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| School AbandonsNCEA |
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| Author : Michael Drake
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| Created : 30 Jun 2002
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| Last Revision : 03 Jul 2002
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SCHOOL ABANDONS NCEA: "IT'S A FRAUD" SAYS PRINCIPAL
Auckland private school Carey College today
announced that it was abandoning the National Certificate in Educational Achievement (NCEA).
Announcing the change Principal Michael Drake said
"NCEA is a cumbersome monolith, a vast under-fuelled
malfunctioning meat plant with missing parts, confused
operators, and an obscure instruction manual that is being changed on the hop. Unstopped, it will turn a generation of New Zealand youth into shrink-wrapped experimental sausages, uniformly cloned in the experience of ignorance and narrow 'formative activities', and branded with the NCEA trademark of mediocrity. Every sausage processed gets certificated, not because it has quality, but because it's been processed. The process, the product and the certification are all wrong."
In today's school newsletter the school says "Despite
our reservations, we set out to implement NCEA with
integrity. That has proved impossible. We anticipated operational and educational problems with NCEA, but we underestimated the extent to which official cheating would turn the "qualification" into a farce, how endless paper-work would divert teachers from teaching, and the way constant assessment would divert students from learning.
"As we have worked through the NCEA programme,
we have become increasingly concerned that it is a path we should not be walking. The final straw added to our 'camel's back' however, was the release last week of instructions from NZQA on how we are to cheat to make sure every student passes, even if they fail assessment tests. "
Drake calls the new instructions issued by NZQA last
week a "cheat sheet". It gives teachers a choice of six ways a student who has failed an NCEA assessment can be "passed". They include telling him what he did wrong and giving him his papers back so he can add more to his original answer, and interviewing a student to see if, after he's been told what he should have done, he can tell "additional information" to justify an award of NCEA.
"That always used to be called cheating," says Drake.
"Now, according to an NCEA assessment trainer, we should call it 'Overseeing the formative stages and guiding the result.'
So far as Carey College is concerned that will still be called cheating and we will have nothing more to do with it."
According to the cheat sheet the option of telling a
student he is not up to the standard is not one of the six ways teachers should respond to student incompetence. The presumption is every student processed by schools must have reached the NCEA standard so long as they are given enough
help to get the right answers.
"Parents, pupils and staff are agreed on abandoning
NCEA" The school reports. "It's a worthless burden on pupils and staff alike: it offers nothing of value, but robs children of a quality education while costing staff time and energy better spent on helping children learn."
On its website www.careycollege.com the school
reports on
* An example of one student's essay submitted for
assessment throughout New Zealand that finished up with grades all the way from "failed" to "excellence"
* The inability of NZQA to get its policy statements out on time (the newsletter containing the cheat sheet was dated May but only arrived in schools last week)
* Documented frustration, confusion an dissatisfaction among teachers all over the country.
In its place Carey College is committed to the
Cambridge International Examinations (CIE). The benefits the school lists are:
* CIE is recognised all over the world - it is an international qualification
* CIE is trustworthy - all aspects are properly controlled
* CIE is exam based, with no opportunity for the sorts of corruption NCEA encourages
* CIE is structured around a challenging, quality curriculum with which we are happy to be associated
* CIE is flexible - meeting the needs of both vocational and academic students
"NCEA is a fraud," says Drake. "Teachers and students now know it is a dumb system that dumbs-down standards and students together - producing a dumb qualification that is as vacuous as its designers."
For detailed comment and supporting data
including sources of teacher comment and references for quotes and allusions above see:
NCEA Grade Awards are a Lottery
http://careycollege.com/education/currentissues/?id=370
Teachers are Directed to Cheat
http://careycollege.com/education/currentissues/?id=372
NCEA is Not Working
http://careycollege.com/education/currentissues/?id=375
Copyright is waived for news media and school publication of
those articles (citation is requested)
Contact Details
Michael Drake: 021-66-9796 [email protected]
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