My Views on NCEA

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) has set the standard for qualifications in New Zealand.

In 2002, the NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) introduced in New Zealand. It replaced School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary. It allows students to study for three levels of certificate, usually in years eleven to thirteen (previously known as fifth, sixth and seventh form). The framework has some problems.

I am a resident of the North Shore. On the North Shore, there are some schools that have a good reputation, where the school environment is excellent, where the usual problems of city schools are rare in some of the selected schools on the North Shore.

I read the article named Boy's death highlights top school's 'fight club'. According to New Zealand Herald, a tragic incident happened in March 2008 at Takapuna Grammar School where a seventeen year old teenager named ‘Toran’ who was involved in a fight at a fight club secretly operating at the school in front of two hundred students. A second fight the next day was videoed by about fifteen students and later played on their cell phones. Toran took his own life after being beaten up at school. He was found dead just over twenty-four hours later. The teenager was suffering from depression and was under medication, and once before, tried to take his own life. The school was aware of Toran’s situation. According to the students of at Takapuna Grammar School, he was wondering in the school grounds waiting for the principal to give his permission to allow him that year to study for the NCEA six credits required to enter AUT University.

The school seemed blind eyed on this case. However, when the teenager took his own life in a five-line statement to the newspaper, the principal Simon Lamb said that “the situation is tremendously sad and extremely delicate” and students and the wider community were mourning the “sudden loss of one of its friends”. He also refused to give an explanation why he had tried to attend Toran’s funeral despite requests from the family not to do so.

This incident disturbed a lot of people, especially on the North Shore. I am surprised to see the reaction of the principal of the school. I have seen the news report on television. Toran’s mother was calm at the time of the interview. Definitely, she was not calm inside herself. She had lost her son. This type of incident is not common on the North Shore.

Generally, students who do not have the required credits for some university courses want to go straight into degree courses like Bachelor, but are having to complete entry level courses before being accepted on a degree course. For example, in AUT University which offers students English For Academic Studies (EAS) or Diploma in English to help them as they do not have the required amount of credits for entry into higher level learning.

According to Scoop (2009), only one student in New Zealand of Diocesan School for girls was a top achiever in NCEA three scholarship subjects – Physics, Statistics and Latin – since 2004. She was the only student who gained six Outstanding Scholar Awards in the year 2008’s scholarship exams. The same person also did well in Calculus, English and Chemistry.

The NCEA system sometimes does not identify other talented students and cater for their learning styles and requirements. Some students are still doing well in the areas of Drama and Art which do not receive the same attention as the more technical qualifications receive.

Some poorer schools become considerate to give students higher marks for internally assessed subjects, results from a study of marking show. This is a concern of one school principal, the Qualification Authority compared the difference between schools’ internal and external results. According to Bali Haque, NZQA deputy chief executive of qualifications authority, the gap between the internal and external results was larger for some low decile schools than for some high decile schools.

Moreover, John Packer, a previous University of Auckland chemistry associate professor, science textbook author and bursary examiner has characterized an NCEA exam a “disaster for students” after failing to complete the test himself. He failed to complete the level three chemistry test and he commented the scholarship chemistry paper was “quite rightly very demanding”.

In New Zealand, domestic students get free school education facilities. In university, students need to pay the fees. Currently, I am studying for a BA in English Studies at AUT University. I have recently finished my Diploma in English. I personally think the university teaching method, and how the lecturers assist the students, preparing them for assessments, the marking system of assessments, and the feedback to say how a student can do better are more flexible compared to NCEA.

There are students who are doing well in NCEA. But the numbers of students failing each year are high. The fail rate in mathematics and science are higher due to the risk of failing or lack of interest. Some students work very hard to do well in NCEA. But become frustrated when their final results are not what they expected. Some schools do not cooperate with the students by not showing the right way. In addition, some schools are so lazy that they send a good report to the parents, but when the final results come out, they do not match with the expectations of the parents and students. NCEA system changes between schools and individual classes.

There must be good cooperation among NZQA, schools, students and their parents. Without their support, the problems of NCEA will not be overcome. New Zealand is a peaceful country and the environment is pollution free. It has good human rights. The crime rate is not extremely high although the size and the population of the country are not very big.

According to the students’ personal choice or unclear conception of NCEA, some students prefer to do IB (International Baccalaureate) or CIE (Cambridge International Examination) alternatives. Kristin School in Auckland is the first school who introduced IB in New Zealand.

At present, university vice-chancellors have been commenting on the qualifications authority relating to whether University Entrance Standards are not very high.

Mr. Derek McCormack, the vice-chancellor of AUT University said that he is not sure if it was suitable for setting the special admission scheme at the age of twenty to get an entry to university. Although, he did not think that there is any necessity to make the UE standard tougher. However, he agreed that there were some problems relating to it which required to be reviewed.

Bali Haque said that general discussions about a potential study of UE standards had been taken over the past few months.

New Zealand has limited (eight) universities and the student demands for admissions are higher compared to limited places available. Other universities around the world receive grants, but New Zealand universities general funding is not encouraging.

The NCEA needs careful consideration as it is letting down the students and taking away the good value of education. More and more students are leaving school to go into the workforce with no skills, and entering university at a much later stage in life, when they can enter on a different level as a mature adult. When there was no NCEA, there were less or no arguments. As the population has gotten bigger, the need for a more comprehensive education system has become more urgent, and the need for New Zealanders to compete on a higher level has increased. Now the system has come under increasing concerns to perform at a much higher standard.