Assessment & NCEA

There has been much talk about reviewing NCEA. NCEA was implemented in the 2002-2004 and has been changed, upgraded and the like over time to make it more equitable. But NCEA is a qualification based on given standards not a true reflection of a students' strengths and capabilities.

NCEA is supposedly an assessment of what students can do. But we know that there are students that do amazing things outside of NCEA but these abilities do not count.

Unfortunately NCEA has led to some degree to over-assessment, credit counting (if it doesn't give me credits, it doesn't count) and extraordinary pressure on schools, teachers and students.
NZAI was set up this year to look at quality assessment across the education system.

Schools came together in seminars across NZ to look at positive ways of assessing student progress.
Avonside Girls' High School suggested integrating learning across multiple standards to minimise the NCEA effect using connected learning across multiple learning areas. The collaborative conversations refined assessment expectations and teachers became more explicit with assessment criteria.

Mary Chamberlain ran workshops looking at what we need to assess at each learning stage pointing out that there is a difference between assessment and learning ie not everything needs to be assessed every year. Schools can make choices as to what to assess each year and thus reduce the assessment load, leaving time for enjoyment of learning to take place. The latter would be monitored but not assessed. There is a difference between an accountability focussed system and a learning focused system. Students generally do better with the latter with a small amount of high-level accountability.