SecQual

Changes to External Moderation for 2012
S2011/055 - 23 Nov 2011

Changes to External Moderation for 2012

Recently, at the PPTA Annual Conference, the Minister of Education, Hon. Anne Tolley, announced a number of changes to NZQA secondary moderation.  This circular outlines in brief these key changes and others.  More detail will become available next year.

Volume of external moderation

NZQA is required to moderate internally assessed student work achieving credit towards NCEA.  In the past NZQA was required to moderate 10 per cent of student work, in 2011, NZQA moderated 154,000 samples.  The recently announced changes to moderation mean NZQA is now required to moderate approximately 100,000 samples of student work. 

NZQA external moderation will now consist of two separate samples:

1. A school check of approximately 90,000 to 95,000 samples of student work for the purpose of providing professional feedback to teachers. The school check will operate in much the same way as in previous years, but schools and teachers will notice a decrease in the number of standards requested for external moderation from 2012.  Work selected for this sample will not be used to calculate teacher/moderator agreement rates.
2. A new national system check of approximately 5,000 to 10,000 samples of student work for the purpose of establishing a national teacher/moderator agreement rate.  NZQA will randomly select about 500 students across the country for whom all work will be moderated. More details will be provided to Principal’s Nominees about how this will operate early next year.

Submission rounds

In keeping with the decrease in external moderation the number of submission rounds will also decrease.  The first submission round is now 1 April and the last is 1 November.  Schools may get a new submission date next year.  NZQA plans to spread moderation more evenly throughout the year in order to increase turnaround times.

Changes to what will be moderated

Previously NZQA moderated both assessment judgements on student work and assessment materials.  The moderation of student work and assessment judgements will continue but the moderation of assessment materials will change. From 2012, NZQA will focus on the moderation of assessment judgements on student work overall against the achievement criteria in the standard.  If issues arise with assessor judgements, only then will the moderator look at the assessment materials. 

QAAM® and NZQA Approved™ assessment materials will not be moderated unless they have been significantly modified so as to affect assessment judgements.

Schools and teachers will still be required to send in the assessment materials for moderation but in many cases will not get a detailed report back as it is not required and would be of little or no benefit. Currently, over 97% of assessment materials being used are at the national standard or require minor modification.

The degree of moderation of assessment materials will vary between subjects.  More subjective judgements, such as those in Visual Arts, better suit this new method whereas more objective judgements, such as those in Accounting, can often only be verified in conjunction with the assessment schedule and task requirements.

Optional Teacher Selected Evidence (OTSE)

Demand for OTSE has more than doubled in the past year. NZQA will continue to offer feedback on OTSE for teachers in 2012.  This is particularly important for new standards as they may not be selected for external moderation in the first year of implementation.

OTSE can be used at any time:

• for any curriculum-related, internal achievement standard
• to pose questions to moderators about the interpretation of standards
• to support internal moderation

The purpose of OTSE is not to verify teacher marking or to pre-moderate assessment tasks. It is to help clarify standards. Teachers can ask specific questions of the moderator about interpreting standards, judging student work and also, new in 2012, ask questions about task design.  This is being made available to help improve assessment practice and to increase teacher confidence when making assessment decisions.

More examples of how to ask questions about task design and the sort of questions that will be suitable will be created and put on the NZQA web site.

Further information about sending in OTSE is available online.

Best Practice Workshops

The number of workshops will be increased to approximately 200, catering for 3600 teachers. This is an increase of 1420 more places for teachers. The registration fee will also be waived for 2012.

In order to further reduce the teacher relief cost for schools, workshops will now be offered during term time and also school holidays or weekends

NZQA will also be contacting Subject Associations with a view to hosting some workshops either side of national conferences to reduce travel costs for teachers.  National Assessment Moderators may also be available to address national conferences.

A key change to the content of these workshops will be to cover assessment design principles, to include course design and to show how to easily modify the context of an assessment resource to better ensure authenticity of student work.

Registration is open to all who wish to participate and NZQA will continue to provide additional workshops on demand.

Next year’s workshops have not yet been scheduled, but further information will be available at: www.nzqa.govt.nz/bestpractice.

Electronic submission of materials

In 2012, NZQA will be working with a few schools to trial the electronic submission of secondary moderation materials.  If your school would like to be included in the trial, please contact the Secondary Moderation business unit.

NZQA Approved™ status for assessment materials

Two years ago, NZQA introduced the Quality Assured Assessment Materials (QAAM®) trademark for commercially developed assessment materials.  We should expect to see an increase in the number available from 2012.

From 2012, NZQA is also introducing a new ‘NZQA Approved™’ status for assessment materials developed by the Ministry of Education.  These will be immediately applied to the new assessment materials being published for the aligned standards. 

These materials can be used with confidence by teachers as they have already been quality assured by NZQA moderators as being ‘fit for the purpose’ and ‘at the national standard’.

If any issues arise with the ‘NZQA Approved™’ assessment materials then NZQA will work closely with the Ministry of Education to remedy these issues and put a new version up on the TKI website, rather than giving detailed feedback to teachers on how to fix them themselves.

Other changes to external moderation:

• A National Assessment Moderator Te Reo Māori has been appointed for 2012.  A key focus of this new role will be to develop the same support materials available in other larger subjects and run best practice workshops. The role of the Kāhui, external moderation panel, will also continue and expand to include wider support for the sector.
• NZQA will be exploring the use of social media to communicate with teachers in 2012.

We are always open to new ideas and feedback.  Please feel free to contact us directly at the team mailbox listed below.

Enquiries

Please refer any enquiries relating to this circular to:

Secondary Moderation
Telephone: 04 463 3000
Email: secmod@nzqa.govt.nz