School Certificate Figures Misleading

Tuesday, September 11 2001 Donna Awatere Huata Press Releases -- Commerce

ACT Education Spokesman Donna Awatere Huata revealed today that 12,883 out of the 62,465 students who sat School Certificate last year achieved no better than D or E grades.

"The Minister's responses to my Parliamentary questions show that 20 percent of the students sitting the exam last year achieved actually failed every subject ' since D grades are given for marks of 49 or less.

"Of course, it is not called failing now, because even if you get all D and E grades you are still issued with a certificate and regarded as if you have a qualification. Indeed 1457 students were issued certificates last year even though their only 'qualification' was a single E grade ' for a score of 29 or less.

"It is misleading and unfair to students to give them the impression they have gained a qualification ' when clearly it is not worth the paper it is printed on.

"These statistics show that the numbers of students failing to get qualifications is much higher than the Government would want us to believe. The Government says that 10,262 students left last year without qualifications ' that's students who didn't sit School Certificate. And yet an extra more than 12,000 students, although sitting the exam failed to get any marks of 50 or more.

"All of this is just not good enough. Employers need more accurate outcomes and students need to know exactly what their abilities are. The Government claims it is fixing this problem through the NCEA.

"But I have seen research that shows that an NCEA test score will be more than twice as unreliable as current exams.

"This government has shown that its can talk about policy, but is not able to set benchmarks to see it through. If students are to compete in a modern knowledge-based economy we must raise the standards in education with accurate testing and assessment," Mrs Huata said.

For more information visit ACT online at http://www.act.org.nz or contact the ACT Parliamentary Office at act@parliament.govt.nz.

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