Hon Bill English National Party Education Spokesman

7 February 2005

NZQA stalling over scholarship results

NZQA and the Associate Minister of Education are still stalling over dealing with dodgy NCEA scholarship results, says National's Education spokesman, Bill English.

Schools have not received national NCEA results despite a promise from David Benson-Pope last week in Parliament and an official circular from NZQA saying that results comparing each school against national trends would be available by last Friday.

"NZQA should quit stalling and release the results. Without them, schools and students have no way of knowing how well they performed nationally," says Mr English.

Last week schools revealed that students who had failed Level 3 graphics won scholarships, a student who had never attended a class won a geography scholarship, and that very few scholarships had been awarded in science subjects.

"I am now advised that though there were very few science scholarships awarded, more than 60% of students who sat the accounting scholarship exam won scholarships," says Mr English.

"I am also told failure rates in Level 2 English have jumped from about 30% to 70% because it was a harder exam than Level 3 English.

"Schools are reporting huge differences in their internal and external assessment results. Something has clearly gone wrong.

"Students are finalising their decisions this week on subject choices for the year, while speculation and unease continues to mount.

"The sooner NZQA releases the results, the sooner schools can identify problems and the sooner those problems can begin to be ironed out," says Mr English.

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