Univesrsities New Zealand made the following two submissions on the recent proposed changes to NCEA:
Submission from the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors' Committee
Introduction
This submission is from Universities New Zealand, the operating name of the New Zealand Vice-Chancellors’ Committee, a statutory body established under Section 311 of the Education and Training Act 2020 (the Act). Universities New Zealand brings the eight universities together to collectively support and advance the objectives of the Act – including quality assurance and collective review and approval of qualifications.
Submission
Universities New Zealand supports the proposed direction signalled for NCEA and looks forward to working with NZQA and the Ministry of Education on how the new Certificates of Achievement subjects will work in place of University Entrance requirements.
We do recommend that particular attention be paid to the transition period in 2028 and 2029. Teachers and students are likely to need additional support and guidance over this time as they navigate new subjects, new curriculum, and different pathways.
This need to manage the transition period well comes from lessons learned when University Entrance literacy and numeracy standards were increased in 2014.
The 2014 changes were extensively signalled to schools over a three year period following decisions taken in 2011. Despite this, a proportion of schools were not ready and the percentage of year 13 students gaining UE in 2014 dropped to 58% from 70% in 2013.
Although the pass rates recovered in following years, a substantial number of students were caught out and either had to make up credits or were unable to get to university.
Submission from the Universities New Zealand Subcommittee on University Entrance
Context
Under the Education and Training Act 2020, NZQA has the responsibility to set the prerequisite educational standard for entrance to universities, in consultation with the individual universities and with the New Zealand Vice Chancellor’s Committee (here referred to as Universities New Zealand). The Subcommittee on University Entrance has representatives from each of the New Zealand universities.
We emphasise that our comments are more from a university entrance perspective, than from a wider perspective of how a qualification meets broader societal needs. We do, however, begin with a number of educational principles that we support.
Educational Principles
The Subcommitte supports:
• the need for a national curriculum as a clear statement of educational goals, against which assessment would be designed. This is likely to reduce ‘teaching to the test’.
• establishing strong coherence within a defined subject, capturing the core knowledge and skills that characterise that subject.
• the need to take a coherent and systemic view of education that clearly prepares students in secondary education for the various post-secondary paths that are available, including employment, vocational study and academic study.
• the need for a curriculum system and the various pathways it serves to be clear and transparent to all users.
• the importance of literacy and numeracy being promoted to as high a level as practicable beyond the meeting of a minimum standard. These are general tools that are a preparation for adult life, whatever path is followed.
• a system that records and gives recognition to what a student can do rather than a simple pass-fail approach to a qualification. The older school certificate/bursary qualifications were either passed or failed and NCEA was designed to avoid this all-or-nothing approach. The way in which any achievement is documented is a paramount issue in the design of the system.
The current university entrance standard
Currently the minimum university entrance standard is:
• NCEA Level 3
• 14 credits at Level 3 in each of three approved subjects
• 10 Literacy credits at Level 2 or above, made up of 5 credits in reading and 5 credits in writing.
• 10 Numeracy credits at Level 1 or above, made up of co-requisite Level 1 Numeracy unit standard 32406 or Te Pāngarau unit standard 32412, or certain achievement standards.
Each approved subject is associated with a list of the approved achievement standards from which a minimum of 14 credits is selected by the student or their school.
We note that while this university entrance standard has provided significant flexibility, and therefore variability, in defining what constitutes a coherent subject, that same flexibility does allow ‘gaming’ in the sense of selecting achievement standards that might present less challenge than others, perhaps at the expense of coherence.
The most recent attempt at reform was intended to reduce the number of standards to four for each subject and we supported this tighter definition of a subject. We also supported the proposed requirement to have two of those standards externally assessed. A more centralised system also allows for efficiency of producing educational resources.
The proposed qualifications
With regard to university entrance, our comments on the proposal for new national qualifications are as follows:
1. We see the focus on a subject as a whole (rather than an aggregate of stand-alone standards) to be a better preparation for university study, which is generally based on a similar, discipline-based curriculum. We also support the proposed breadth of 5 subjects. The subject progression from year 12 to 13 will need particular attention in the design of the curriculum.
2. We would expect that the various post-secondary pathways would be clearly associated with lists of subjects that serve each of those pathways.
3. For university entrance purposes, the universities are likely to maintain a sub-list of approved subjects from the NZACE list of subjects, depending on the academic rigour that is inherent in each subject.
4. We support a compulsory element of external assessment in the new system on the grounds that different modes of assessment capture skills and knowledge in different ways and therefore a mixture of internal and external assessment should provide a more balanced and reliable overall assessment.
5. We support the intended increase in simplicity and transparency of the proposed system.
6. In developing new subject curricula, we encourage ongoing attention to the development of numeracy and literacy beyond the foundation level proposed. One of the points of interest for the universities in establishing a university entrance standard would be how to ensure appropriate levels of these capabilities from NZACE results.
7. We look forward to the details of how achievement in a subject is recorded and how partial achievement might be carried forward to be acknowledged in later attempts by students who do not manage to achieve a certificate in one year. We would encourage considered attention to how the new assessment system might retain the flexibility necessary to cater for students who experience educational disruption (for example, due to illness or life events).
8. We strongly encourage genuine bipartisan collaboration in developing these changes, from the beginning. An education system needs to endure beyond parliamentary terms.
9. While benchmarking will be an important element in the development of the new curriculum, both for quality and international acceptability, we recommend strongly that sufficient time is made available to ensure that benchmarking is carried out effectively.
10. We encourage that consideration be given to including science as a compulsory part of the curriculum at Year 11. Science teaches particular skills in hypothesising, collecting and evaluating evidence, which are skills that guide critical thinking, a major component in civic engagement.
11. We advise strongly that sufficient time be provided for full consultation and feedback on this significant change in New Zealand education once the details have been developed. Our more direct concern will be in the eventual construction of a university entrance standard based on the assessment of performance in the new qualifications. At the same time we are also stakeholders in the quality of the full education system in New Zealand. We look forward to the next opportunity to comment.
