Reasons 3,043 & 3,044 why the NCEA should be dumped

Monday 31 Jan 2005
Deborah Coddington
Press Releases -- Education

Every day more evidence comes in which shows that the Government must move quickly to allow schools to dump the NCEA, ACT Education spokesman Deborah Coddington said today.

"One parent wrote to me in the weekend, outlining his concerns, and labelled the qualification 'No Chance of Ever Achieving'," Miss Coddington said.

"The National Party has today expressed outrage at a history paper question which stereotyped a National MP as 'not sympathetic to Maori concerns'.

"National is justified in labelling this brainwashing. However, Dr Brash's calling for an explanation is not good enough.

"He and Bill English should go further and call for the NCEA to be dumped by those who've had a gutsful of this politically correct nonsense.

"Another NCEA horror story that hit my desk this morning was the information that a Year 12 student at an Auckland school got a scholarship in 2004 NCEA Level 4 Geography. This student, however, had 'never had a geography lesson in his life except a five-minute chat to the geography teacher the day before..all he had on entering the exam hall was a clutch of coloured pencils'.

"Never before have New Zealand's education standards sunk to such a low. It's time to dump the NCEA and bring back an internationally recognised, objectively measured qualification," Miss Coddington said.

ENDS

contact the ACT Parliamentary Office at act@parliament.govt.nz.

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