NCEA enhancements announced

Increasing student motivation, consistency of assessment, and public confidence are the focus of enhancements to NCEA, announced by Education Minister, the Hon Steve Maharey, on 29 May, with the Ministry of Education and NZQA.

Considerable work has already gone into the enhancements, some of which will be put in place almost immediately, says NZQA Deputy Chief Executive Qualifications Bali Haque.

These include endorsing NCEA certificates for the current year, with 'Merit' and 'Excellence', to encourage students to achieve as many Merit and Excellence grades in the standards they are studying.

Next year, it is also planned to introduce similar endorsement for subject areas, with students having Merit and Excellence grades recognised in standards that make up defined areas of study.

Moderation of internal assessment will also increase, with up to ten per cent of student work likely to be sampled, by fulltime NZQA moderators.

"NCEA is New Zealand's national secondary school qualification and it is a sound system," Mr Haque said.

"What these enhancements are aimed at doing is increasing motivation for students to do as well as they possibly can, while also increasing the confidence of students, parents, and employers, and the public in general, that assessment is robust and reliable."

The enhancements include: –

Endorsement of Certificates: from this year (2007), students will be able to gain NCEA certificates with Merit or Excellence.

Endorsement of Subjects: from 2008, students will be able to gain Merit or Excellence in particular subject areas.

Internal Assessment: Currently around three per cent of internally assessed student work is sampled for moderation – about 81,000 pieces of student work. From next year, this will increase to up to ten per cent. Random sampling of student work is also being trialled in September.

Managing National Assessment Reports: these reports will go online on the NZQA website, later this year.

Reporting results: from 2008, "Not Achieved" grades for internally assessed standards will be included on annual Result Notices.

Next year, students leaving school will also receive a School Results Summary, which will list every standard attempted by students during their time at school, and what result they achieved. This will include all Not Achieved results.

The Record of Learning will be renamed as the Record of Achievement to clarify that it records learner achievements.

Online Help: students will be able to log into an online help system to follow their progress towards qualifications. Exemplars will also be available to teachers, students and parents.

Alignment of Unit and Achievement standard reviews: reviews of Unit standards, by NZQA, and Achievement standards, by the Ministry of Education, will be coordinated and aligned. This will ensure unit standards and achievement standards have credit values that fairly reflect the effort required to achieve them.