Hipkins Chris: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHipkins Chris: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 03 December 2015. Volume:710;Page:8550. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]7.CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) to the Minister of Education: Is she confident that increased pass rates for NCEA reflect a genuine increase in student achievement?Hon HEKIA PARATA (Minister of Education): Yes I am. If that member wants to denigrate the efforts and hard work of the—Mr SPEAKER: Order! There is no need to answer the question with that tone. It is simply a question that was answered. If the member wants to add something that is then relevant to the question I will accept it but to then attack that member for asking a legitimate question will only bring disorder.Chris Hipkins: Have any National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) markers been instructed to re-mark exam scripts to raise the number of students receiving Achieved Merit or Excellence grades; if so why?Hon HEKIA PARATA: Our system is robust and as part of the integrity of the system the New Zealand Qualifications Authority looks at 100000 student samples each year and to ensure fairness to students a rigorous quality assurance process sees 10 percent of exams re-marked by a senior marker. It is part of quality assuring our system.Chris Hipkins: Is Peter Lyons of St Peter’s College in Epsom wrong when he said last week that a fellow teacher marking NCEA exams had been told by the chief examiner “to re-mark his scripts to ensure more students achieved excellent pass rates.”?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I cannot comment on what Peter Lyons said to the person in his staff room but what I can tell you is that this system is about students meeting the standard not being compared with other students. That is why we do not have a norm-referenced one. We need to know overall how many kids are meeting the standard. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority keeps an eye on that. But as to Mr Lyons’ personal opinions I cannot comment.Chris Hipkins: How can she claim that we have a standards-based system if examiners are being told to re-mark exams in order to increase the number of students achieving a particular grade?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I cannot speak to Mr Lyons’—one person’s casual conversation with another in the staffroom. What I can tell the member and this House is that the Auditor-General in 2012 carried out a review of the quality and integrity of our system and found it to be very very good. The New Zealand Council for Educational Research carried out a similar evaluation in 2013 and found that principals have high confidence in our examination. Students are being assessed and their markers are being assessed to ensure that we have a quality system.Chris Hipkins: Can she give an absolute assurance to the House and to parents and to students that no student’s grade has been inflated as a result of their exams being re-marked to increase the number of students who gain Achieved gain Merit or gain Excellence for NCEA?Hon HEKIA PARATA: I can give an absolute assurance that I am confident in the processes of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority as opposed to one columnist in a paper which the member is relying on.Chris Hipkins: Has the number of student results from externally assessed achievement standards decreased by over 60000 over the past 5 years while the number of internally assessed standards reported increased by over 150000? If so what evidence does she draw from to claim that increased National Certificate of Educational Achievement achievement reflects an actual increase in student achievement not a change in the nature of the qualifications being achieved?Hon HEKIA PARATA: To begin with because I have trust and respect in the New Zealand teaching profession. Secondly internal assessment does make up about 70 percent of hours because when we moved to this approach of qualifications it was in real time to assess learning. Examinations are at the end of the year; it used to be the case that they were at the end of 3 years. Now we have a system that allows real-time marking when the learning has been done complemented by external examinations.