2. Taken from NZQA website Only those students who meet the
criteria for Merit or Excellence Level get those grades. Therefore
proportions gaining Merit and Excellence grades change a little
from year to year. This sets NCEA apart from qualifications systems
that use a predetermined distribution of grades where a limited
number of high grades is allocated to candidates who do better than
the rest, regardless of the standard of their work.
3. Regardless of whether an achievement standard is assessed
internally or externally, the criteria for Achievement with Merit
and Achievement with Excellence are set down in the standard. Only
those students who meet the criteria for Merit or Excellence get
those grades. There is no predetermined distribution of
grades.
4. Achievement Achievement with Merit Achievement with
Excellence Identify or describe Give descriptions or Give concise
aspects of explanations in terms explanations that phenomena,
concepts of phenomena, show clear or principles. concepts,
principles understanding, in and/or relationships. terms of
phenomena, concepts, principles and/or relationships. Solve
straightforward Solve problems. Solve complex problems.
problems.
5. Real standard Finished task assessment Virtual standard
Developmental assessment No difference from a syllabus
6. Enables recognition of a task Qualification is independently
recognised Examples Driving licence Firearms licence Radio licence
Athletic standards, cross country times All finished task
assessment
7. Attempts to show development in a process Has no direct
employment value Examples Level 1 physics What job could you get
with Level 1 Physics? Level 2 physics Level 3 physics Physics
degree (if it were NCEA) What does achieving mean in physics?
8. Standards Assess students by standards Graded against
standards Process (percentage) Assess students on how much they get
right Graded by norm referencing Cohort is the standard
9. Standards assessment Arbitrary since the standards have no
real meaning Standard does not set the difficulty, question does
Process (percentage) assessment Gives information on how much a
student knows Can bench mark using norm referencing
10. Answer from NZQA All national exam systems have tools to
manage variation, ensuring consistency. PEPs are a tool for
managing variation. PEPs consist of historical information and
results within standards and subjects. Statistically, for cohorts
of a reasonable size, candidate performance does not vary
significantly from year to year. So why choose standards based
assessment?
11. Examiners cannot tell in advance how well a cohort will do,
on untrialled questions. Elley NZQA had no mechanism in place to
prevent year-to-year and subject-to-subject variation and seemed
not to believe that it was necessary to have such a mechanism. Nash
A norm-referenced reality always underpins criterion referenced
standards in the educational system. Nash
12. NCEAs supporters, including NZQA, the Ministry of
Education, and the PPTA, are reluctant to concede that that
re-marking to maintain expected profiles introduces a form of
norm-referencing and, being concerned to defend the examination
against criticism that threatens to undermine public confidence in
it, have no interest in debating the point. Nash Remarking is not
scaling, but the technique is used to generate a distribution of
grades more or less consistent between subjects and years, and is
thus simply an expensive way of accomplishing the same outcome.
Nash
13. Answer from NZQA Markers must follow the assessment
schedule (mark scheme) that has been finalised by the panel leader.
This occurs after a substantial sample of answer booklets have been
marked by the panel leader and a senior marker, giving an idea of
the spread of performance to be expected (referred to as setting
the standard). Why is this important in standards based assessment?
The published assessment schedules are the ones finalised by the
panel leaders and applied by markers. Teachers use these to
identify the answers allowable for that particular exam.
14. Has NCEA ever been assessment based? PEPs GSM Are internals
the same difficulty as externals? How does NCEA compare with
Cambridge and IB? Why are schools implementing the above programs?
Have universities noticed an improvement in pupils since the
introduction of NCEA?
15. No real standards exist for physics Standards are used as a
syllabus NCEA Ptolemaic Standards lead to the right answer (solve
problems, no method marks) Right answer encourages spoon feeding
Mark schemes procrustean NCEA via PEPs leads to arbitrary grades
Arbitrary results demotivates able pupils Low level of achievement
hides lack of skills and knowledge at bottom (about 16% to pass in
maths) NCEA gets pupils to university, does it keep them there?
NCEA pupils disadvantaged in competitive courses NZ university
entry very low compared to rest of world (120 points; 4 AS levels
at D grade)
16. A Change of Direction for NCEA: On Re-marking, Scaling and
Norm-referencing Roy Nash Fixing the NCEA: Ongoing problems,
current reforms and proposed changes
http://www.maxim.org.nz/files/pdf/policy_paper_ncea_refor
ms.pdf
