The New Zealand Initiative recently commented on a pilot of new reading, writing and numeracy assessments for NCEA. Just a third of students participating in the pilot met the standard for writing. One third met each of the reading and numeracy standards.
Commentators from the education sector were surprisingly relaxed about the findings.
The Ministry of Education asserted that the trial was “small-scale and not representative”. In other words, they’re saying that their own study didn’t include enough students to yield reliable results. They’re also saying that the sample of schools involved wasn’t a good snapshot of New Zealand’s schools in general.
Let’s take these claims one at a time.
