Smith Nick: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
Smith Nick: Urgent Debates — National Certificate of Educational Achievement—Scholarship Examination 
[Volume:623;Page:18475] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. This urgent debate has been set down around the scholarship exam quite specifically. I listened very carefully to every word of the Minister’s contribution but I did not note him at any time during his speech making reference to the scholarship exam that is the subject of this debate. This is the Minister who is responsible for the very issue that the Speaker has deemed of sufficient import to set aside the time of this Parliament. Would it not be proper for the Minister to be asked to address the issue of the debate? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Whether or not it is proper the Minister has made his contribution in the way he sees fit. There is no need for further comment on that. We have had a number of comments so far. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 So that people who are listening to the debate understand the issues involved I want to think through a scenario where people are lining up for a 100-metre race and the person in lane 1 has to leap over 1-metre-high hurdles; the person in lane 2 has to leap over 2-metre-high hurdles; lane 3 is covered in old tyres so the person in that lane has to zigzag through them; lane 4 is undulating up hill and down dale; lane 5 is all covered in gravel but the person has to run in bare feet; and lane 6 is clear. I ask the House and people who are listening to this debate whether they believe it is fair that the runner in lane 6 should get the gold medal because that is exactly what we are confronting with this issue of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) scholarships. We are not comparing on an equal level playing field people in different lanes. In fact there is no moderation across the subjects and therein lies the problem. 
The Minister was asked about this in the House today and he made the statement that he was surprised to find there were no comparability mechanisms between students who were doing different subject areas. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Between the standards. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: But that means the same—between the different subject areas that they are doing. In other words the examinations. 
I suggest to the policy makers that it is impossible to get two examinations across two different curriculum areas in any one year or in fact across the same curriculum in various different years that will be exactly comparable and on which one can make a fair assessment and a fair judgment. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: But you can try. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: If the Minister is going along with pursuing the argument that he is then what he is suggesting with the results that came out is that the standards in English in stage 1 at our universities are far far lower and far easier to meet than those in the sciences and biology and so on because of the numbers that were there. 
I want to explain to people that when the NCEA was designed it was always intended that there would be a scholarship examination and that it would be an examination to compare the top students. It would be competitive. It was not to be about standards it was to be about who the top students were in our particular schools. It does not impact upon NCEA levels 1 2 and 3; they are a different question altogether and are aimed at different populations. I want to say something about a comment made by David Benson-Pope that shows that he completely misunderstands the issues. He said that we do not want to go into a system where 50 percent are failures. School Certificate was scaled. It was the first obstacle that people had to come to. In this particular case the students who were doing NCEA level 4 have already done NCEA levels 1 2 and 3 in the same year as they are doing scholarship. This is not about failure; this is about the top echelon—the cream—and it is to decide which of those students coming out of level 3 are the cream. Under those circumstances it is totally valid to scale those and to have statistical moderation across it. 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: You’re looking at a scale when you don’t have a number. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: Let us face it we set a number. We set a mean and a standard deviation as we always did then we compare those students who are doing mathematics as being an equivalent population to those students who are doing English. Unfortunately the way that things are set up that is not the case. I find it interesting that given that we have— 
Helen Duncan 
: It wouldn’t work. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: Of course it would work! Obviously the member does not understand the basis of scaling and what it is all about. It would also allow comparability from one year to the next. Members should remember that this is not students doing their first assessment in the fifth form as School Certificate was. This is students at the upper echelon of our schooling system who have already got three qualifications that they have entered for in advance of this. This is purely and simply the top of them. 
The problem that we have is the very problem that has been witnessed. People are dead set on the fact that everything must be standards based. Everything does not have to be standards based. In fact we have to have some sort of absolute comparability and there is no comparability in this particular circumstance. It really concerned me to hear that the secondary school principals had said that this would not work unless we had these moderation processes in place. They offered their advice to the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and they were ignored. It came out in the media yesterday from Paul Ferris that the Secondary Principals Association offered its support in this particular case. That was the advice that was given and that was the advice that was ignored. 
If we go back to the scenario that I raised after the race is run and the person in lane 6 with the clear lane has been given the gold medal and everyone moans like heck and says that that is not fair the Government has come along and said: “We don’t believe that’s fair either so we will get some pewter medals and paint them gold and give them out to a few other people.” That is exactly what this Government has done. It has come up with some arbitrary arrangement and said that it will hand out a few extra things that are of a lesser standard than scholarship but that at least it might buy the Government some peace. 
I say to the Government that it has the capacity to take the results from this year and to statistically analyse them in such a way that we could have comparability across the different subject areas for the students who sat in 2004. If such a process is not put in place we will have a repeat in 2005 regardless and meanwhile the 2004 students have been treated unjustly unfairly and quite wrongly but at least something has to be done to fix it up for 2005. That is what concerns me a little bit about what Bill English is saying and doing. National is certainly fingering some of the real genuine flaws that have occurred in scholarship. But I do not hear National telling us what it will do about it. What will National do about NCEA levels 1 2 and 3? Will it keep it? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Yes. 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY 
: That is good to know. The Hon Dr Nick Smith has now told the House that National will keep the NCEA levels 1 2 and 3. What will National do with scholarship? We do not know because at this point in time no one has actually told us. At least New Zealand First has said that we will make the modifications to levels 1 2 and 3 that have to be made to fix it up but we will stick with it. We believe the philosophy is right and that largely it is on the right track. 
However we do not believe that the thinking process was applied to the NCEA level for the scholarships. We believe that there has to be a moderation process. There has to be a process whereby we can compare the students who sit one subject with those who sit another and also aggregate their results so that we can make decisions about the top students. Forty-five thousand dollars was given out to a top student and we have no confidence at all that that person is the top student or is just purely and simply a student who picked the subjects for which the examinations that he or she went into were easy. That is not fair and we will not instil confidence in an assessment system if we have a continuation of that process where so much is dependent upon the subjects that one picks and not on the actual abilities and capabilities that are demonstrated through the testing and examination process. 
The scholarship exam is about finding out who are the cream amongst our scholars. It is not about the first draft. It is about rewarding those particular people and giving them encouragement to take further steps in their studies so that they will pursue university and tertiary studies for the betterment of our nation. The way that we have devised our scholarship exam and the poor thought that has gone into it has weakened the system at this most critical point. We ask that the Government goes back and re-looks at the philosophy behind the level 4 assessment and we encourage it to put some sort of statistical moderation process in place.