying, and examiners to examining...and if we wanted to be REALLY liberal, we would get rid of National Assessment altogether.

Ah well, that's that off my chest, I suppose...

Thank you for reading, those of you who lasted the distance!

Gerald.