Donnelly Brian: Urgent Debates — New Zealand Scholarship Examination—Future 
Donnelly Brian: Urgent Debates — New Zealand Scholarship Examination—Future 
[Volume:624;Page:19455] 
Hon BRIAN DONNELLY (NZ First) 
: 
 In his speech Mr English queried why it is that when both he and I are saying the same things the Government is nice to me and not very nice to him. I think the answer is pretty obvious but I will say just so he knows this that probably the manner in which the message is being delivered is the difference between us. Having had something to do with the Rt Hon Wyatt Creech during the establishment of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) and the initial work that was done on it I will make a number of comments around the issue of New Zealand Scholarship and the larger issue of the NCEA. Mr Benson-Pope is not correct in saying that the NCEA was devised to get rid of scaling. Scaling had already been got rid of prior to that—and well and truly got rid of. We also had a standards-based system that was getting in the way of everything. The unit-standard system was threatening to smother everything. We had the anachronistic School Certificate system which was really a bit of a lottery. We also had Sixth Form Certificate which was based upon the results that came from School Certificate. If people think that in the past before the NCEA was developed we had examinations where 50 percent of students passed and 50 percent failed I say that is absolutely untrue. 
The NCEA was designed to overcome some of the problems that had developed since Sixth Form Certificate had become the sole qualification in the sixth form and university entrance had been abolished. However in the decision making it was decided that there would be an examination called a scholarship examination to rank out our top students—to recognise excellence in academia. That was the whole purpose behind it. It was always understood although it was never written in black and white at that particular point in time that it would be a form of ranking examination—a competitive examination. I sat scholarship over 2 years in my secondary career with 10 3-hour exams spread over the course of 2 weeks each year. It was a bit rugged. It was decided that for our very top students there would be a series of examinations that would discriminate the very very best from the very very good. That is why NCEA level 3 was developed and why New Zealand Scholarship was to be sat in the same year. Scholarship was not for all and sundry but for the cream of our students. The only way to discriminate between the top students is to have a ranking scaling-type system. There is no other possible way to do that. We cannot do it on the basis of standards-based assessment. 
Unfortunately all that the October 1998 Cabinet minute stated when it came to scholarship was: “There will be a scholarship examination”. It did not state that it would be standards-based. It just stated that it would exist and it assumed that further policy work would take place. I have questioned whether policy work was done around the issue and have learnt that in fact it was not. What actually happened was that a gap was left and the bureaucrats were left to make the decisions. Unfortunately the bureaucrats particularly those in the New Zealand Qualifications Authority were absolutely committed almost to the point of irrationality to standards-based assessment to the extent that they could not see the inherent weaknesses in standards-based assessment. Those weaknesses do exist and the problem we have at the moment is that even to this day the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Government are not admitting to the fact that there are inherent weaknesses in standards-based assessment. 
I will give an example of that to the House. It comes from the information we received from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority about level 1 of the NCEA and is to do with the problem of why there was such a big range in the number of “excellents” given in 2003 and 2004. Here is the standard: “Find unknowns in word or 3-D problems”. The thing is that there were about 5000 “excellents” in one year and about 90 in the next. We have to ask whether there was such a big difference in teaching from one year to the next or whether the difference was in the standard between one year and the next. The problem is actually that there are two standards in the standard as stated not one but it is wrapped up as if it were one standard. I will give the House the answer. In the first year of NCEA assessment the examiner chose to assess a word problem whereby a situation was presented in context and candidates had to translate the practical situation into a mathematical situation. In the second year the examiner assessed the candidates’ ability to solve a 3-D problem and stated: “This is an aspect of mathematics which students have always struggled with. The candidates performed very badly in this question in 2003”—that is the second year—“which was not unexpected as it is conceptually more difficult for them.” Now if members are hearing what I am saying they will realise we have within one standard two separate standards that are conceptually different and one is more difficult than the other. 
If we can have that kind of difference within a standard surely we will be presented with huge differences between different standards even within one subject area and across different subject areas so how can we then use the results to compare students? That is exactly what occurred in New Zealand Scholarship. There was no moderation process or scaling process—and I am sorry but I still believe that we need to assume that the populations in every subject particularly in the ones that attract the larger numbers are equivalent populations if we are going to work this issue out. I believe that the moves that have been made are a step in the right direction but that they still do not resolve the fundamental problems and tensions that exist as a result of the decisions that have been made. 
However I have to go on and ask who is to blame for the situation. Is it because National did not make the right decisions at the time? Well National made only one decision and that was to have a scholarship examination. The problem has to be pointed at the present administration. These decisions should have been made when it took office. Let us face it some critical decisions about the timing of the NCEA were made by Government members and I applaud them for that. They got that one right. They could have made decisions in here. They could have faced up to the fact that if one is to have a ranking-comparing examination or test then one has to have some sort of moderation or scaling process. The Government did not face up to that. It did not make those decisions and therefore what came out at the end was pretty predictable—in fact very predictable. Therein lay the problem. I kept on asking why even after the results came out in January this year and huge problems were noticed in the variability between different subjects decisions could not have been made to overcome the problems. The issue was that the exams were not marked in such a way that that could be done. There were no marks that could be manipulated. It was not a matter of the scripts going back. The scripts had already been sent back; that was not the problem. The problem was that the grades were marked in a manner that could not then be manipulated statistically in order to get a fair outcome. So we have a situation where people have got scholarships based upon the subjects they have taken not necessarily on their abilities and that is unfair on the students. It is unfair both on the students who gained them justifiably and on the students who missed out as a result of picking subjects that had hard standards. 
What this decision now will mean is that in each particular subject area a given number of students will most definitely get scholarships. However that will not overcome some of that variability between the cohorts themselves and there will be variability within those cohorts. So I suggest to the Government that this measure will be only a very temporary solution and that there will still be some problems to overcome arising from the decision made today which will face us at the end of 2005 and the beginning of 2006. Further modifications will have to be made to this particular examination particularly in terms of the awards to the top students because that cannot be done by the present suggestions. I have to go along with what the Hon Bill English said which is that the problem it leads us to now is not confidence that the examination will yield the results but the issue of the presumed quality of the school. I am the ex-principal of an area school—Tauraroa Area School—and because it did not have a town or anything else attached to it no one would know where it was. If one of my students had got a scholarship people would have just said they were sorry but he or she came from a tinpot country school. But if a student who received a scholarship came from Auckland Grammar they would have said that because the student was from Auckland Grammar he or she was deserving of it. That is unfair and that is something that has always been a challenge to our education system. Our education system has always fronted up to ensure that there was equity within the results that our assessment systems produced. That is so that anybody who gets an A a B or a C award is judged to be equivalent.