One article today was talking about how now students will receive a certificate that says E, M, A or NA as applicable and that seems fine, but coupled with a comment asking how we will determine what grade to give someone across a whole subject based on standards I was left scratching my head. NCEA is basically Uni lite. Each standard is a paper and teachers are given a vast array of standards to put together into a program that will last a year and provide enough credits to pass the year level. Would you expect people to say that they had received a B- Bachelor of Science? No, they have a Bachelor of Science. But then you can look within that and see what sort of grade average they have and in what particular areas.
yes. but apparently employers are too fucking stupid to figure it out. it doesn't help that the media makes the whole situation worse by bitching about how it's a subpar qualification. which it's not. the education you're getting hasn't much changed.
I gotta say, comparing how I remember experiencing Sixth Form Cert and Bursary with how I was trying to teach using the NCEA setup, I found NCEA made a lot more sense form a teahcing perspective, more flexible to work with the students you have. And the subjects and tasks were definately the same, only there was a bit more room for something that might catch the student's interest.
Which is presumably why it's such a good predictor of uni marks. It does get me a bit that NZQA are throwing this statistic around like it means NCEA is the best measure of academic ability. Not denying that it DOES measure academic ability, but I would guess it predicts university marks in particular so well because of the mixture of tests and exams, and the compartmentalising of things, not because it so purely measures ability.
The changes are primarily for motivation from my understanding, which I completely agree with. Kids need to be pushed because a lot of them are inclined to go for just good enough. Uni peeps are the same. I was.
But it doesn't matter what the system is in place, if theres a way to slack off and get through, some will do that. They did it under the last system too.
It'll be interesting to see if it does help as people want I guess.
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One article today was talking about how now students will receive a certificate that says E, M, A or NA as applicable and that seems fine, but coupled with a comment asking how we will determine what grade to give someone across a whole subject based on standards I was left scratching my head. NCEA is basically Uni lite. Each standard is a paper and teachers are given a vast array of standards to put together into a program that will last a year and provide enough credits to pass the year level. Would you expect people to say that they had received a B- Bachelor of Science? No, they have a Bachelor of Science. But then you can look within that and see what sort of grade average they have and in what particular areas.
yes. but apparently employers are too fucking stupid to figure it out. it doesn't help that the media makes the whole situation worse by bitching about how it's a subpar qualification. which it's not. the education you're getting hasn't much changed.
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Which is presumably why it's such a good predictor of uni marks.
It does get me a bit that NZQA are throwing this statistic around like it means NCEA is the best measure of academic ability. Not denying that it DOES measure academic ability, but I would guess it predicts university marks in particular so well because of the mixture of tests and exams, and the compartmentalising of things, not because it so purely measures ability.
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Remember, Canadians spell like the Brits and prounced like the Yanks.
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It'll be interesting to see if it does help as people want I guess.
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