Human Biology Student Guinea Pigs - NCEA

“NZQA has finally accepted that Concerned Teachers are right that the NCEA needs a ‘pilot’ or trial, but is wrongly using this year’s Human Biology and Physics School Certificate students as guinea pigs,” said Concerned Teachers spokesperson Peter Calvert. Mr Calvert was commenting on an NZQA circular that had just arrived in schools.

“The circular states that ‘In preparation for the implementation of Level 1 Achievement Standards in 2001, a pilot is being conducted in two School Certificate examination subjects this year. The 2001 examinations in each of these subjects will be based on the present subject prescription but will be organised into four sections. Each section will be presented to candidates in separate Question and Answer booklet format, with each candidate receiving a complete package of four sections to complete in the allotted three hour examination time’,” said Mr Calvert.

“Some bureaucrat deep inside NZQA clearly has a sense of irony with the choice of Human Biology as one of the guinea pig subjects. Grass roots teachers will however see this in Dr Mengele proportions,” said Mr Calvert.

“Pilots or trials should not be run in high stakes examinations like School Certificate thereby affecting this year’s results for some students. They are run side by side or with Year 10 or 12 students, where there are no current examinations,” said Mr Calvert.

“This is another case of the Minister of Education’s ‘make it up as you go along’ approach. In fact NZQA is also in breach of its own regulations,” said Mr Calvert. “The prescriptions state that these examinations must be one paper, not four separate papers as they have announced.”

“The NCEA must be postponed. It could be then trialled next year in Year 10 or 12 without affecting students’ life chances,“ said Mr Calvert. Ends: For More information contact: Peter Calvert 021 2111 825 E-mail ConcernedTeachers@xtra.co.nz Website www.concernedteachers.com

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