Awatere Huata Donna: National Certificate in Educational Achievement Moratorium Bill — First Reading 
Awatere Huata Donna: National Certificate in Educational Achievement Moratorium Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:606;Page:4048] 
DONNA AWATERE HUATA (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I move  
That the National Certificate in Educational Achievement Moratorium Bill be now read a first time. 
 I propose to have this bill referred to the Education and Science Committee. The past year has been a roller coaster year for fifth form students who sat level 1 of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). It has been a roller coaster year for teachers of level 1. It has been a confusing year for parents who cannot understand how the new exams work. It has been a stressful year for the first group of students who have gone through the system. They are the ones who have been on the back end of a mad scheme set up by a small group of bureaucrats determined to cut down our academic tall poppies and level them all down to the lowest common denominator of mediocrity. 
The NCEA moratorium bill is not a big bill. It does not say to do away with the NCEA. It does not say to turn back the clock and stop level 1 from proceeding. It does not even say for us to go back to School Certificate and Sixth Form Certificate. It is saying that we should stop for a minute and reflect on what is happening here because there is no doubt that what is happening is a disgrace. 
The Post Primary Teachers Association (PPTA) which represents 14500 secondary school teachers has resolved that level 3 which would replace bursary should not go ahead before 2006 at the earliest. It is saying that schools and teachers need time to bed-in level 2 to get it right to iron out the problems and that schools should be given next year and 2005 to do that. It is also saying that there needs to be greater flexibility and I agree with it. I predict that we will look back in 5 to 10 years’ time and rue the day that we let a fundamentally flawed exam system leach its way into the school system—leach its way into cutting down the tall poppies taking away their incentive to excel. 
The irony in all this is that it is not the future potential of the well-off or those lucky enough to get into our top schools that is at risk. The ones most at risk are those students in the poorest areas who have no choice but to go to a school where students have traditionally underachieved. Anyone who thinks that an employer or a university is going to think that NCEA qualifications gained at a decile 1A school like Flaxmere College or Tangaroa College is the same as that gained at Havelock North High School or Samuel Marsden Collegiate School for example is being an optimistic Pollyanna. That is my view—an optimistic Pollyanna. Saying that the qualifications are the same does not make them so. 
Let me make it quite clear: the students who will be most seriously disadvantaged from the NCEA especially with this mix of internal and external exams will be the very students whom the social engineers have tried to help—the ones who leave school without any qualifications other than unit standards. But employers are not going to look through all the paperwork to find out whether the paper was largely internally or externally assessed; they will look at the name of the school and jump to their own conclusions. That is exactly what will happen and that is why students from decile 1A schools and the lower decile schools will be disadvantaged by NCEA in the long run. 
The aim of this bill is very simple: it is just to provide a 1 or 2 year breathing space. We need some breathing space because the implementation of the NCEA has been frantic muddled and confusing in this past year. I have to say that the Minister’s decision to delay the start of the NCEA until 2001 was a good decision but even then the Education and Science Committee’s hearing last year into the implementation of level 1 of the NCEA uncovered a litany of problems—the sorts of problems that occur when the thinking behind the exams is wrong in the first place and when the time and the resources simply were not set aside to ensure a smoother less troubled first year. That is the problem with NCEA I contend: it is the thinking behind it that is flawed. 
My bill is a bit too late to do anything about level 2 which was pushed ahead this year and I think I have made it pretty clear that while I am not a great supporter of the NCEA I believe that we can yet avert a greater tragedy than the loss of School Certificate. Sixth Form Certificate has also gone but many believe—and I am one of them—that it is not much of a loss at all. 
However bursary is another matter. Bursary is quite a different matter. Bursary is a gold-plated exam. It is gold-plated. Twenty years have gone into getting bursary to the point where it is today. It is now gold standard and I cannot understand why we would want to tinker with it. Of course there are things we can do to improve it. Of course we can refine it. Of course there are many suggestions already on the table suggestions from teachers that should have been followed years ago. Maybe now is the time to do it but throwing the baby out with the bath water is I believe a retrograde step. At the end of the day employers know bursary. Tertiary institutions know bursary. It is gold standard. It is internationally recognised and I believe very strongly that we should keep it just as it is. 
The advantage that my bill presents to us tonight is that it gives us an opportunity to evaluate where we are to date with NCEA in its totality but best of all it will give us the breathing space we need to make sure we do the right thing. Let us just take one example. Why can level 3 and bursary not coexist? There is no reason that level 3 and bursary cannot coexist—no reason at all. The Minister’s argument that there are not two teachers per subject good enough to be chief examiners is insulting to 14500 secondary school teachers and to every single senior subject teacher in this country. The Post Primary Teachers Association has called it a laughable excuse and I agree with the association. 
I could accept NCEA if there were credible research to support it but there is none. There is no peer review or published research that shows the benefits and advantages of NCEA. A small pilot was held yes but no quantifiable outcomes were defined upfront no analysis was undertaken and no research reviewed and published. If the research had been done I believe that the kinds of bungling and resource issues that were brought to light by the NCEA inquiry last year would never have happened. So when parents claim as they have that their children are guinea pigs in a giant experiment they are quite right. 
It gets worse. No plans are in place yet for a major evaluation to be undertaken or for a major research project to be even begun. The Minister and his bureaucrats have said to us that they will wait until the exams have been in place for a few years. By then it will be too late. Habits will be in force and loopholes found and problems that are unacceptable now will no longer seem as bad. In my view it is time to have a breathing space and I commend this bill to the House.