We could sense it was coming, but we didn't think it was going to be the blunt kind of announcement that came last week.
The rest of the world doesn't care much about education in New Zealand, but a big change has just been announced here, along with some revelations about the use of AI to mark student work.
For the last twenty-ish years we've been preparing senior classes for their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) - a standards-based assessment system.
It was announced on Monday that it will be scrapped.
Over the next few years, it will be replaced by new qualifications. Not overtly standards based, but 'subject based' (whatever the heckfire that means), marks out of 100, best four subjects counted.
That precisely describes what I did at school from 1973 to 1974 (it took me two years to get School Certificate by 'passing' four subjects with marks over 50%).
My immediate thoughts:
- How will my current students sitting NCEA react to this scrapping of their qualifications (Year 9 to 13 students will leave without the new qualification)? Will they abandon their efforts given the criticisms by politicians (David Seymour doesn't let facts stand in the way of his opinions - NCEA has Excellence standards that are damn hard to get).
- For twenty-ish years I taught English for School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate, and University Bursary students. For twenty-ish years I taught English for Level 1, 2, 3 NCEA.
- I don't have another twenty-ish years left in me. I do have a few though and I'd like to think they had some purpose other than preparing students for an 'untrustworthy' qualification.
- This is a real reverting to the pre NCEA years and all of the gains from a standards-based approach, UCL approach will be lost for a while (these things are cyclic).
- Twenty-ish years of textbooks written for NCEA are now useless.
- Will a change of government mean they scrap all these proposals and revert to a standards-based qualification again? Potentially, it's a clear point of difference in an election.
- Did we know about A1 taking over teaching marking? Like all of my colleagues, I missed that memo. Apparently, the Common Assessment Activities (CAA) in numeracy and literacy are marked by A1 now - it takes 6 weeks for students to get their results. Six weeks!! Will teachers' job be safe from A1 in the future? I think I know the answer.
The more I thought about all this, the angrier I became, which is disappointing. I can only control my reaction. I have zero control over political decisions. I told myself off.
Instead, I need to think about the possibilities, the benefits, the areas where I can contribute. That may take me a while, but it needs to happen.
I will be very interested in how all this shakes out.
BTW the students' response to all this was - meh.
