SecQual

Internal Assessment Resources Project for Level 1
S2011/005 - 01 Feb 2011

Internal Assessment Resources Project for Level 1

Annotated exemplars

NZQA has been working with the Ministry of Education to develop annotated exemplars of student work for the new 2011 Level 1 Achievement Standards. An annotated exemplar consists of two parts. The first part is a sample of student work from school trials against the draft standards, or an expected student response that has been developed by teachers. The NZQA moderators then develop annotations that link the student work to the requirements of the standard. For each standard there are 1 or 2 sets of annotated exemplars. These exemplars are at the grade boundary to best assist teachers when making assessment judgements. There are examples of Low Excellence, High Merit, Low Merit, High Achieved, Low Achieved and High Not Achieved. The moderators then explain why the evidence does not quite meet the next grade level and what more could be done to lift the student above the grade boundary.

These annotated exemplars of student work can be found on the NZQA subject resources pages.

These exemplars will help teachers in their planning and in making better assessment judgements when grading student work. They will be regularly updated as student work becomes available through the year.

These exemplars are also very useful benchmarks for students to see the quality of work required to achieve at each level. They can be used to raise student achievement.

We would welcome feedback on these exemplars. In particular, whether the samples of student work need to be the entire student work or just key extracts. Also we would like to know how useful they are to teachers and students. Please e-mail feedback to assessmentresources@nzqa.govt.nz at any time.

Assessment Activities

As part of the Standards Alignment project, the MOE and Learning Media Limited used subject experts to develop assessment activities. These have been published on the TKI website.

They can also be found via the NZQA subject resources web pages by clicking on ‘Curriculum Standards Alignment’ on each subject page.

The initial drafts are labelled as Draft Assessment Resources. They were published in May 2010 and were for planning purposes only. They were based on the draft standards and developed before most standards were trialled. They were not for student use in 2010 because the standards had not yet been finalised and registered.

On the TKI web site you will now find a range of updated assessment resources for the new Level 1 Achievement Standards, labelled ‘Final published assessment resources’. These updated assessment resources have been amended as a result of trialling in schools or final changes made to the registered standards in December. These are for use with students from 2011.

A number of assessment resources are in the process of moving from ‘Draft’ status to ‘Final Published’ status. This means that they should not yet be used with students, however, they are still adequate for teacher planning purposes. These ‘final’ resources will be ready for use by the end of February, at which point they can be used with confidence by teachers in 2011.

We recognise that this is not entirely satisfactory.  As the standards have been trialled and gone through the rigorous quality assurance process a number of changes needed to be made to the standards.  As a result of this, many of the assessment resources also needed to be adjusted.  While many of these changes were minor, they do matter. The number of changes required and the difficulty of accessing subject experts over the last three months have resulted in the delay.

We want to ensure that once the resources are ‘final’ teachers, and moderators can use them with confidence.

As with all assessment resources, schools will still need to follow their own quality assurance processes, including addressing authenticity. In some cases the generic activity needs to have a specific context or topic set.

Note: For copyright reasons, some assessment resources or annotated exemplars may only be viewed through the school’s secure log-in on the NZQA website.

Moderation

In 2010, your school was given a moderation plan for 2011. The randomly selected standards are now a more nationally representative sample of standards.

In 2011, NZQA will not be moderating most Level 1 Unit Standards as they are expiring and feedback will be of less benefit to teachers. The new Level 1 Achievement Standards have also not yet been selected for external moderation as schools may choose to use either the older and expiring Level 1 internally assessed Achievement Standards or the new Level 1 Achievement Standards.

Schools may negotiate the replacement of any expiring Level 1 Achievement Standard that has been requested for external moderation with any similar new Level 1 Achievement Standard. Please ask your Principal’s Nominee to email your requested change to the school’s moderation plan to your School Relationship Manager.

Enquiries

Please refer any enquiries relating to this circular to:

School Relationship Manager
School Quality Assurance and Liaison
Telephone: 04 463 3000
Fax: 04 463 3113
Email: firstname.surname@nzqa.govt.nz