Because she's already concerned enough to order a review - and the review has come back slamming it, so she's got all the ammo she needs to pull the trigger if she wants to.
And I hope she does, because it has become apparent, especially in the last three years, that NCEA is a massively flawed system. And I don't think this is just a level one problem, I think there's problems across all three levels.
What's going on is that schools have had a gutsful and they're dropping it - fast. This year, only 87 percent of schools offered NCEA level one, next year only 75 percent will offer it.
You can see this massive drop- and the problem is that the ones predominantly dropping it are the ones in the highest socio-economic areas.
That is a problem, because if it carries on like this, what we’re gonna end up with is rich kids and kids living in nice suburbs and going to to high decile schools coming out with decent qualifications like IB and Cambridge and everyone else coming out with junk NCEA.
And all that’s gonna do is create an education gap where only wealthier kids get the premium education qualification, and we don’t want that. That's not what this country is about, it's always been about everyone having the same opportunities.
If you’re a parent of an NCEA pupil, you don't need me to tell you this. The problem is that there’s no consistency. Your child can hand in an internal assessment to one teacher and give it an awesome grade - and another teacher can look at the same assessment, think it's mediocre and give it a mediocre grade.
It says a lot that employers don’t rate NCEA level one, increasing numbers of schools don't rate NCEA level one, the Education Review Office doesn't rate NCEA level one - and judging by the noises coming from the Education Minister, she doesn't rate NCEA level one.
I think it's time to scrap it - scrap the whole lot. From where I'm sitting, it looks like a failed experiment.
Heather du Plessis-Allan is a journalist and commentator who hosts Newstalk ZB's Drive show HERE - where this article was sourced.
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