Improving secondary qualifications

An address by Karen Poutasi, Chief Executive, New Zealand Qualifications Authority, to the New Zealand Secondary Principals' Council Conference 2006.

Download PDF document showing the proposed enhancements to the Record of Learning

Download PDF document showing the current layout of the Record of Learning

27 July 2006

Thank you for the opportunity to address this conference. It is a pleasure to be with you.

As you know, I have only recently been appointed as Chief Executive of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority. So I am still 'learning the ropes' and I am the beneficiary of the efforts of all those who have done so much already to develop national qualifications in New Zealand, including for secondary students.

But, as I start to understand the issues that the sector faces, I can see trends in the way things are developing and today I want to brief you on a possible change and to get your feedback.

The central fact of assessment in secondary schools is that we have now had NCEA at all three levels for two years, and, after some initial difficulties, we now have a formulae for New Zealand Scholarship that works.

So, in short, we have the basics in place.

I think we can legitimately say we are now entering a phase of second-generation refinements.

But for starters, let's try to put this in the widest possible context.

The very different kind of economy that we now live in means almost no one has a job for life. Nowadays we have to retrain and re-educate ourselves a number of times during our working lives. Education as just the dissemination of information from teachers to students isn't enough, if it ever was. Every bit as important is students 'learning how to learn', so later in life they can teach themselves things that we, the older generation, currently can't imagine. We know that in the digital economy the capacity for life-long learning is a key life skill, akin to literacy and numeracy.

If you think back a few decades, it could be said that education acted as a manager of social stratification, so wherever education slotted you, then that was your place in the scheme of things for life. For example, School Certificate was the first in a series of permanent binary societal determinations.

We aren't in that world now. In the digital economy flexibility and creativity win the plaudits and the rewards. Most importantly, being able to keep learning is essential. Success has no respect for hierarchy or tradition.

In response, education is changing. The National Qualifications Framework and, within that, the NCEA are designed to do two critical things. First, all students should leave school open to the prospect of further education or training later on. No one should shuffle out the school gate embittered or convinced that, for them, failure is their place in life. This is pivotal for building a culture of life-long learning.

Secondly, for individual students and individual schools, tuition should be personalised to match the interests and abilities of individual students and the interests and contexts of particular communities. The breaking down of subjects into assessment subsets called standards means students can study at multiple levels and their schools can customise what their students learn. "One size fits all" is gone. Recognising the uniqueness of every student is critical.

In terms of the mechanics of secondary assessment, we are now in an evolutionary phase. Knowledge of how the new system works in practice is growing all the time, and this makes our task easier. For any new assessment system a key question is how will people behave in response - what unintended consequences and unexpected incentives has the new system created?

As we make refinements, we can now more confidently predict the results. If the devil is in the detail, we are now getting the detail sorted. For that reason our confidence is growing. The public too can now have more confidence that a durable assessment system in the secondary sector is settling in and stabilising.

You will have seen recently reports of two studies of students' opinions of secondary assessment - their likes and dislikes, and what they want.

In the study commissioned by the Qualifications Authority, the young people said they liked being able to build up credits through internal assessment during the year. They also said they liked the chance to study at multiple levels. The students welcomed less pressure going into end-of-year exams because they already had credits from internal assessment during the year, and they welcomed increased flexibility and choice in what they could study.

Those points are worth thinking about because they identify rather well what, as policy implementers, we are trying to achieve. One can sum that up as personalised education. Every student is unique. Every student learns in his or her own way and has his or her own particular interests, enthusiasms, strengths and weaknesses. We all take very seriously the goal of 'all learners achieving to their potential'. For this, every student should be receiving his or her schooling in the manner which best caters to his or her particular needs. This will maximise each learner's level of achievement, this being personalised education by another name.

It wasn't always seen this way. I'm told that within education circles there's an apocryphal story of an education administrator in the 1940s who reportedly said. "It's 11.45 am. Every child in New Zealand is spelling hippopotamus," this being seen as a good thing. It was, I suspect, a celebration of the notion that standardised one-size-fits-all education mitigated privilege and was a building block of democracy. Indeed, much more markedly again, the French have a long tradition of a highly standardised education system seen as a building block of citizenship. Reflecting their culture, education was required to be an experience in common; part of what made you French.

However, this is not France and it is not the 1940s!

Our tradition says diversity is a civic virtue. We have never been corporatist in the European sense. And in the 21 st century an economic transformation is underway that increasingly rewards individuals, firms, industries and countries that are fleet footed, nimble, creative and diverse.

This new economy has a constant demand for people who are skilled. The skills required penetrate right through the economy, though the requirements are always shifting.

This is why education has had to change and has to keep changing.

Traditionally, royalty had multiple individual tutors, clearly the ultimate in personalised education. Today we hear of children of wealthy Americans receiving the same. We can't duplicate that and neither would we want to - social skills are as important to learning as cognitive skills. But good teachers can within a classroom ensure that each and every student has a work programme that reflects his or her particular needs. The Qualifications Authority's contribution to this is an assessment system that encourages, as opposed to inhibits, personalisation.

And, indeed, in the survey that's what the young people liked. Studying at a mix of levels is becoming increasingly common. This means a student can race ahead in the topics in which he or she is strong. That's personalisation. And the fact that assessment is against multiple standards, instead of subjects, encourages teachers to develop diverse and specific tuition programmes class-by-class according to students' interests and abilities.

The students also appreciated the increased use of internal assessment. Despite recent far-fetched headlines, internal assessment isn't the easy option - rather it's a different and additional option. External exams, for example, don't measure the capacity to do research or to complete a project. Some students prefer to rely on end-of-year exam assessment, but others don't. The important point is that multiple assessment options are more likely to give everyone a fair chance - that's another example of personalisation.

So was there anything that the students did not like?

Yes, and let's not be shy about this.

The students said that unit standards should have Merit and Excellence grades. They also want more than only three grades of achievement in achievement standards. The students say Merit and Excellence grades should be worth extra credits and the lay out of the Record of Learning should be improved.

We are always seeking improvements in conjunction with the wider education sector. Short-term fixes of complex issues are sometimes problematic and, as you know, much of what the students raised is complex. We have substantive work programmes under the aegis of the Leaders' Forum.

That said, in response to concerns about the layout of the Record of Learning, we can do something and fairly quickly.

Apart from the students having a view, for some time we've been concerned that we aren't meeting the needs of employers who find our current Record of Learning confusing. We've been talking with employers groups and have mocked up an improved Record of Learning, which I would like to show you to get your feedback on, as to whether it works. No decisions have been made and consultation will be required, but we can show you what we are thinking of doing, at least so far.

The current Record of Learning just lists the standards that the learner has achieved. Now I'd like you to look at a possible alternative. We hope that this better helps a person, such as an employer, who is trying to get a sense of an applicant's achievements and abilities.

(See Page 1 of amended RoL )

So what's different here? The first and most important thing is that right at the top we have put the learner's qualifications so far, in this case NCEA levels 1, 2 and 3, along with the date issued. The current Record of Learning has these down the back. Note that this is 'Qualifications and Other Achievements'. So next we see that this student has gained New Zealand Scholarship in six subjects and University Entrance. The current Record of Learning doesn't include University Entrance because technically it isn't a qualification. We've concluded that we should just tell people what they want to know. Likewise, if this student had gained any other national certificates they would be here too.

Then we move down to the individual standards that the learner has achieved.

(See Page 2 of amended RoL )

Here's the second page in this Record of Learning, which, interestingly, is of a real student, though we've changed the name. The big change is we have grouped standards for the most part into subjects and levels. The old Record of Learning bunched standards according to other classifications (domains), which were counter-intuitive for most people. We want a reader to be able to quickly see the subjects the learner is strong in.

Looking at the detail now, on the right of the page we have the results, in most cases Achieved, Merit or Excellence, the number of credits gained and the date awarded. You'll see that some results are in bold. That's where this is the highest grade available for that particular standard. So on this page the student has done a level 4 standard for manufacturing leather goods and achieved at the highest level available for that standard which is Merit. This is one of those unit standards where students can succeed by being awarded either an achieved or a merit, but not an Excellence.

Despite the clamour, we are not including "Not Achieveds". Why? As some employers have pointed out to us, in effect a Record of Learning is part of a job applicant's CV. A CV doesn't typically cite things a person hasn't achieved. And there are many reasons why internal assessments aren't completed by some students, some of which the students has no control over.

Students know how they did, of course. Their preliminary results tell them of the external assessments they missed out on and schools tell their students of the internal assessments they missed out on too.

So where does all this leave us?

We hope that an amended Record of Learning, once finalised, will be more useful, especially when presented to employers by job seekers. I repeat again, no final decisions have been made. A lot more thinking and a consultation process will be required before, if at all, we make changes.

The draft for on-line consultation will have tertiary-level examples and be further developed. We aim to have it on our website by 4 August and will be in email communication with you as we confirm that date.

Just one other thing I should mention. As you know, the Qualifications Authority is reorganising itself internally. Two divisions will do our externally focussed work, one concentrating on qualifications and the other on quality assurance. We've announced that the new head of the Qualifications Division is to be the current principal of Pakuranga College, Bali Haque. He, of course, knows the concerns and challenges that you face. I trust that you will give him every assistance, as sector colleagues.

Likewise, more generally, the Qualifications Authority needs your help too. I know it is an over used word, but we are in a partnership. Nothing stands still and your input as we keep refining what we do is fundamental. We need each other, and we share the same purpose and the same duty to the young and, indeed, to all the learners that we serve.

Thank you