National Certificate of Educational Achievement - NCEA and National Standards

NCEA and National Standards

These two systems both run in the New Zealand education system but are completely different. NCEA runs from year 10 upwards, with most students starting at Year 11. National Standards purports to be an assessment system for year 1-8. It is far from standardized,with individual teachers using the items they think are best suited to their students and leaving much to the imagination of the principal. It is described by the MOE as aspirational meaning that mean performance levels are deliberately set about 6% higher than the students are capable of achieving on average. The reporting of each schools' findings are described by one educational expert at Waikato University in 2012 as woolly. Broadly speaking the 2012 results published on line show that children in higher decile schools do better than children in lower decile schools. Maori and Pacifika children are clusterd in lower decile schools because the decile ranking is determined by the socio-economic data of the parents. This has been known for years and well before national standards was implemented.