A response to the New Zealand’s NCEA review
The government is currently engaged in a large-scale review of the New Zealand education system. A part of this is the most comprehensive review of NCEA since the qualification was first implemented in 2002.
A Ministerial Advisory Group has put forward some initial ideas for changes to NCEA. One of these ideas is to include a substantial and compulsory project, to be assessed at each level of NCEA, focusing on civic engagement and pathways beyond school. These may, for example, involve engagement with employers or with tertiary education providers.
Eighteen members of the Faculty of Education at Victoria University have submitted a document to respond to this proposal, arguing that it has been poorly conceived, lacks an evidence base and potentially leads to more problems than it solves.
With regard to the proposed projects, we had many concerns. One is manageability: it does not seem feasible for teachers, who are already burdened with heavy assessment workloads associated with NCEA, to oversee individual projects for almost every student in Years 11, 12 and 13, let alone to make these meaningful for students and communities.
It is also likely that these projects expect an integration of curriculum, requiring teachers of different subjects to co-operate for the projects, raising concerns about the nature of learning within subject areas and potential competition for subject representation.
A further objection is that it is very difficult to think of a way in which such projects – which would vary vastly in content and focus – could be assessed with any kind of consistency or reliability. But our deepest concern with the project idea relates to knowledge.
Under the previous system, students attained qualifications by sitting examinations in ‘traditional’ subjects like mathematics, history and economics. Students from different backgrounds didn’t have equal access to this knowledge. Those from high socioeconomic strata did much better than those from poorer communities and, as a result, the benefits of qualifications, such as opportunities for further study and for employment accrued disproportionately to the already well-off.
Under NCEA, students can be assessed in almost any domain of knowledge or skill. This has led to students being able to attain qualifications in ways that wouldn’t have been possible before. Students from lower socioeconomic strata have started to catch up to their counterparts from wealthier communities in qualifications attainment. While this, taken at face value, is welcome news, it’s not at all clear that all NCEA qualifications afford equivalent opportunities.
Students from poorer communities are more likely to attain their qualifications with skills-based learning such as communications, retail or health and safety, while those from wealthier communities continue to attain their qualifications predominantly in the more traditional disciplines. NCEA masks many different pathways to qualifications attainment by awarding equivalent credits for all assessment standards.
If the idea for projects and pathways is adopted, it is likely to widen socio-economically related differences in the composition of NCEA qualifications. Small and remote schools, which, on average, tend to serve smaller communities, would be likely to gear themselves towards projects engaging with local industries. While this may lead to employment, it would tend to limit access to higher education and professional opportunity. Meanwhile, schools in wealthier areas, under pressure from their parent communities, would predominantly run projects in traditional disciplines, and be more likely to engage with universities than with industry. This is a recipe for perpetuating social inequality.
We argue that a better way to reform NCEA would be to refocus it on disciplinary knowledge for all. Disciplinary knowledge is cultural knowledge: western culture, Māori culture, and every other culture is based on language and on disciplinary understanding. These things provide a sense of connectedness between people who share that knowledge.
Dr Michael Johnston, Dr Bronwyn Wood, Dr Sue Cherrington—Victoria University of Wellington’s Faculty of Education.