NCEA is anything but traditional. In fact, it is unique in the world. It offers a vast assortment of assessment options. Students undertake multiple assessments, called standards, in each subject they study. Each successfully completed standard contributes credits towards qualifications.
In just about every year since the full implementation of NCEA in 2004, there has been some change, minor or major, to the system. For the past five years it has been under review. Both the design of the system itself, and all the achievement standards are in the process of being replaced.
Recently, the Ministry of Education delayed the implementation of the new NCEA Level 2 and 3 standards for a year. They will begin to be used in 2026 and 2027 respectively. But the Level 1 standards will not be delayed. They will be introduced next year.
This is a strange move.
In 2024, Year 11 students will be assessed with the new Level 1 standards. But when they go onto Years 12 and 13, they will be assessed with the existing Level 2 and 3 standards.
The new standards completely reconfigure existing subjects, mashing some of them together. At Level 1, for example, Biology and Chemistry are to be assessed as a single subject. As a result, there will be a mismatch between the new and the old for next year’s Year 11s as they progress through the system.
In another strange move, the ‘refreshed’ New Zealand Curriculum won’t be fully implemented until 2027, the same year as the new Level 3 standards. NCEA is supposed to assess the curriculum. So, for three years, schools will be operating with assessments for a curriculum that does not yet exist.
Many schools are getting frustrated with the continuous emanation of chaos and uncertainty from the Ministry. St Cuthberts College has announced that it is giving up on both the Year 11 curriculum and assessment for NCEA Level 1. It is developing its own Year 11 curriculum and diploma.
Other schools gave up on NCEA some time ago. Many now use Cambridge International exams or the International Baccalaureate.
By the time the new standards and curriculum are fully implemented, there may be no schools left that want to use them.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
This is a strange move.
In 2024, Year 11 students will be assessed with the new Level 1 standards. But when they go onto Years 12 and 13, they will be assessed with the existing Level 2 and 3 standards.
The new standards completely reconfigure existing subjects, mashing some of them together. At Level 1, for example, Biology and Chemistry are to be assessed as a single subject. As a result, there will be a mismatch between the new and the old for next year’s Year 11s as they progress through the system.
In another strange move, the ‘refreshed’ New Zealand Curriculum won’t be fully implemented until 2027, the same year as the new Level 3 standards. NCEA is supposed to assess the curriculum. So, for three years, schools will be operating with assessments for a curriculum that does not yet exist.
Many schools are getting frustrated with the continuous emanation of chaos and uncertainty from the Ministry. St Cuthberts College has announced that it is giving up on both the Year 11 curriculum and assessment for NCEA Level 1. It is developing its own Year 11 curriculum and diploma.
Other schools gave up on NCEA some time ago. Many now use Cambridge International exams or the International Baccalaureate.
By the time the new standards and curriculum are fully implemented, there may be no schools left that want to use them.
Dr Michael Johnston has held academic positions at Victoria University of Wellington for the past ten years. He holds a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Melbourne. This article was published HERE
8 comments:
What is the motive for implementing this most excellent method to not only fuck up students but also teachers and the whole integrated education system? This is what comes from having academics and politicians having more say in children's education than professional educators. Also what role does the Union have in the politicisation of education in NZ? Because it should be the thread of humanity in the system but seems to be the sycophant of politics.
MC
Coming now up to two decades of activity, the proof couldn't be more stark that our standards have been falling and, rather than being envied for our position near the front, we are now trailing at the rear of the pack and only the envy of those without English as a first language.
Our PM had five years at the helm of Education and what did he achieve? Nothing! It's long overdue that heads need to roll and ideologies changed.
For goodness sake, our children are our future, just when are we going to have that much needed purge? October can't come soon enough.
"By the time the new standards and curriculum are fully implemented, there may be no schools left that want to use them."
Maybe that's the best outcome. If a large number of schools pulled out of NCEA then even our MSM would have to take notice. Even better - if achievement stats were then presented between NCEA and non-NCEA schools, presumably showing higher REAL standards in the latter, then that should be enough to sink the whole warped, racist experiment.
Then we can get rid of the MoEd as well, since it clearly is no good for anything and allow schools to manage themselves and prepare plans and budgets which are reviewed and signed off by someone competent.
We put our kid through private education at great cost, I might add, and it was the best decision we ever made.
This driver was the school teacher informing us that they don’t teach the decimal system to children like they used to. Whether this was true or not I couldn’t care, the main thing was after several years of attending school our kid struggled to do basic maths and had no idea about the foundation of numbers. The alarm bells were going off inside my head.
The Cambridge system was way better than NCEA. It took 6 months of hard effort to get the grades up to the level of a Cambridge student. Our kid passed 6 GCSE straight A and also passed 3 A levels and is now just finishing University before studying a masters.
Was it worth the cost? Damn right it was, every penny.
To hear so called education experts defend a bullshit NCEA system which is clearly failing , makes your blood boil.
Tens of thousands of Kiwi kids are being undereducated and given no chance to succeed in life.
Billions of kids have been educated by the Cambridge exam system. I think they know what they are doing. Which is more than can be said for idealistic dreamers of the NZ education department.
Stop wasting time and money on this failed experiment and get back to teaching Cambridge.
This may well be the answer for high decile schools who don't have the enormous numbers of kids arriving in year 9, who don't know what a sentence is, nor what the months of the year are, nor the answer to 3x4, or which side of a decimal point digits have more value, read and calculate at a year 5 level, persist in reading angle as angel, think 300 +20 =500, etc. I am not making this up since as a tutor for 40 years, I have seen this sort ignorance frequently in normal and bright children.
What in hell, to put it bluntly can low decile colleges, who have a bunch of these unfortunates, arrive each year from primary school do with them ? I can sort of understand resorting to giving them NCEA, credits in microwave cooking, cardboard box folding and making coffee.
Back to basics at primary school using traditional methods of teaching that have stood the test of time and are now proven by cognitive and neuroscience is the only sensible answer and the start.
I have found the average citizen can discern the rot and the reasons in our education which the ministry, the media and some academia fail to do. Almost everything in our education system is stuffed. We have taken the the wrong trip for decades.
Shifting the deck chairs won't do it.
I wonder if there are enough persons with long memories or books and written records to accurately descibe the effective teaching methods of the distant past. Seems to me the old matricualtion needs to be revived, Soeme primary students nearly needed tio shave but at least they acould add up, even with 12 pence in the shilling.
Robert, I have collected NZ school texts and teachers' manuals for all subjects primary and secondary covering almost a century. I always ask old folk about what and how they were taught as well as every parent I meet. For example did you know they taught in 1980s, Pythagoras in year 6? Also at primary and lower secondary every day respectively had at lower primary half an hour of handwriting , wrote two stories one in class and one for homework , had 10 spelling words to learn from the home based NZCER spelling book, had all learned to read and spell all the common regular phonic spelling patterns and sight words by seven years old, could draw a map of the world freehand and name many countries and oceans, knew the periodic table off in year 9......
In the 1970s there was an institutional vandalism purge by the Ministry and they had landfills comprising much of the previous decades texts. My home looks a little like a collection site for a book fair of these books.
Hmmm grandchild aged ten last year still got spelling lists. Half the words were Maori.
Will help enormously with the new road signs being promoted in Maori as first instruction.
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