Bill Lennox	�
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Welcome to this issue of QA News where the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) is profiled as an organisation with a revitalised role to play in the future of education in New Zealand. With a new chief executive officer at the helm, it seems an appropriate time to describe who we are and the services we provide.

The Authority has an overarching role in quality assured qualifications and co-ordinates national qualifications in New Zealand. It is a crown-owned agency headed by a Board appointed by the Minister of Education. The Board represents industry, community and education interests.

An employer of approximately 280 staff, the Authority also contracts thousands of examiners, moderators, markers and supervisors. The following articles provide a snapshot of our services, the key people who make them happen and some of NZQA's plans for the future.

Underlying all that we do is the belief in the importance of the quality of the education system in New Zealand. The staff at NZQA is committed to improving access to quality qualifications for all New Zealanders. We are very conscious of the positive influence that a strong and flexible qualifications systems can have for New Zealanders of all ages. At a day-to-day level, we strive to respond helpfully and efficiently to those seeking the services we provide.

Reflecting that commitment to excellence in education, is the cover photo of the two all-round Māori Top Scholars, Arwen Chee and Luke Ruha and Top Scholar for Te Reo Rangatira, Kania Worsley, in the 2000 University Bursaries examinations.

As always, we welcome your feedback and questions.

Bill Lennox,
Communications Manager

Pictured is the current NZQA Board
Back row from left: Jennifer Button, Former Principal, Samuel Marsden Collegiate School; Catherine Gibson, Management Consultant; Judith Carter, Director of Teacher Education, Massey University College of Education; and Joan Baker, Consultant and Director.
Front row from left: Tina Olsen-Ratana, Representative for Association of Māori Private Training Establishments; Manager of Kokiri Marae Seaview; Dr Frank Wood, Vice-Chancellor, Lincoln University; and David Moloney, Executive Director, Interlock Industries.

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New Zealand's top academic achievers for 2000 were honoured in a function at Government House on 20 April 2001.

Every year the Authority acknowledges the top overall candidates, male and female, the top Māori and Pacific Island scholars, and the top candidate in each Bursaries subject.

In 2000 all top overall scholars were from Auckland. The female Top Scholar was Leah Hye Min, from St Cuthbert's College. The male Top Scholar was James Chen, from Glendowie College. These candidates scored the highest total marks from five Bursaries subjects.

The top Māori students were Luke Ruha from King's College, Auckland, and Arwen Chee from St Cuthbert's College, Auckland.

The top male and female candidates of Pacific Island descent were Joseph Halapua from King's College, Auckland, and Helen Liava'a from Epsom Girls' Grammar School, Auckland.

Each overall Top Scholar receives $8 000. The overall Top Scholars and the top Māori candidates receive Government Commemorative Scholarships.

The top candidate in each Bursaries subject receives $5 000 (apart from Latin where there were fewer than 100 candidates so the top candidate gets $2 000).

Features of this year's Top Scholar awards include:

To qualify for a Top Scholar award, candidates must be studying at least three Bursaries subjects and be a New Zealand citizen or permanent resident. In foreign languages, candidates identified by their schools as first language speakers are not eligible for Top Scholar awards.

In addition to the Top Scholar awards, students who achieved scholarship results in five or six subjects will receive monetary awards. Those with scholarships in six subjects receive $3 000, while five scholarships earn $2 500. Scholarship results are awarded to the very high achievers in each subject, generally the top three to four percent of candidates.

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Iain Gunn	�

"Our crew is as good as any in New Zealand," says Call Centre Manager Iain Gunn. "They have a strong team spirit, work well under pressure and are committed to quality and customer service."

The Call Centre aims to answer 80 per cent of customer enquiries without needing to forward the calls on to other NZQA staff.

To achieve that aim, Iain and his team have to be knowledgeable and up to date about all aspects of the Authority's business as well as related areas. At times the team finds themselves answering queries about not just education related areas, but also immigration (calls related to Qualifications Recognition Services) and even driver licensing - when the new licences were coming in, a lack of clarity about who to contact meant people rang NZQA in search of information.

Since the establishment of the Call Centre four years ago, the number of calls has been steadily rising with numbers peaking when examination results are issued. Iain says the growth in calls also reflects the revitalisation of the Authority in the last year. In January of 2001 the team of five staff received 17,324 calls - the largest number ever.

According to Iain, the Call Centre "acts in many ways as a barometer of what's happening - if there's a problem we can identify it at an early stage and prepare the relevant service unit".

Modern technology is pivotal to the Call Centre's operation. The operators have to be familiar with databases and NZQA's Internet site. Iain points out that in theory the Call Centre should be receiving fewer calls as NZQA becomes more web enabled, but that it seems to generate a workload. These calls may range from someone who has lost their pin number to others who need help with navigating their way around the Internet.

Iain keeps complex statistics about the Call Centre's workload, but a new online call logging system will enable more detailed logging of every call that comes through and facilitate future planning.

Not only are the number of call increasing, Iain says the length of calls has increased from 50 seconds on average to 1 minute and 20 seconds. The operators' aim is to lose only two per cent of calls a day.

Iain is extremely aware of how the Authority is perceived in the marketplace and is totally committed to providing a good service to the customers.

NZQA Call Centre Facts

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Once, young people wanting to study dance and drama as subject options at secondary schools in New Zealand faced a void. And, for students attempting to choose reputable performing art qualifications from the tertiary sector, the picture was confusing.

Today youngsters can choose to study dance and drama unit standards at secondary school and be confident that these will lead to nationally recognised qualifications.

Around 500 students gained level 2 NQF credits in drama last year.

From this year, unit standards in drama (as well as a range of other subjects) will count for University Entrance.

The fields of both visual and performing arts are a dynamic example of how education providers, the industry and NZQA have worked together to ensure that appropriate training and national qualifications are available to New Zealanders.

The project has resulted in the development of a range of National Certificates in Performing Arts including a National Certificate in Māori Performing Arts. Likewise in the field of visual arts, there is now a National Certificate plus National Diplomas available.

To administer and further develop the Framework, NZQA provides:

The Framework fills an important niche in New Zealand education and training and is crucial for industry upskilling. Māori and Pacific learners are represented in proportion to their numbers in the general population. Mature workers are very well represented.

Technology has played a pivotal role in the development of the Framework. This year all 600 000 New Zealanders, registered as learners, will be able to download their Record of Learning at any time.

Facts

Planning, reporting and auditing are the three key thrusts of Angela Irwin's wide-ranging role at NZQA. An ex-teacher with a special interest in adult literacy, Angela has been with NZQA since the beginning and thrives on the challenge of working at corporate level.

"We have to practise what we preach," says Angela of the May external audit of NZQA's Quality Assurance Services (QAS). Angela was joined by John Merrin, Director Quality Assurance and Risk Management, Audit New Zealand and Peter Holland, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of Geography, University of Otago, to ensure that QAS has adequate and appropriate means to make approval and accreditation decisions.

Through its legislative role, the Authority is also conducting audits of the quality assurance activities of the Association of Polytechnics in New Zealand and the Association of Colleges of Education of New Zealand.

On the planning side, Angela is responsible for the Statement of Intent, a three-year document, which is updated annually, tabled in parliament and "basically tells the public what we do". The Statement of Intent is available on the website.

Angela's responsibilities also include:

Angela is also the "whistleblower for the Authority." Under the Protected Disclosures Act every organisation has to have somebody named that staff can go to if they are aware of serious wrongdoing in the organisation.

The NZQA website has proved increasingly popular	�
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The technology is now sufficiently robust for the Authority to move toward conducting most of its business via the Internet, says Communications Manager Bill Lennox.

"There's no doubt that the existing website has served NZQA well," says Bill, "but the time has come for the site to be revitalised".

With this in mind, a web coordinator, Rachel Simpson, has been reviewing the mapping and navigation of the site, and working jointly with IS Support, Steve Eades to revamp the site.

Rachel is enthusiastic about the possibilities: "the huge advantage of the Internet is that it allows immediacy - I'd like to see the NZQA website bring the latest news items about NZQA's develop-ment and initiatives and deliver them in a timely fashion to site users. The first stage will be to redevelop the homepage with an improved look and navigation."

NZQA's website was developed five years ago, initially as a vehicle for publishing unit standards and other Framework data and material. Over the years it has been rebuilt to include other material such as examination prescriptions, details about provider accreditation and the publication of information about services.

A May 2000 survey of stakeholders revealed high levels of usage and satisfaction among regular users, mainly tertiary providers. The one major request (access to ROL numbers for tertiary providers) has now been met. However, NZQA itself has identified improvements for the site.

Plans for the future include making the Record of Learning (ROL) accessible to all 600 000 Framework learners - learners will be able to download their up to date ROL any time they need.

If you have any feedback about the website, contact the webmaster

The Authority's website was the most popular site within the govt.nz domain in January, according to Neilsen/Net Ratings. It was followed by winz.govt.nz and ird.govt.nz. Students heading to Bursary results made up 16 per cent or 23 000 of the visitors to government websites. These figures were reported in NZ Infotech Weekly.

Visitors to nzqa.govt.nz in January were made up of
63% male
41% aged between 12-17 years
21% aged between 18-20 years

Brent Richardson	�
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The last year has seen Quality Assurance Services (QAS), the operational quality assurance arm of the Qualifications Authority, develop and consolidate into a 44-strong team.

"The role of QAS is to give the learner confidence that when they choose a qualification path, that the qualification and the pathway has met some stringent standards," says QAS Manager Brent Richardson. "We're not about quality control - we can't provide guarantees - but we are about quality assurance."

"The real development in the last 12 months," he says "has been to develop a quality assurance process that is inclusive of quality audit and that includes checks on the effectiveness of a provider."

Brent sees the challenges in the next year as threefold. The first is to continue to consolidate quality audit and monitor the quality assurance process. The second will come when the Authority finalises the requirements for the Register of Quality Assured Qualifications and the many existing approved courses will need to be checked that they meet new nomenclature requirements.

The third challenge will involve the updating and improving of the documentation requirements for the two quality assurance standards. Brent is looking forward to greater web enablement to make it easier for people to access things and do business with NZQA-QAS electronically.

Beyond the management team of four, QAS is made up of three teams:

The role of the Case Management team is to monitor provider quality. The team is currently made up of one senior case manager, six case managers (including two case managers with an exclusive focus on Māori training establishments) and a group of six administrative support staff.

The group is the provider's first point of contact with the Authority on all matters relating to registration, course approval, accreditation, audit and quality assurance of degrees.

Case managers work very closely with the auditors from QAS Quality Audit Group - their role is to do the field work to verify that the evidence and information about and from providers is correct. Brent says the sheer volume and diversity of providers that the auditors are dealing with means that the QAS auditors will become highly skilled in their role.

All quality audits are led by one of the NZQA-QAS auditors. For larger and more complex audits, the audit team may include contracted specialist auditors, national standards-setting body representatives or other relevant experienced persons.

The role of the Framework Registration team is the quality assurance of unit standards, achievement standards and associated national qualifications. While the QAS staff bring a wide range of experience to their roles - be it industry, the not-for-profit sector or education, and cover a range of ages - what they share is their commitment to education and the learners.

According to Brent: "they care about the learners and the providers - they don't want to be too prescriptive but they do want the providers to do the best they can".

Quality Assurance Services

Adrienne Waghorn	�
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"The last year has seen Moderation Services initiate some significant changes that mean we are better matching the needs of the individual sectors we deal with. We're basically making moderation more manageable," says Manager Adrienne Waghorn.

"These changes have included the complete revision of the documentation for all the moderation systems and an increase of resources, such as templates, on the web. My aim is to minimise bureaucratic and administrative barriers."

The implementation of Assessment Review, in preparation for the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA), is a major initiative for Moderation Services. Assessment review takes a whole-school, audit-based approach to moderation, not a single-subject focus.

"Our aim," says Adrienne "is to maintain the quality of our business while facilitating schools' preparation for managing internal assessment and moderation of achievement and unit standards for NCEA.

"The number of schools involved in Assessment Review is gradually increasing - this year it will total 83. We began Assessment Review in 1999 - the idea is that it takes a whole-school approach to moderation, not a single subject focus. Moderation Services has also been looking at ways of extending the Assessment Review model into the tertiary sector. Otago Polytechnic has been used as a pilot and other providers are expected to follow.

Adrienne oversees a team of 16 - eight assessment and moderation officers and eight operations officers. Moderation Services is also responsible for managing the administration, training and contractual arrangements for around 500 moderators and moderation coordinators who are mostly practising teachers.

The role of the assessment and moderation officers is to select and train moderators and to work with assessors and providers. They have assessment and moderation expertise and generally some subject specialist background.

The operations officers are the point of contact and do the administrative work. They maintain databases and communicate with providers.

An assessment and moderation officer for Field Māori , Mere Black, was appointed in 2000. Her role is to manage the moderation system for Field Māori and Te Reo Māori unit standards. She works with a panel of 10 moderators for Te Reo Māori .

In addition a national moderator for Cook Island Māori unit standards has recently been trained.

When any accredited provider starts assessing unit standards, they need to make arrangements to have their assessments moderated. "We really encourage providers to contact us - ask us questions - just as soon as they know they are going to be assessing for unit standards" points out Adrienne.

An annual check is made of credits awarded and providers who have not engaged in moderation are given a reminder.

Most moderation is conducted by post but in a very few subjects there are visits by a local moderator. Assessment Review, however, involves visits.

Core skills is another area where Moderation Services have initiated significant changes recently - both to simplify the unit standard moderation process and provide more options. For example, there is now provision for individual providers to interact directly with the moderator.

As with all service units in NZQA, Moderation Services constantly works with and is interdependent with other units in the Authority. Adrienne sees a particular need to identify possible gaps and overlaps in NZQA processes.

Committed to the challenge of making moderation systems work better for providers, Adrienne is confident in the expertise of her team to continue to provide a responsive and innovative service.

Moderation Services manage moderation systems for over:

The Authority is undertaking new initiatives for Māori by developing the National Qualifications Framework, assessment resources and provider support.

The influx of new Māori staff to the Authority has signalled a major turn around in the ability to support the large number of learners who are achieving qualifications through the National Qualifications Framework, according to the Authority's former Chief Executive, Norman Kingsbury.

"The prime beneficiaries will be Māori learners. We need to ensure Māori learners have access to quality courses and quality providers."

Norman Kingsbury's belief in increasing support for Māori learners, links higher recruitment of Māori staff with a higher quality of service for Māori . The two service units, Māori Qualifications Services and Māori Provider Development and Support, are benefiting Māori with the increase of Māori staff through a number of significant initiatives.

�	Patsy Karauria
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Other work currently underway includes the development of unit standards for Māori music. Titia says Māori musicians are keen to create new standards that recognise the particular skills needed to support the burgeoning Māori music industry. These unit standards will cover skills such as composing, performance, music management and sound engineering.

A further initiative is the development of assessment resources for teachers in Whakairo, Raranga and Māori performing arts. Staff are working with a range of different learning institutions to trial assessment resources. Project Leader Brian Morris, notes that the final assessment resources should be completed some time this year.

The decision to establish a new initiative of support for Māori providers of education was made by the Board of the NZQA in September 2000.

The aim of the Māori Provider Development and Support team is to build capacity among Māori providers by establishing partnership relationships with Māori providers at a local level and working co-operatively to raise levels of quality in education management and delivery. Their objectives are to:

Carl Ross	�

"There has been initial contact with more than a hundred Māori providers. PTEs are saying the advice is timely and they really appreciate the fact that our regional facilitators are from local iwi. One PTE wrote in the other day to thank us for providing this service free of charge. It said paying for NZQA services has long been a barrier for struggling providers."

Linda Forsyth	�
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New technology has revolutionised the work of Learner Information according to Manager Linda Forsyth. "When I started in this area over 11 years ago, there was a handful of computers - we had to fill out punch cards to change addresses and we had to ask someone to retrieve information for us.

"There's little doubt that today's electronic systems mean that we process data more quickly, cheaply and efficiently. Most of the systems and programs being used here have been developed by Learner Information staff."

And that information has steadily increased every year. In 1996-7 around 2 000 National Certificates were issued - in the last full year (1999-2000) that had risen to 14 000.

In processing over one million results a year, the team of around 20 is driven by deadlines. The areas they deal with include traditional national school, trades and vocational qualifications, as well as the National Qualifications Framework registered standards and qualifications, and non-university degrees and diplomas. The two key areas are referred to as:

According to Linda, the major improvements over the last couple of years have been for learners, the introduction of phone and Internet results, and for providers, the Record of Learning numbers on the website.

So what further developments are in the pipeline? Later this year the Record of Learning results will be made available on the NZQA website. Linda anticipates that learners will input their NZQA ID number and a pin number (to come) and then will be able to look up their record and get an up to date printout of their results. However, "this will not be an official printout - print versions will definitely still have their place and be sent out by NZQA".

And the developments don't stop there. Next January, Linda is hopeful that schools will be able to access results for their own students on the Internet. While learners were able to access their results on the Internet this year, schools remained dependent upon the traditional print and post results.

She also hopes that schools will eventually be able to have "read access" to their examination entries so that they can check their data for themselves. In an information driven society, there's little doubt that Learner Information Services is on the leading edge of the trial and development of processing and providing information. However, Linda points out that basic communication remains essential: "we can't always get it right - and if there's something wrong, please let us know".

Facts and figures

Current qualifications

School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate, Bursaries, Higher School Certificate, AVA, Trades, NZ Diploma in Business

130 000 per year	Entries processed for current qualifications
600 000	Results/marks/grades processe d
250 000	Documentation issued to students, for example result notices, certificates
5 000	Reviews and reconsiderations processed after scripts returned

Record of Learning

120 000	Registrations processed
600 000	Unit standard results processed
15 000	National Certificate/National Diploma applications processed
200 000	Records of Learning sent to learners

Joe Carlin	�
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"Getting orders despatched within 24-48 hours of receipt" is the aim of Manager, Joe Carlin. He's proud of the complaint-free record of the team over the last two years.

The team processes orders and despatches NZQA paper and electronic based resources to external and internal clients. These include past examination papers, audiotapes, Framework Explorer CD-ROMs, unit standards, assessment guides (CD-ROM versions), publications and prescriptions.

As part of dealing with these orders, the team answers queries regarding current unit standards, expiry dates, replacements and so on. They also provide tailored products such as loading unit standards information onto floppy disks on request.

As NZQA becomes increasingly web enabled, the question that could be asked is: what's the future of a print-based service? However, as Joe points out - "the development of the NZQA website has actually increased the demand for our products by promoting what's available. People still want printed materials - they don't want to have to turn around and photocopy large numbers".

Because of the wide array of clients it deals with, NZQA has undertaken to provide all information in print as well as on the web.