Ogilvy Bernie: Urgent Debates — New Zealand Scholarship Examination—Future 
Ogilvy Bernie: Urgent Debates — New Zealand Scholarship Examination—Future 
[Volume:624;Page:19463] 
BERNIE OGILVY (United Future) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of United Future to address this matter from probably a different perspective but to note that although we have had a lot of Opposition politicians quick to publicise or to promote what the problems might be solutions have been very slow to emerge. That is one observation that we have been able to note. United Future has been more focused on how to fix the problems. The committee that examined this has come forth with a solution today and it has been published. I will come back to that to refer to one or two points that the Associate Minister touched on today. 
United Future has had a track record of trying to improve the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) programme through the system. Right from the beginning since we were elected I remember that we—and myself in particular—initiated a select committee inquiry into the implementation of the NCEA qualifications system. It was not so much dealing with it as a system but addressing the total inadequacies of the support and everything that went through for that—the funding the personnel the skills and everything else. From year one it was obvious that the system was struggling even to exist. We were successful in helping with the Government in the 2003 Budget to add at least I think it was something like $66 million over the next 4 years to help with operations grants in implementing NCEA. We want to offer specific constructive and common-sense solutions to the problems that have and will still beset the NCEA. 
But I think it would be good if we could just refer to what we are looking at here. We are probably looking at a clash of two world views in educational philosophies. Nobody really has got on to how we synchronise these two which actually cannot truly be synchronised. That is where everyone is trying to harmonise one with the other. 
I would like to refer to where these matters began. They began with Socrates and Plato. Plato and Socrates had two different views on how to allow education to take place and it is from there that we still have two different views in operation. That is why we talk about norm-based or standards-based. They are two entirely different views. When they come together they clash. 
I remind the House that Socrates had the concept that children were inherently bad and the system called education and educators were there to help and to correct them. That was his view. Plato had the concept that children were inherently good in terms of education and the systems that were there made them worse. So what we are looking at today is very similar—the knowledge or norm-based systems that we have had up until now with exams were really where Plato was coming from. We had good children; they needed to be filled up with more information and therefore be accounted for and assessed in that manner through examinations. 
On the other hand Socrates had what we would call a standards-based system—children were bad they need to be corrected in all their assessments life skills and everything else and hence the standards-based concept is as old as that. 
 Today we arrive at a clash of these two ideas and I do not believe that we have fully solved it. It is important that the House comment on the report the Government has produced today. Other speakers have addressed these comments but if we are going to have a scholarship system where a percentage is allocated to every subject—if I recall what the Associate Minister said today—it is not then based on scholarship. The Minister stated: “We will allocate a percent of the top people”—and they do not define how we get to the top people—“and then we will allocate a percent.” 
Let us say it is 3 percent for argument’s sake of all of those who did the level 3 programme. They cannot be called scholarships; they are basically just selected. It has nothing to do scholarship. I think this is where the clash of ideas still exists in our vocabulary. We call it a scholarship exam when it is not. It is a delusion. 
Another thing that I believe the Associate Minister spoke about by way of conclusion was that it was based on level 3. Level 3 is not scholarship as we used to know it. It should be and it is what we tried and experimented with this year with the 2004 exams a level 4. There should be a level 4 that is quite separate and it should not only just meet as the Associate Minister proclaimed today a satisfactory level. I am not sure what that means and I am sure the students of 2005 will never know what it means. In fact it will be hidden from them until somebody selects a certain percent on every subject. 
It is a terrifying experience not to know whether there are any standards that can be achieved. If everybody went to the lowest possible satisfactory level the top percent would still be chosen whatever it was and I do not think that that is really what it is all about. I applaud the Government for at least having a top scholar award programme built into the whole issue but I believe that we are not adequately looking at the two philosophies as they clash. 
The standards-based programme should finish at level 3 and the norm-based programme should kick in at level 4. I say that because when one goes to university in particular it is a norm-based system. So to integrate the two systems the clash between them needs to take place before the students get to university so that they can understand. 
United Future asks for a return to real scholarship exams in their previous format. I do not believe there is any problem with that. A separate scholarship exam system is to find out who are the top students in every subject. Their results can then be compared they can be ranked and they can have an order about them. People want to know where they stood as students and so do the universities and others who are taking them on. It is very difficult to go away from that. Scholarship exams should revert back to the norm-referenced systems and therefore enable results to be ranked or even scaled if necessary. This should not jeopardise the NCEA assessment because the scholarship exams are kept separate. 
I believe that what the Associate Minister has to do now is engage in a strong and vigorous public education campaign to ensure that parents students employers and certainly the universities can understand what is going on through the promotion of a scholarship exam. We should not call them scholarship exams fraudulently unless they are scholarship exams. If that were achieved we would see a better more relieved public in terms of present students and certainly forthcoming students in New Zealand.