John Morris - Headmaster Auckland Grammar School

Next year will see the beginning of a new era of school qualifications in New Zealand. This should be a really positive development, but I fear this is not how history will judge the new National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

An extraordinary feature of this revolutionary change that will affect generations of students is that very few, not even the PPTA or the Minister of Education himself, actually want the NCEA in its proposed form. Few are still enthusiastic about it. Many teachers are worried and uncertain. The NCEA will be launched onto a largely unsuspecting student cohort in 2002 with, at most, lukewarm support from those who will teach and assess it. The vast majority of parents will be confused by it.

The range of opposition is impressive. According to The New Zealand Herald (3 April '01), 20 schools are looking to set up a trust to run a separate qualification system.

Auckland Grammar School and 50 other schools have a concerted interest in the Cambridge University international exams. At least one university in New Zealand has discussed setting up its own entrance exams.

The activist and arch-defender of state education, John Minto, has expressed doubts about the NCEA. Low decile schools have gone public against a scheme designed to help those very schools.

The Minister has said that he is not happy with aspects of it, and the opposition National Party has said it will abandon it. A group called "Concerned Teachers" has been set up to fight it.

A second striking feature it that there appears to be no expert educational support for the NCEA. All the research papers of which I am aware have condemned it. Several New Zealand educationalists, including assessment experts Cedric Hall and Warwick Elley, have identified very serious weaknesses. International experts, writing in reports published by the Education Forum, have also criticised it. Officials in the Ministry and NZQA seem incapable of effective response.

A third feature of the current situation is that nobody is quite certain about important aspects of the scheme - a factor that is hardly surprising given the frequent shifts in policy.

The development of the NCEA continues in an ad hoc fashion reflecting the lack of quality thinking when the scheme was originally conceived. The Minister himself has personally instigated changes that he calls "political", not educational.

The "Leaders' Forum" has come up regularly with compromise proposals that suddenly become part of the scheme but have no educational underpinnings or research support.

The recent announcement that subject marks will be reported is a classic example of political compromise. But it will end up pleasing no one: it won't please those who were enthusiastic about the original concept because, as they correctly point out, marks don't fit within a scheme in which assessments are against standards; and it won't please the critics who point out that the introduction of marks is not only inconsistent but, more importantly, won't address basic design faults.

We are advancing (or should I say "retreating" ?) into the unknown - into a scheme which has not been trialled, for which there is no successful international precedent, and about which there is much informed criticism.

This year's 4th formers will be the guinea pigs in this massively expensive experiment. They and all subsequent cohorts will, if we are not careful, emerge from secondary schooling with academic anorexia and worthless qualifications.

As Headmaster of Auckland Grammar School whatever I say on educational issues tends to be denigrated by the small elite running school education in New Zealand as rantings typical of the headmaster of an archaic and draconian school.

I reject such descriptions, but I am deeply concerned at the de-education of New Zealand that will be hastened by the implementation of the NCEA.

There are many problems in the NCEA:

• the ideological refusal to accept that much assessment requires inter-student comparisons and the consequent attempt to define all education in terms of "standards";
• the lack of a national policy on reassessment;
• unacceptably low levels of assessment reliability;
• limited moderation and lack of consequences for schools making incorrect internal assessments;
• the lack of comparability of student assessment between schools and subjects and of qualifications over time;
• the use of only four grades;
• difficulties in establishing the authenticity of a student's work;
• workload and assessment overload; and so on.

Any one of these could prove to be the Achilles' heel - the weakness that brings the whole system to its knees.

How could a qualification with so many fundamental weaknesses ever be seriously considered for introduction? It is as if so much energy, time and money has gone into the NCEA project that it will be introduced next year regardless of the adverse effects on the education and life chances of our children.

Surely it is absurd to continue with a scheme with no expert support, many serious but unanswered criticisms, no international precedent or local trialling, and which, in fact, few now seem to want?

At this late stage the best step would be to postpone the introduction of the NCEA indefinitely, continue with existing qualifications, and go back to the drawing board using the best local and international expertise available.

The present system does need reform, but the NCEA would make the situation far worse.