Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
Turei Metiria: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
[Volume:623;Page:18478] 
METIRIA TUREI (Green) 
: 
 The Greens have generally supported the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) system. We think it is a good thing to have moved to an internally assessed system particularly for Maori students. There has been a notable difference in achievement for them under NCEA compared with their achievement in previous years. 
In our view the elimination of scaling is a very good move. There is a need to focus on the actual achievements of children and young people against their tests rather than to pay blind adherence to a bell curve which is what happened in the past. In our view scaling seriously disenfranchises students and creates failures for no other reason than the reporting of statistical niceties. 
Our kids are not just statistics; they are precious and we must not allow our system to abuse them in that way. However we are now faced with another fresh debacle over NCEA scholarships that is exactly that—a form of abuse against those students who have been working so very hard to achieve the best they can. It is frankly not good enough. 
Children and young people are continuing to pay the price for the mistakes made by adults and Government departments in failing to take sufficient care over their assessments. NCEA has been continually dogged by those kinds of problems. Previous examples include the manipulation—the active manipulation—of the NCEA system at Cambridge High School. Those are not necessarily problems with NCEA itself but with the way in which it has been implemented. Implementation has been hurried and careless and for that our young people have paid the price. 
The Greens acknowledge that the Minister and the Government have accepted that they bit off more than they could chew that they made a mistake and that they have tried to find ways to remedy that. But I do not think that the Government takes particular cognisance of the fact that it is the young people who are suffering here. I support Bill English’s very deep concern that those young people do not have a second opportunity to make the grade to achieve what they needed to achieve this time around. Every time we make a mistake with our education system it is those young people who suffer; they bear the full price for those mistakes. They have absolutely no control over the way the education system is structured or the exams and the processes that are put in place. 
The education system makes no effort to find out from those young people what they need and prefer for their education for the future. Yet young people continue to pay the price for the stupid mistakes that are continually made. This Government continues to pay lip service to the importance of our young people in our future yet continually undermines their ability to be active and responsible citizens and leaders of our nation in the future. 
Student loans are another classic example of that failure to recognise the importance of young people and their success. Nothing has been done by this Government of course to remedy the serious social educational and economic consequences of that system. 
In order to remedy the problem that has been created by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and to undo the injustice to our young people by the failure of the NCEA scholarship system the Government needs to ensure that not one single student entitled to a scholarship is in any way penalised for that mistake. All those who were entitled or would have been entitled to a full scholarship must receive one of the full amount. If that means that more scholarships will be awarded than might otherwise have been then that is no problem for this Government. It must be no problem. It is no price to pay to ensure that those students are given the recognition they deserve. 
The distinction certification that has been suggested by the Minister as a result of the report is not good enough. It is a second-class option for those students arising from mistakes made not by them but by the education system itself. Scholarships are a critical means of awarding excellence in our students. The Government and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority owe them the recognition they deserve and not a second-class option. 
Our kids do not deserve to be discounted. They must not be robbed either of their financial entitlement or of the benefits of their hard work and commitment over the years. This Government must ensure that no child pays the price for its mistake.