Assessment in secondary schools in New Zealand is about to undergo the biggest transformation since the introduction of NCEA almost 10 years ago.
Starting next year at least 50% of pupils' work in most subjects will be marked within schools.
This means the main national qualification offered in our secondary schools will now be largely marked at a local level.
This has alarming implications for consistency and quality of results between schools and subjects.
It also has implications for teacher workloads.
This quiet revolution in assessment is being disguised as a "realignment" of assessment to fit with the introduction of the new national curriculum.
The implications for pupils and teachers are enormous.
Pupils' assessment for NCEA will increasingly be set and marked by their own teachers.
In my subject area of economics, this means level 1 NCEA will consist of three internal assessments and three external assessments.
The average 15-year-old pupil can expect to be bombarded with about 15 internal assignments over all their subjects throughout their school year from 2011.
This unfortunate group can expect the same assessment overload each year as the change is gradually phased in at each level.
Why the change? Ministry of Education officials and the New Zealand Qualifications Authority say it is to fit with the nature of the new curriculum and provide for local "flexibility" in assessment.
The more likely reason is the huge cost of getting NCEA right under its current guise is crippling the budget of the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.
Under the current system, a significant portion of most subjects are marked by external marking panels based on examinations at the end of each year.
Because each subject is broken into units, the number of exam papers has multiplied compared with the old system of School Certificate.
Each unit has to have its own panel of markers.
The markers then need to ensure the pass rates in each subject and between all subjects are reasonably consistent.
NZQA's worst nightmare is that the pass rate in geography units is 90% and in physics 15%.
NZQA was hammered in the media when NCEA was first introduced and large discrepancies in pass rates within and between subjects became apparent.
The solution to this very costly system appears to be to throw the problem of assessing and marking back on individual schools and teachers.
This should be cause for concern for parents, pupils and teachers.
If the qualifications authority with its many panels of markers and huge budget has struggled to achieve consistency of standards in assessments and marking, how are individual teachers and schools expected to cope with the task? What's to ensure that my standards of assessment and marking are the same as a teacher in Invercargill or Dargaville?
The qualifications authority would argue it has systems of moderators to ensure assessment standards are the same throughout the country.
The experience of many secondary teachers so far is that the moderation processes of NZQA are cumbersome, inconsistent and largely ineffective.
NZQA uses bluff, bluster and threats against schools to try to get them to improve their assessment systems.
It will never succeed.
This is because there are no pure standards of knowledge.
If I were to ask 50 economics teachers for an excellence level definition of economics I would probably get as many different answers.
Having a national qualification marked at local levels invites major anomalies in the standards applied.
This is the issue of which primary teachers are now becoming aware.
When careers and promotions and school reputations are tied to the academic performance of pupils the system is easily corrupted.
Why is all this important? Because a qualification system is a form of currency.
If a country debases its money, its people lose confidence in that currency.
Already since the introduction of NCEA the qualifications offered in secondary schools have fragmented into NCEA, Cambridge examinations and the IB system.
This move to shift more of the assessment on to teachers and schools will serve to debase the currency of NCEA further.
It is likely to increase the pass rates without improving teaching or learning.
The internal pass rates in most schools are already above the external exam pass rates.
NZQA will then trumpet the fact NCEA has led to higher rates of pupil achievement.
The reality will be that we have lowered the bar for academic success to the point where pupils cannot help but fall over it.
- Peter Lyons teaches economics at Saint Peters College in Epsom.
