Address to the Top Scholars Ceremony at Government House, 2008
30 May 2008
Kia Ora Koutou.
Good afternoon everybody, it is a pleasure to be here today.
My name is Sue Suckling and I am the Chair of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority Board.
Before I begin, I would like to thank Their Excellencies The Honourable Anand Satyanand and Mrs Susan Satyanand for hosting this wonderful event. It is always a pleasure to be welcomed to this beautiful setting.
Minister Carter, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, most importantly, Top Scholars. On behalf of the Board of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and our Chief Executive Karen Poutasi, I thank you for joining us you here today.
We are here to honour New Zealand 's brightest young minds – the Top Scholars of the New Zealand Scholarship exams 2007.
I congratulate you. The award you receive today is recognition of the effort and investment you have made in your own education. You have pushed yourselves to be the best, and you've succeeded.
Speaking of success, it is very tempting to draw upon a sports analogy. Especially with the Olympic Games only two months away, I find myself drawing parallels between the Games and the Scholarship examinations.
The tradition of the Olympics was revived in 1896 by French educator Baron Pierre de Coubertin. De Coubertin wanted to start a program that encouraged people to balance the development of both mind and body.
The modern Olympics were fashioned around the principles of effort, education and ethics. The first paragraph of the Olympic charter states:
Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a balanced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good example and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles
Olympic athletes stand out as having a willingness to challenge themselves, to learn; they use their thoughts to condition their results; they are able to cope with strong obstacles; they set themselves useful objectives; they know how to focus; they earn the respect, and give respect to, their competitors.
I'm sure to all the parent, teachers and principals here, these attributes sound very familiar to those of the top scholars we have come to celebrate today.
I quote from NZQA's own literature when I say:
a student who achieves scholarship will have demonstrated, within complex situations, higher level critical thinking, abstraction and generalisation and the ability to integrate, synthesise and apply knowledge, skills, understanding and ideas.
It's fairly clear that top-level performance is top-level performance, no matter if you are an accomplished athlete or an accomplished academic.
Key to reaching this top-level achievement, however, is a system that encourages and drives performance.
Top-level athletes approach the Olympic Games unsure of who will stand on the podium, yet knowing what to expect from the event. They are confident that they have arrived at a respected and reliable test of their abilities; they are aware of the high calibre of competitors they will face; and they are motivated by the spirit and the tradition of the Games - keenly aware of the international pride represented by an Olympic medal.
In education, the key to facilitating top performance is providing an assessment system that motivates students to succeed; a system that is robust and challenging.
Our nation's top young scholars approach the Scholarship examinations with the same expectations as an olympian. They are more than aware of the competition they face, but they can be confident that the tests they face will be both challenging and fair. They also know the rewards to be gained, including financial scholarships, and that their results will be acknowledged internationally.
The quality of the Scholarship examinations is evident in the process by which the assessment is developed and administered.
The examinations - originally developed in consultation with the wider secondary education sector - are written by subject experts, checked by subject experts and then reviewed by even more subject experts. The whole process is overseen by an independent group of academics from New Zealand 's finest universities. The overview group provides advice on examination methodology and facilitates the selection of top-level awards.
This of course doesn't even begin to take into account the effort put in by teachers, in and out of the classroom, to direct and encourage students to keep aiming higher. The hours, weeks, and months spent working with students, challenging them not only to learn, but to learn to think. Their work, the work of some of you here today, keeps helping to raise the bar in the impressive competition for scholarship.
And one of the outcomes of all this effort, of the whole Scholarship process, is determining the nation's top scholars - New Zealand 's most promising young people. The examinations are designed to identify approximately the top three percent of Year 13 students studying each subject, but are also backed up by a challenging baseline of criteria which all candidates must meet in order to gain scholarship. Those criteria I mentioned earlier: the higher-level critical thinking, the integration, synthesis and application of knowledge, skills, understanding, and ideas.
The Scholarship exams enable students to be assessed against challenging standards and give recognition of their success through monetary award. New Zealand Scholarship awards total almost $2 million annually, so little wonder the level of competition is so fierce!
Like the top-level Olympic athletes, the top scholars have dedicated time and shown perseverance and willingness to continuously push themselves harder in order to reach a higher level of achievement.
Scholarship winners, therefore, are also New Zealand 's medallists. Top in Subject winners are the gold medallists. I guess that makes you Premier Award winners the decathletes of the Scholarship examinations - you are specialists in multiple fields, winning medals in each.
So, to you, the top scholars, on behalf of the Board of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, I congratulate you all. Your achievements echo those words from the Olympic Charter; you have embraced achievement and realised the joy found in effort, and the balance of body, will and mind.
Today you are all champions.
Congratulations.