Ever since its progressive implementation between 2002 and 2004, NCEA has been under nearly constant revision. Its first major crisis came in 2005. Massive variability in pass rates heralded a political crisis. NZQA’s Chief Executive resigned and the organisation was restructured.
Over the following five years, a range of measures was introduced to address the technical problems behind the variability. Soft norms (approximate percentages of students expected to attain each grade) were used to control variability in exams. A massive moderation system was put in place to bring consistency to teachers’ marking of internal assessments. A new marking system for exams was introduced.
The reforms were mostly successful in reining in variability, although internal assessment has had ongoing problems. That bought time for NCEA, but its fundamental design flaw remained. Assessment for each subject is split into multiple units, called standards. Each standard passed contributes credits towards NCEA.
This piecemeal approach to assessment fragments the teaching of subjects, because teachers tend to approach the content for each standard in isolation from that of other standards. Important connections between the knowledge assessed by different standards are often missed.
Internal assessment has led to a ‘credit counting’ mentality in students and schools. Because students do not have to pass all the standards for any subject to gain NCEA, many opt out of assessments they think will be difficult. That leaves them with patchy and incomplete subject knowledge. Schools, under pressure to increase qualifications attainment, have often encouraged this behaviour.
Another effect of internal assessment has been superficial learning. Students tend to focus on gaining credits, rather than engaging in deeper learning. Teachers, eager to see their students succeed, are often tempted to over-coach them.
The moderation introduced after the 2005 crisis failed to control variability in teachers’ marking, and through the 2010s, internal assessment started to suffer from ‘grade inflation.’ Pass rates, and especially excellence grades, began to rise, year on year. Grades in external exams did not rise, due to NZQA’s technical processes. The declining performance of New Zealand students in international tests like PISA shows that the grade inflation in internal assessment was not due to improvement in students' performance, but to teachers becoming more generous in their marking. Pass rates for internal assessments are now much higher than those for external assessment. That has led to more and more students opting out of exams – and the learning they assess.
In 2018, the whole NCEA system was reviewed. To limit students selectively opting out of assessments, each subject was allocated just four standards at each NCEA level. The new Level 1 standards were introduced in 2024. Those for Levels 2 and 3 were scheduled for introduction in 2028 and 2029 respectively. But those standards will never see the light of day.
Education Minister Erica Stanford has called time on NCEA. It will be progressively replaced between 2028 and 2030 with new qualifications. Level 1 will be replaced with a foundational award focussing on literacy and numeracy. Levels 2 and 3 will be replaced with new qualifications, respectively called the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE).
The piecemeal reporting of assessment results that has proven the nemesis of NCEA will end. Students will still complete both internal and external, exam-based, assessments. But crucially, results will be combined into a single grade for each subject. That will put an end to selective participation in assessment and the fragmented, shallow and incomplete learning it fostered. Students will have to pass at least four subjects, and the foundational award, to attain a qualification.
For the first time, New Zealand will introduce a new qualifications system alongside the curriculum it is designed to assess. That curriculum, still under development, will specify a great deal more content than the current curriculum. This could be a game changer. If the assessment is well designed, it will prevent the assessment cart from leading the curriculum horse.
This is not a return to the days of School Certificate and University-Entrance-Bursary system. Under that system, a student’s grades were based on their position in the rank order. Under the new system, students will be graded relative to consistent standards, not relative to one another. Success will not be rationed.
One thing NCEA accomplished was to challenge the stranglehold of academic, university-focussed academic subjects on the qualifications system. Students could attain vocational skills standards, which contributed credits to NCEA attainment. Unfortunately, though, these standards are often used as ‘filler’ for students short of the credits they need for a qualification. There is no requirement to use them coherently.
Stanford has promised to enhance vocational pathways under the new system. Coherent assessment programmes for vocational pathways will count as subjects towards the qualifications. This will not, on its own, transform vocational pathways for school students, but it will be a good start.
The NZCE will not be a return to the past. Instead, it will combine the rigour of the system that came before NCEA with the best of what NCEA promised, but never quite delivered.
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