English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
English Bill: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:632;Page:4114] 
6.  
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What proportion of National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) internal assessments moderated by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority in 2005 were found to be faulty? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The moderation process works as follows. Each year schools negotiate with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority as to what will be checked. For each standard eight pieces of work are provided ranging from “excellence” to “not achieved”. The work submitted is required to be samples considered to be on the borderline of each of those levels of achievement. The schools are then given feedback which supports the professional development of the teachers. Samples checked by the authority in 2005 made up 3 percent of all internal assessment. Of that 3 percent around 29 percent were rated by moderators as not being to the national standard and 10 percent were said to be invalid meaning that there needed to be improvements in the way that questions were put to students. 
Hon Bill English 
: Can the Minister confirm therefore that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has acknowledged that 40 percent of the internal assessment tasks it moderates turn out to be faulty and that this represents wrong results for thousands of students? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: No. What I can confirm is that of the 3 percent of the overall internal assessments that came into the authority during the year 29 percent were rated by moderators as not meeting the national standard and 10 percent were rated as having a question that was not the right kind of question to elicit the right kind of work. 
Moana Mackey 
: Is the Government seeking to making improvements in the assessment process of NCEA? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: We are now in the third year of NCEA and overall the assessment process is working well. With ongoing professional development and feedback it will improve further. The assessment system of course relies on the professional integrity of teachers—in the same way that we rely on the integrity of doctors and lawyers. I was concerned that a recent media article portrayed four teachers in four schools as acting unprofessionally. It is my position that where unprofessional behaviour has been identified the accreditation of the school and the registration of the teacher should be considered. As Graham Young of the Secondary Principals Association said yesterday: “Teachers need to demonstrate they can be trusted. If that can happen we have a professional teaching occupation operating within self-managing schools in an environment of high trust and high accountability.” 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Has the New Zealand Qualifications Authority instigated the application of item response theory mechanisms to the modification of NCEA as recommended by John Hattie in his March 2005 paper  
Professional Opinion on the Major Issues to be Addressed in the NCEA 
; if not why not? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: The answer is yes. The authority works closely with John Hattie and other leading assessment experts. 
Hon Bill English 
: Why did the Minister tell the House that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority works closely with John Hattie on NCEA when in fact it does not; Mr Hattie has written no reports had no commissions and had no formal discussions with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority about NCEA—only about Scholarship? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: That is exactly what I told the House—that John Hattie along with other people like Terry Crooks has worked closely with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority on Scholarship and much of that work has been applied to NCEA. 
Hon Bill English 
: When is this Minister going to answer a question honestly given that the member from New Zealand First asked him about NCEA and the Minister said John Hattie was working on it with the New Zealand Qualifications Authority then the Minister said that Mr Hattie was talking to the authority only about Scholarship; why can this Minister not give a straight answer and tell the House that despite the Minister’s best efforts to mislead the House John Hattie has done nothing with NCEA? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Replying to the member who has made an art form of misleading can I say that what I have said consistently is that an expert group has worked on Scholarship and that much of that work has been applied to NCEA. 
Hon Bill English 
: Why it is acceptable to the Minister that 39 percent of internal assessments moderated by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority are found to be wrong that by his own figures 97 percent of internal assessments are not checked at all and that thousands of students are getting the wrong results because the assessments are faulty and no one knows and no one tells them? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: Let me go through it again for the member. The moderation process is not a marking process; it is a process that after all the results are in relies on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority negotiating with schools to send in to it 3 percent across the board of all the internally assessed work that is undertaken. 
Hon Bill English 
: So is it a sample or not? 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: So that is a sample of the work that is undertaken. 
Hon Member 
: Random sample. 
Hon STEVE MAHAREY 
: It is not a random sample; it is a sample of the borderline assessments that schools want to have moderated in order to know whether they have got it right. They send the work in it is moderated they get feedback and they improve their performance. That member probably got his university entrance qualification—because he is so smart—by accreditation. That was internally assessed; that was not moderated. God knows what work he did to get through! 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: I seek leave to table the paper by John Hattie from March 2005  
Professional Opinion on the Major Issues to be Addressed in the NCEA 
. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House.