All NZ High Schools Consulted On Qualifications

6 October 1999
Immediate Release

All NZ High Schools being Consulted On Qualifications

Every secondary teacher in New Zealand will have the chance to comment on the new senior secondary school qualifications system to be introduced in 2001.

The Achievement 2001 consultation aims to make sure that final decisions on the initiative are made in the light of the considered views of teachers.

The Ministry of Education and the Post Primary Teachers' Association are jointly hosting 28 briefing meetings, from Okaihau in the far north, to Invercargill, in the next week (October 7 - 13).

Every secondary school will receive a detailed briefing pack on these meetings.

School representatives will use this material to conduct special staff meetings during October.

By October 28, each school will be able to return its response to the key issues raised by the development of Achievement 2001 to the Ministry's Qualifications Development Group (QDG).

QDG manager Tim McMahon says it's critical that the new qualifications system is one that teachers support.

"We'll pull together all the responses we receive and present them to one leaders' forum which meets again on November 1 and 2," he said.

"With all this input from teachers, our representative forum of principals, senior curriculum people, the PPTA, the Ministry, and the New Zealand Qualification Authority will give us the steer we need on the key issues.

"The key aims for all of us, including the Ministry and the PPTA, are to properly recognise student achievement in a unified and coherent way; and to have a system that is manageable in the classroom without placing unsustainable workload pressure on teachers."

PPTA National President Graeme McCann said he welcomed this opportunity for joint nationwide consultation.

"It's excellent to work with the Ministry on this major issue. We must get this right, and to do that we need to listen to all the views in our hundreds of staffrooms," he said.

END

© Scoop Media