... on Education Qualifications, NCEA and change (Rangi News July 2008)

New Zealand is a country that has always embraced new ideas and change: indeed, we have often lead international change, as examples such as votes for women, a stand against nuclear power, social welfare and a sense of social equity have shown.

Rangi Ruru itself is a symbol of a young country’s desire for all, including women, to have equal opportunities. Our education system has developed largely free from some of the entrenched premises of the English schools and, while it has many of the same structures, curriculum and systems, there has always been a willingness and a wish to have our education system reflect the New Zealand culture.

As we have grown as a nation, recognising our diversity and our own unique identity, our education system has changed to reflect our needs and those of New Zealand students, readying them for local and global citizenship.

Despite the feeling that education seldom changes, we have in fact seen enormous change over the past decade in both what we offer and in the recognised needs, such as those of the Gifted and Talented, that we are meeting.

One of the most dramatic and perhaps controversial changes is that to our assessment or qualification systems. Most of those who are reading this will have grown up in the time of School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate, University Entrance and Bursary. Some of you may even be more familiar with Matriculation. While these served their purpose for their time, they were far from perfect and the move to change began many decades ago.

Those of us in the education sector knew these systems were flawed in many ways. Apart from an almost complete lack of transparency, these qualification systems were based around all or nothing examinations which mainly tested memory and the ability to write quickly. With set percentages of students passing
or failing each year, it didn’t matter if you were in a brighter year group or had harder or easier questions, as from year to year roughly the same percentage would pass or fail - leaving many students without any qualification or clear indication about their skills or knowledge.

Our understanding of learning, of what is important in schools and what we want for our young people in order for them to move confi dently into the next phase of their lives has brought about a signifi cant shift in our education - or more particularly in the way we assess student learning.

School Certificate and its fellow systems were systems of assessment, in that they are not what is actually taught in the classroom - that is the curriculum. While the two are linked in the senior school, the curriculum should drive what is assessed, not the other way around.

I think this is one of the sources of confusion in the minds of many New Zealanders. NCEA (or the National Certifi cate in Educational Achievement) is an assessment tool that leads to a qualifi cation, in this case a certificate with three levels.

Rangi Ruru has been committed to NCEA since its inception. We believe the philosophy behind it is sound. This philosophy is that in order to measure a student’s ability you need to make explicit what is expected in order to achieve at certain levels. Thus NCEA is based on Achievement Standards - very explicit Standards which cover the aspects of each curriculum subject.

Rather than head almost blindly into an examination wondering what is expected, today’s students know broadly what sort of knowledge and skills they need to demonstrate in order to gain an excellence, a merit or to simply achieve in any chosen aspect of a subject. Some of these Achievement Standards will be sat externally, at the end of the year; or internally, in prescribed conditions, during the year. What sense it makes to be assessed as you actually deliver a speech, conduct an experiment or talk about the process of making a garment.

Having said all that, there is no doubt the introduction of NCEA has had its share of challenges. Some of these have been procedural and have been frustrating for those of us involved and committed to this assessment system. The very transparency of the system, however, has also meant that it is open to extraordinary analysis, not all of it informed, but much of it valuable. Interpreting the wealth of data that is now available is quite complex and can be quite overwhelming.

One of the key failings of NCEA’s introduction was, I believe, in not fully addressing or anticipating the lack of understanding about the new system with the general public, and with employers in particular. The previous systems were never so exposed.

Any new system takes time to bed down and I firmly believe that huge improvements have been made and that it is a rigorous assessment tool. At scholarship level in particular the requirements are very high indeed. Rangi Ruru’s philosophy is that we will offer a curriculum and assessment programme that we believe best meets the current and future needs of our students. Over 90% of our students go on to New Zealand universities and sit alongside students who have been assessed through alternative qualification systems, and, as our records show, our girls do extremely well. We do not feel they are in any way disadvantaged against any other system offered anywhere in the world

Certainly Rangi girls are achieving among the top in New Zealand. Each year a number of girls apply and attend university overseas, some straight from school, but the vast majority of these girls go as post graduate students. Increasingly education authorities and universities overseas recognise NCEA and our girls are, as they have always been, judged on their record of learning and their achievement.

Like many schools in New Zealand, we have examined other qualification systems, including the International Baccalaureate (IB) and the Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) to see if they would offer our girls some we have seen offered overseas. Several years ago, for example, we incorporated additional aspects of community service and a stronger focus on thinking and inquiry, which we have continued to develop. There are other aspects which we consider and may investigate from time to time.

There is currently nothing significant that leads us to believe that we would adopt any of these alternative systems in their entirety. Our girls are incredibly busy and doing very well in terms of both their studies and other interests. Adoption of any other assessment programme and curriculum, would mean we would lose some aspects of the Rangi education essential to our belief in the importance of a broad, enriching and full education. We would, for example, have difficulties with the prescriptive nature of the IB where it dictates that certain subject areas must be taken by all girls, thus reducing choice as we currently have it. The IB is also expensive (particularly to set up, as staff have to be involved in ongoing training and most of this overseas) and managing this programme within the school could well create a two tier system in the senior school and adversely impact on the range of subjects and co-curricular options we currently offer.

Academically, many of our girls achieve scholarships, which are based on the current curriculum, and they enjoy the fi nancial rewards of these for their university studies. Neither CIE nor IB offer these same scholarship opportunities, although students can still opt to sit them and would have to ensure they have covered the necessary material.

Curriculum Manager, Rowan Billing and I recently attended a seminar about CIE. Again, for a school our size, there is a difficulty in running two systems, and in introducing a new one. Some schools use CIE in selected subjects only to give some extra incentive/exposure, and this is one of the virtues of this qualification.

Currently several of our faculty coordinators are assessing some of the CIE programmes. CIE, like the IB, does not follow the New Zealand curriculum so adaptations would have to be made. The CIE examinations are held at different times and again, those who want to have the financial rewards of scholarship have to do a little extra. CIE is, like NCEA, standards based and when you read that someone is ‘top in the world’, the way the system works is that this could apply to many students, provided they achieve the standard. CIE does not offer some of the subjects that our girls currently enjoy, such as Media Studies, and the English curriculum in particular is more prescriptive in that it has a list of written texts from which teachers may select - but not film, which would certainly upset our English faculty!

Neither IB nor CIE have been exposed to the same rigorous scrutiny, by either the media or by impartial analysts, as NCEA. The systems are not as transparent, and in fact the papers are marked overseas. Both have made efforts to tailor their curricula to the New Zealand context. New Zealand took a leap when it introduced NCEA. It introduced a system which was radically different to those used by many countries. Yet, six years down the track, our students rank 5th in the world in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)1 and New Zealand is seen internationally as a leader in education innovation and achievement. Overseas universities, particularly those in Australia openly recruit in our top schools, including Rangi Ruru.

As a proud New Zealander, I like to think that we can provide an assessment system that is robust, fair and transparent and that will stretch our top students as well as allowing those who sometimes struggle to have both a sense of what they can do and a useful record of this. If we at Rangi Ruru think that NCEA is not serving our girls’ needs we will reassess. In the meantime, we will continue to do what we do well - offer every girl the opportunity to gain a strong foundation education across a broad range of interests, and a qualification that demonstrates that she has developed both the knowledge and the skills to think, learn and critique, and that she has the resiliency and openness of mind to make the most of whatever her future brings.

1 The (PISA) is a triennial world-wide test of 15-year old schoolchildren’s scholastic performance. The aim of the PISA study is to test and compare schoolchildren’s performance across the world, with a view to improving educational methods and outcomes.