Putting NCEA to the test

Year 12 student Alison Officer has had her share of assessments and exams thanks to NCEA, but actv8 gave her and some other students the chance to turn the tables and put the system under the microscope.

NCEA has received a lot of criticism over the last couple of years, but lately people have been more positive about it. Everyone knows what principals and officials think, but what about the students? I interviewed some past and present students from my school, Avondale College, and got a range of replies.

Internal assessments are strongly preferred over exams, because there are usually a lot of reassessments and easy marking, so it is relatively painless to get a good mark. Also, different teachers, different schools, and even different subjects all have different standards of marking. Some students deliberately choose subjects that have lots of ‘internals'.

Who likes exams?

External exams didn't receive quite as much enthusiasm, but really, what do you expect? They're exams! However, a few students said it was good to have the internals so that there wasn't a lot of pressure. Because of internal assessments, it is possible to pass a subject well before exam season rolls around. The general feeling was this made it easy to pass, but not easy to achieve Excellence [the highest in the standards, above Not Achieved, Achieved and Merit].

It's not all good news, though. Many students have run into problems by completing the majority of a paper to Excellence standard, but still being assessed as Not Achieved because of a few mistakes at the beginning. This is the downfall of not having percentage scores. Others I talked to said, "There aren't enough markers. There's no difference between only just getting a Merit and just missing out on Excellence."

Some past students commented that NCEA is hard to understand, and that the way it's explained by schools and representatives is hard for students to relate to. "It usually takes the whole of year 11 to figure it out," they said. Despite this, they claimed it was still a good system. It helps teach time management skills throughout the year to study for ‘internals', and personal responsibility in following the correct procedures if, for example, you miss an assessment.

Now you are 10...

While many have good things to say, others have said it is a bad system because it is "so vague and inconsistent". What is the difference, for example, between ‘explain' and ‘describe' in an exam question? However, now that NCEA is about 10 years old, its critics have become the minority, as schools, teachers and students adapt to its style and shape.

NCEA allows for classroom tests as well as national exams, reducing the stress on students. Yes, there are different standards of marking internal assessments, and external assessments are usually harder, but employers are learning to give the examination results more importance. Students' opinions of NCEA can be poles apart, but most tend to agree that NCEA is a good system, and as one past pupil commented, "You just have to go with it."