NCEA is Corrupt: $78 Million Won't Help

Mallard's taxpayer-funded $78 million fix-up job for the absolutely flawed NCEA is pathetic, ACT New Zealand Spokesman Deborah Coddington said today.

"Trevor Mallard's bought a lemon - and this expensive paint-job is just a sign of desperation. Mr Mallard says this $78 million will "develop support documentation for all national qualifications". Well, I'm sorry Trevor, but you're far too late to start sorting out your paper work now. Kids have sat NCEA level one, they've been treated as guinea pigs, and the experiment has failed.

"Mr Mallard has lowered the fees for beneficiaries' kids - buying off the people whose children lose most -paying for it with a $150-per-subject fee for ordinary working families.

"The ideology behind NCEA is that choice and competition are dirty words. This is manifest in the elimination of national exams, chopping subjects into bits, forcing teachers to teach according to a warrant-of-fitness type curricula, and - most importantly - preventing students from outsmarting their peers.

"The NCEA is designed to undermine the brightest students by gleefully averaging their assessments to the lowest "credit", while acting as an esteem massager by telling the slowest or laziest students they have not failed, rather they simply "did not achieve".

"More money will just buy the bureaucratic defenders of NCEA a few more mechanical pencils," Miss Coddington said.

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