CURRICULUM, ASSESSMENT AND
QUALIFICATIONS
- AN EVALUATION OF CURRENT REFORMS -
PREPARED BY
Michael Irwin, New Zealand Business Roundtable
FOR THE EDUCATION FORUM
May 1994
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD by John Taylor vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ix
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter 2 THE NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM FOR SCHOOLS 5
2.1 Introduction 5
2.2 Outline of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework 5
2.3 Purposes of Education 6
2.4 Essential Learning Areas and Essential Skills 8
2.4.1 Theory of Knowledge 8
2.4.2 The Knowledge and Skill Distinction 11
2.4.3 The Balance Between Knowledge and Skills 14
2.4.4 Teaching Methods 15
2.4.5 Subjects and Learning Areas 19
2.4.6 Technology 20
2.5 Attitudes and Values 23
2.5.1 Values 24
2.5.2 Spirituality 26
2.6 The National Curriculum Statements 27
2.6.1 The Extent of Central Control over the
Curriculum 28
2.6.2 The Division of Learning Areas into Objectives 30
2.6.3 The Number of Levels and Sequencing of Learning
Objectives 32
2.7 The Experience of Curriculum Reform in England
and Wales 35
2.8 Student Performance 39
2.9 Conclusions 42
2.10 Recommendations 45
Chapter 3 ASSESSMENT IN SCHOOLS 47
3.1 Introduction 47
3.1.1 Purposes of Assessment 47
3.1.2 Types of Assessment 48
3.1.3 Types of Certification 49
3.1.4 Internal and External Assessment for
Qualifications 50
3.2 Assessment Procedures in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework 51
3.3 Standards-based Assessment 52
3.4 Assessment and Curriculum Delivery 56
3.5 Monitoring the System 57
3.6 The Experience of Assessment Reform in England
and Wales 58
3.7 Assessment at Key Transition Points 59
3.8 Implications for Curriculum Delivery 61
3.9 Conclusions 68
3.10 Recommendations 69
Chapter 4 THE QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK 71
4.1 Introduction 71
4.2 The Government Interest in Certification 74
4.3 Outline of the Qualifications Framework 76
4.4 The Extent and Scope of the Qualifications Framework 79
4.5 The Vocational/Academic Divide 83
4.6 The Skill/Knowledge Distinction 85
4.7 Curriculum Delivery 86
4.7.1 Unit Standards 88
4.7.2 Size of the Unit 92
4.7.3 The Unit Standard and Curriculum Delivery 93
4.7.4 Specification of Objectives 96
4.7.5 Level Descriptions and the Allocation of Unit
Standard Credits to Levels 98
4.8 The Type of Assessment 101
4.8.1 Achievement-based Assessment 102
4.8.2 Competency-based Assessment 103
4.8.3 Quality Control of Assessment 107
4.8.4 General Educational Content of Vocational
Courses - Lessons from the NCVQ 108
4.8.5 Moderation 109
4.9 Qualifications 111
4.10 Accreditation of Providers 113
4.11 Costs of Developing and Maintaining the NZQA
Qualifications Framework 114
4.12 Conclusions 115
4.13 Recommendations 119
Chapter 5 SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND QUALIFICATIONS 121
5.1 Introduction 121
5.2 Proposals for Reform 122
5.3 Contrasting Systems - England and the Continent 123
5.3.1 An example from the Continent - the French
system 126
5.3.2 The General Educational Content of Vocational
Awards - English and Continental Systems 127
5.4 International Comparisons of Achievement 129
5.5 Curriculum and Qualifications from F3 to F5 132
5.6 Qualifications at F5 - the School Certificate 132
5.6.1 Standards and Methods of Assessment 134
5.6.2 Scaling between Markers within Subjects 135
5.6.3 Scaling between Years 136
5.6.4 Scaling between Subjects 137
5.6.5 Conclusions on the School Certificate 138
5.7 Other Forms of External Examination at F5 138
5.8 Curriculum and Qualifications at F6 and F7 139
5.9 The National Certificate 140
5.9.1 The Scotvec National Certificate 140
5.9.2 Implications for the NZQA's National
Certificate 144
5.10 Qualifications at F6 and F7 - The Academic Pathway 147
5.10.1 Bursary and Scholarship 147
5.10.2 The New Zealand Education and Scholarship
Trust Scholarship Examination 149
5.10.3 University Entrance 151
5.11 Conclusions 152
5.12 Recommendations 158
Chapter 6 INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS 161
6.1 Introduction 161
6.2 Present Arrangements 161
6.3 Institutional Design Issues 163
6.4 Conclusions 165
6.5 Recommendations 166
REFERENCES 169
Author and Acknowledgements
This report was prepared for the Education Forum by Michael Irwin, a
policy analyst working for the New Zealand Business Roundtable.
The author wishes to acknowledge several important sources of material
used in this report: the analyses by a number of New Zealand academics of proposed
curriculum, assessment and qualifications arrangements; the Channel Four Commission on
Education for its analysis of, and recommendations on, schooling in the United Kingdom;
and the research staff of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, London,
for their studies of vocational education and training in the United Kingdom and
continental Europe.
The author also wishes to thank Rory Barrett, Agnes-Mary Brooke, Merus
Cochrane, Warwick Elley, Barry Gough, Cedric Hall, James Irving, Roger Kerr, Pat Lynch,
David Lythe, John Marks, Michael Matthews, Michael Mintrom, Susan Moore, Mary Munro, Mike
Murtagh, John Rentoul, Rosemary Renwick, Harold Russ, Alan Smithers, John Taylor, Hans
Wagemaker and two anonymous reviewers for many valuable comments and suggestions on
earlier drafts of this report.
The interpretations, conclusions and the recommendations are solely
those of the author and should not be ascribed to any of those whose assistance is
acknowledged above.
Further, the views expressed in this report are not necessarily those of
the New Zealand Business Roundtable.
This is a very important report and I hope it has the
impact it deserves. I cannot believe what New Zealand is trying to do, especially in view
of the United Kingdom's difficulties with competency-based assessment in its national
curriculum and vocational qualifications.
Professor A.G. Smithers, B.Sc., M.Sc., M.Ed., Ph.D., C.Psychol., FSRHE.
Centre for Education and Employment Research, University of Manchester.
FOREWORD
For several years the education system in New Zealand has been
undergoing substantial reform. The first wave of the recent reforms began with the
administrative and financial changes outlined in Tomorrow's Schools following the
publication of Administering for Excellence (the 'Picot' report). Subsequent
reports and government policy papers dealt with similar matters for the early childhood
and tertiary sectors.
This report addresses a second wave of reforms which are, in their own
way, just as comprehensive and which more directly affect students and teachers. A
national curriculum framework for schools has been published and curriculum statements and
related assessment procedures for the various subjects and learning areas are being
developed. An extensive new qualifications system is being introduced for all education
and training from Form 5. Changes are under way in some school examinations.
Before implementing any significant reform it is usually sensible to
identify the problems with the current situation, to analyse their causes, and to assess
the costs and benefits of the various ways of addressing them. Where there is
international experience to draw on it is wise to do so. Some of the current developments
have their precursors. However, overall there has been a lack of analytical and research
support for these very extensive and interrelated reforms. Certainly there has been
consultation but usually only after broad policy directions had been decided.
The development and implementation phases of these reforms also give
some cause for concern. The lack of initial analysis has led to a somewhat ad hoc
approach to problem solving. The necessary co-ordination between the various developments
is also lacking and has not been helped by the allocation of design responsibilities to
teams in different state agencies.
There has been much commendable energy applied to implementing these
very ambitious reforms. Unfortunately this has not always been matched by hard thinking
and openness to the possible need for changes in direction. In fact, the reforms represent
a vast experiment with the life chances of many thousands of young people without
significant prior research, debate and trialling.
Centrally planned 'Grand Designs' in education should always be viewed
with caution. They tend to ignore the decentralised nature of education activity and to be
pretentious in terms of social goals. Their benefits often turn out to be illusory, while
their costs can be considerable and ongoing. For example, as has been noted in this
report, the move in the 1960s to comprehensive schooling in England and Wales is now
coming under critical reevaluation by, among others, one of that move's leading
supporters. It is also now widely agreed that the very costly education investment
projects in many OECD countries in the 1950s and 1960s did not achieve the social and
economic gains that had been expected.
A feature of curriculum and qualifications 'Grand Designs' is that they
are national. This means that if they are wrong we will all be much worse off than before.
Also, without alternative systems, we will be less able to monitor their effectiveness.
This report has drawn together relevant research findings from New
Zealand and overseas and applied them to our curriculum, assessment and qualification
reforms. It recommends quite different approaches in several areas and draws attention to
several other matters that need urgent attention. From these perspectives the
implementation of current reforms need to be put 'on hold' and reviewed as a matter of
urgency.
The Education Forum commends this report to the urgent attention of the
government and all others involved in the development and implementation of these reforms.
It is time we had a hard rethink about where we are going. The aim of this report is to
help us to do just that.
John Taylor
CHAIRMAN
EDUCATION FORUM
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This report is about the extensive and interrelated changes that are
being made to the curriculum and assessment systems in New Zealand schools and to the
qualifications system at all levels of education and training from F5 upwards.
The new curriculum consists of a framework document and a series of
curriculum statements. The framework identifies principles to give direction to all
teaching and learning, essential learning areas and skills, and attitudes and values and
outlines assessment policies. The curriculum statements are to provide greater detail of
the required learning in terms of strands, aims and specific objectives. The objectives
are to be set out in a number of levels, usually 8, for all 13 years of schooling, and it
is envisaged that in any one class students will be working at their own rate and at
different levels.
The principles place the individual student at the centre of all
teaching and learning. This diminishes some important educational emphases and introduces
a relativism which is widely reflected in the framework and statements. There is no
guidance about the desirable allocation of time to the learning areas and this is likely
to lead to additional pressure on the school curriculum. The common structure of strands,
aims and objectives, being determined independently of curriculum content, may result in
arbitrary divisions of learning and provide insufficient curricular differentiation. The
system of levels presents other problems. The difficulty of setting clear, specific
objectives in areas of general education are considerable. The promotion of multi-level
teaching is at the expense of other pedagogies and poses considerable additional pressure
on teachers. A simpler, clearer framework is required.
The curriculum framework envisages a variety of diagnostic assessment
methods at the school level against the "clear learning outcomes" of the
curriculum statements, assessment at three key transition points, and national monitoring
by light sampling. The proposals for key transition point assessment and national
monitoring are welcome. However, the objectives of the curriculum statements are not
likely to assist significantly in diagnostic assessment. The serious issue of student
differentiation in terms of ability and attainment remains unaddressed. The detachment of
age from levels and the lack of clear guidance about what should be learnt at different
stages of schooling present formidable problems.
The qualifications framework seeks to encompass all qualifications from
F5 upwards. The notion of one all-embracing system is very attractive for many reasons.
However, the proposals are fraught with problems that have not been adequately addressed.
The basic building block is the unit standard which is centred on outcomes against which
performance will be measured. However, outcomes cannot be clearly identified in many areas
of learning without trivialisation. The outcome focus is likely to lead to less emphasis
on general education as requiring separate teaching and assessment and this would restrict
educational progression and ability to change type of occupation.
Disconnecting outcomes from curriculum content and assessment tasks is
likely to lead to artificiality and rigidity, especially in general education. The
achievement of the moderation required to ensure consistent assessment by several hundred
providers employing different assessment tasks undertaken in different conditions would
seem to be virtually impossible. The qualifications framework needs to be much more modest
in its coverage and radically redesigned. The concern should be to promote communication
between different qualifications systems - not to incorporate all qualifications within
one system.
At the senior secondary school, unit standards in the National
Certificate, the first qualification of the qualifications framework, will be introduced
at F5. The School Certificate and Bursary will be optional and outside the qualifications
framework, though linkages to the framework are being considered.
The National Certificate should be redesigned before introduction into
secondary schools. Some changes to the School Certificate will undermine its credibility.
Changes are required to the Bursary examination. Clear pathways are required for the
senior secondary school to cater for widely different abilities, interests and post-school
destinations. Within each pathway there should be options consisting of coherent
programmes centred around a core of general education.
Institutional changes have been introduced alongside the curriculum and
qualifications reforms. Essentially the qualifications framework and school examinations
are administered by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) which has significant
policy responsibilities in these areas. The Ministry of Education is responsible for the
school curriculum and for assessment up to F4. There are a number of problems in the
design of these institutional arrangements which need to be addressed.
Recommendations
1 The New Zealand Curriculum Framework should be revised and
given broader aims. It should place the education of the individual within a relational,
historical and cultural context. It should balance concern for the social and personal
development of the student with concern for the acquisition of subject knowledge and the
reinforcement of the academic component of education. It should promote those values
essential to the proper functioning of a democratic, pluralist society. It should uphold
the importance of high quality, rigorously assessed 'exit' certification.
2 The curriculum statements for the core subjects of English, maths, the
social sciences and science in primary and secondary schooling should describe in simple,
direct language the essential knowledge, understandings and skills that should be acquired
at each form level by all students up to and including F4, and provide practical guidance
about how coherent programmes might be constructed for students of different abilities,
interests and aspirations. The levels approach would be dispensed with.
3 The essential content of each core subject would reduce from, say,
two-thirds of each subject in the primary years to, say, half in the junior secondary
years with the remainder to be decided by each school.
4 The description of technology should be reconsidered with the aim of
establishing the subject as a practical/technical one concerned with the design and
manufacture of products and systems, the content of which would be specified as a
practical organisation of knowledge and skills.
5 Schools should adjust teaching methods where necessary to ensure that
the essential learning in each subject is mastered.
6 Primary schools should provide the foundations of subsequent learning
at secondary school. Primary schools should assess children's readiness for secondary work
in terms of core knowledge and skills in English, maths, the social sciences and science
using reliable external tests, and provide extra tuition if required to enable them to
acquire mastery of the essentials in each subject.
7 Progress through junior secondary school should be related to the
achievement of core knowledge and skills across a range of subjects at a level which
should be within the scope of the great majority of students provided they work hard.
Additional tuition should be made available to assist slower learners to achieve the
required levels.
8 Assessment for progress should employ reliable external tests.
9 To avoid over-burdening teachers, the proposed key transition point
assessments at the start of years 7 and 9 (F1 and 3) should be limited to the core areas
of English, mathematics, the social sciences and science.
10 Classes should be organised so that, as far as is practical, students
in them have reached similar levels of attainment, though opportunities for successful
mixed ability teaching should not be overlooked.
11 The national qualifications framework should be reviewed and
redesigned.
12 The assessment process must suit the material (the mix of skills,
knowledge, values, attitudes and understanding) to be tested.
13 The assessment process must be rigorous, and ensure consistency and
hence the credibility of qualifications. This requires common criteria on matters such as
the number of re-sits allowed, the use of external written examinations and external
examination of practical work. Examination for award purposes must be independent of
teaching.
14 The framework should evolve slowly, initially incorporating the
learning areas which experience and research suggest are most suitable, with expansion and
adjustment in the light of experience. It should, therefore, concentrate initially on
vocational awards at non-advanced levels. Existing qualifications should not be changed
simply to comply with the qualifications framework.
15 It should be accepted that there needs to be several qualifications
systems. The task is not to force all qualifications into one system but to facilitate
means by which different systems can communicate with each other in terms of credit
recognition.
16 Course requirements should describe what students should know and
understand as well as be able to do. They should be simply and directly stated in terms
that students, teachers and employers can readily understand. General educational
objectives should be separately specified and assessed.
17 Programmes leading to qualifications should, in the longer-term
interests of both students and employers, contain courses with an appropriate mix of
skills, knowledge and understanding aimed at raising the general educational attainment of
students as well as their vocational capability.
18 The number of national standards setting groups and qualifications
should have regard to the size of the economy, the need for simplicity and cost
effectiveness, and the importance of avoiding a narrow occupational focus. This will
require a substantial reduction in the numbers that are likely to result from present
policies.
19 Pupils in F5 should embark on one of three inter-connecting pathways
within each of which there would be several options constructed as complete programmes of
study:
- The academic pathway would be based on a core of English, maths,
science and Maori or a foreign or classical language, social sciences plus other options.
It would be rigorous and a good introduction to School Certificate and
Bursary/Scholarship.
- The technical pathway would aim to develop talent for design and
construction. It would include the same core as for the academic pathway but would include
a number of technical options including practical work. It would be a good introduction to
School Certificate and Bursary/Scholarship.
- The vocational pathway would include the same core subjects as for the
academic and technical pathways but with a vocational orientation. It would be geared
towards work situations the students might eventually enter. It could be combined with
on-the-job training under various kinds of school/business link programmes. Employers who
agreed to undertake prescribed levels of training should be paid for the work involved.
Students would work towards credits on the NZQA qualifications framework revised as
recommended in Chapter 4.
20 Choice of pathway would be made by the student in consultation with
teachers and parents. There should be opportunities to switch pathway, though switching
might mean that it would take longer to achieve a given certificate. Progress within a
pathway would depend on meeting minimum standards, and failure to do so would require a
successful re-sit or repeating a period of study.
21 Inter-marker and inter-year scaling should be reintroduced into the
School Certificate. Assessment should be by independent external examination. It would not
be part of the NZQA qualifications framework.
22 Schools should consider alternatives to the NZQA's School Certificate
if present problems are not resolved satisfactorily. Alternatives could include the School
Certificate and the 'O' level examinations provided by examination boards in the United
Kingdom for overseas students.
23 In F6 and F7 students would continue within one of the three
pathways. Options within the pathways should cater for the full range of interest and
ability. They would build on some of the best courses already developed for the Sixth Form
Certificate. They would cater for both the all-rounder who would take a range of subjects
and those with particular aptitudes who would want to pursue a few subjects in depth.
- Students in the academic and technical streams would normally take
Bursary. New technical subjects may need to be developed and existing ones upgraded.
Alternatives that meet or exceed Bursary requirements should also be nationally
recognised. The ablest students would take quality Scholarship examinations such as those
administered by the New Zealand Education and Scholarship Trust. Scholarship examinations
should also recognise excellence in technical subjects. Bursary and Scholarship assessment
would be by external examination. The examinations would not be part of the NZQA
qualifications framework.
- Vocational stream students would follow a similar path to the
technical stream students but at a less advanced level and with greater orientation to the
kinds of work to which the students might proceed. There could be a wide range of possible
programmes. However, all should constitute a complete programme centred around a core of
essential subjects including English and mathematics which would be separately prescribed
and assessed. There would be rigorous external testing of standards attained, including
tests of practical work. Testing would include written as well as practical examinations,
and lead to credits on the NZQA qualifications framework revised as recommended in Chapter
4. Students who satisfactorily complete a comprehensive programme would be awarded a
school leaving certificate.
24 National minimum entry requirements for universities should be set in
terms of Bursary and other examinations of similar or higher standards.
25 Funding formulae for schools should recognise that technical and
vocational education tends to be more expensive than academic education.
26 Secondary schools should be allowed to concentrate on specialist
courses including those for the education of technically or vocationally inclined students
to high levels of excellence. This would be facilitated by adjustment to funding formulae
as recommended above.
27 Consideration should be given to introducing special arrangements to
facilitate the recruitment of suitably experienced and skilled people, if necessary from
industry and commerce, to provide technical and vocational courses.
28 The NZQA's responsibilities should centre around:
- the development of a qualifications framework for technical and
vocational education and training at non-advanced levels within ministerially approved
policy guidelines;
- facilitating communication between different qualifications systems so
as to encourage cross-crediting arrangements; and
- the provision of advice about qualities assessed and achievement
levels reached in vocational qualifications that are not within its own framework.
29 The NZQA, in developing its own framework, should have regard to
those applying in other countries including continental Europe.
30 The responsibilities of the Ministry of Education should include:
- the development of academic, technical and vocational pathways, and
coherent programmes within them, in the senior secondary school; and
- the certification of achievement at school (as well as school
curriculum and assessment) including the setting and assessing of the School Certificate,
Bursary and Scholarship (which might be best administered by an outside agency under
contract to the Ministry).
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Over the last several years substantial structural reforms have been
made in the early childhood, schools and tertiary sectors. They have included the
establishment of new central bodies and the abolition of others. They have radically
changed accountability relationships, organisational structures and funding arrangements.
Further structural reforms are being considered such as those involving the financial
treatment of capital assets in the tertiary sector and the management and ownership of
property in the schools sector.
A second round of reforms started about four years ago and is now
gathering momentum - reforms that will much more directly affect individual students,
parents and teachers. These reforms - of the school curriculum, school student assessment,
and the qualification system at all levels from F5 - are the subjects of this report.
The problems with the present curriculum, assessment and qualifications
arrangements that have led to the reforms have never been fully analysed and reported.
This makes it difficult to evaluate their efficacy in terms of the ills they are meant to
cure. The ills have mostly to be inferred from the prescribed remedies.
The school curriculum reforms are clearly based on the assumption that
the present curriculum, essentially based on a collection of subject syllabuses and
examination prescriptions, does not emphasise skills sufficiently, is in need of updating
to take account of changes in New Zealand's economic situation, and should put more stress
on continuity and progression. These criticisms clearly have some validity especially at
the secondary school level. The response has been to formulate a curriculum framework of
principles, essential learning areas and essential skills to apply to all schools and all
levels of schooling (Ministry of Education, 1993a). This is being followed by the
production of national curriculum statements which, except for technology, are
subject-based and set out in greater detail a sequence of learning objectives. These
reforms are examined in Chapter 2.
The new assessment arrangements are clearly aimed at improving the rate
at which students achieve learning objectives over time, addressing perceived inadequacies
in assessing student achievement and in diagnosing learning problems, clarifying learning
objectives, improving the reporting of achievement to students, parents and teachers, and
tracking national educational standards over time. Thus assessment for diagnostic and
reporting purposes is closely related to the learning objectives that will be specified in
the curriculum statements. Proposals for regular sampling of student performance are to
enable ongoing monitoring of national standards. These changes are examined in Chapter 3.
Reforms to the certification of student achievement are of two kinds.
The major one is the establishment, now under way, of a new qualifications framework. This
is to address existing problems in the vocational area arising from the tangle of
vocational qualifications, the lack of flexibility in, and linkages between, vocational
awards, the lack of pathways and the academic/vocational divide. The proposed solution to
these and other problems is the establishment of a qualifications framework covering
awards for all types and levels of learning from F5 upwards. Qualifications will consist
of combinations of unit standards from an officially approved catalogue totally,
eventually, over 6000. These changes are examined in Chapter 4.
Reforms to the certification of student achievement also involve
secondary school examinations. Changes to the School Certificate have already been
introduced. But its future and that of the Bursary and Scholarship examinations are, as
yet, unclear in view of the pending introduction of unit standards of the qualification
framework into the secondary school from F5. Senior secondary school curriculum and
qualifications are considered in Chapter 5.
This second round of reforms has required institutional changes in the
central educational bureaucracy. These have included the establishment of a major new
Crown Entity, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and a substantial curtailing of
the responsibilities of the Ministry of Education as the main successor of the Department
of Education. Issues arising from these institutional changes are considered in Chapter 6.
A common underlying theme of all these reforms is a new interest in the
idea of education as an activity leading to measurable outcomes rather than simply as a
process. This helps to explain the emphasis on:
• defining the learning and skills to be acquired;
• assessment and certification in terms of predetermined standards; and
• ways of monitoring education systems.
There has also been a corresponding reduction in emphasis on syllabuses,
prescriptions and textbooks.
An emphasis on outcomes is needed but can be over-stressed. All learning
and skill development cannot be forced into a single form of outcome specification or be
assessed by techniques of one particular type. Attempts to apply such a procrustean bed to
all education and training are likely to incur educational loss. One issue to be examined
in this report is whether the benefits to be achieved from the changes do, in fact,
outweigh the educational losses that might be expected as a result of their introduction.
Superficially, it may seem that the prescriptions are well aligned with
the problems. For example, the answer to a lack of pathways is, surely, more pathways. The
use of unit standards as building blocks must surely lead to the desired greater
flexibility and linkages between qualifications. But things are not quite as
straightforward. Pathways must lead to somewhere of value. Unit credits must be worth
working for; if they are perceived as easy options for the less able, the system will
fail. The award of unit credits must be based on well established assessment procedures if
credits are to have credibility in the labour market and among institutions of higher
learning. The new systems raise vital questions. Can performance of outcomes be assumed to
imply that the necessary knowledge and understanding have been acquired? Is the assumption
of the equivalence of levels across courses with very different contents and objectives
justified? These and other fundamental questions need to be satisfactorily answered.
Educational systems based on weak theoretical foundations will ultimately fail.
In the final analysis, the question is whether the reforms will, in
fact, lead to better teaching and learning and higher student achievement levels than
would otherwise have occurred. Will they encourage greater levels of participation,
especially in areas such as maths where participation is relatively low and in which New
Zealand performance appears to be modest compared with that of some other countries? Will
they result in the reduction of the significant and worrying variations in achievement
levels between schools? Finally, are there other changes that are needed if the reforms
proposed are to work or work well? For example, if there is to be a greater variety of
pathways in the senior secondary school, how are they to be specified, funded, related and
delivered at the school level?
It must be stressed that there is no one answer to educational
improvement. Some of the answers lie outside education and include full employment to
provide motivation to students and teachers and an educational culture in which parents
take a strong supportive role in their children's education. There are many other issues
which also lie outside the scope of this report including teacher education, school
funding methods and adequacy, parental choice of schools, and so on.
The following chapters generally consider curriculum, assessment and
qualifications separately. This is, to some extent, an artificial division but one that
was deemed necessary for analytical and presentational purposes. It has necessarily
resulted in frequent cross-referencing of material and some duplication. Cross-referenced
material is indicated in [parentheses].
This report is based on what is understood to be the current state of
the reforms. However, policy decisions are still being made and some of the discussion and
analysis in this report may be based on assumptions that have been overtaken by events.
This report aims to present a broad overview and analysis of the reforms
now under way. It identifies weaknesses in them and recommends remedies. It is hoped that
it will encourage further analysis of, and debate on, the issues raised.
2.0 THE NEW ZEALAND CURRICULUM FOR SCHOOLS
2.1 Introduction
New Zealand has long had a national curriculum to cover all state
schools. Hitherto the national curriculum has
consisted mainly of the subject syllabuses and, for secondary schools, the prescriptions
for school-based examinations.
In recent years there has been concern to develop a new national
curriculum which would:
• broaden the curriculum to include aspects such as attitudes and
values which are difficult to make explicit in one based on subject syllabuses and
examination prescriptions;
• integrate aspects of learning which had been fragmented by
divisions based on subjects - a concern that applies particularly to secondary schools;
• reflect changes in New Zealand's international trading situation
by, for example, including the languages and cultures of our Asian trading partners;
• emphasise progression in learning from school entry to F7 and
beyond; and
• make available the best curriculum materials and practice to all
students.
2.2 Outline of The New Zealand Curriculum Framework
The curriculum framework (Ministry of Education, 1993a) describes the
elements which are considered to be fundamental to teaching and learning in New Zealand
schools:
• principles to give direction to all teaching and learning;
• seven learning areas which describe in broad terms the
learning and understanding which all students need to acquire. These are:
- language and languages
- mathematics
- science
- technology
- social sciences
- the arts
- health and physical well-being;
• eight essential skills to be developed by all students:
- communication skills
- numeracy skills
- information skills
- problem-solving skills
- self-management and competitive skills
- social and co-operative skills
- physical skills
- work and study skills;
• the attitudes and values which should be part of the
school curriculum;
• the approach to the development of national curriculum
statements which are to describe in more detail the required knowledge, understanding,
skills and attitudes; and
• an outline of the policy for assessment at school and
national levels.
2.3 Purposes of Education
The curriculum framework does not explicitly state the purposes of
education that underlie it, but these are implicit. The Foreword stresses the economic
function of education though it also acknowledges the interests of the individual and
society. An explicit concern in the principles is the interest of the individual student.
"The principles are based on the premises that the individual student is at the
centre of all teaching and learning ... "(p 6). Presumably other parts of the
framework need to be interpreted in the light of this central premise. This individual
student orientation is reflected in most of the nine principles. For example, the school
curriculum is to "enable", "respond" to the educational needs of, and
"empower" students.
The emphasis on the individual student is not a new one in New Zealand.
The explicit references to society and its economic needs do, perhaps, constitute a shift
in emphasis. Whether the needs of the individual student and those of society and the
economy are always compatible is an important question that is beyond the scope of this
report. Moreover, the curriculum framework begs certain other fundamental questions
including how needs are to be determined, who by and against what criteria.
The problem with a curriculum focused on needs, whether those of the
society, the economy or the individual student is that it is based on changing subjective
perceptions. It acknowledges few if any external benchmarks against which education can be
judged. This can lead to a lack of emphasis of certain values traditionally thought to be
important to education. The curriculum framework, for example, has little, or no, explicit
reference to:
• Acquiring a respect for knowledge. There is little
acknowledgement that learning might be good in itself apart from meeting the felt need of
the student, the needs of the economy, or the realisation of social ideals.
• Acquiring wisdom. As T S Eliot remarked, it "would be
a pity if we overlooked the possibilities of education as a means of acquiring
wisdom" (Eliot, 1962, p 99). But there is little in the curriculum framework to
suggest that the promotion of wisdom, admittedly a difficult concept, is of concern for
education.
• The transmission of culture. The principles refer to the
importance to all New Zealanders of both Maori and Pakeha traditions, histories and
values. This is hardly a sufficient acknowledgement of the role of education in
transmitting our cultural inheritance. There is no explicit mention of the enormous legacy
of English language and literature and those of Greece, Rome and Israel, and of Europe
over the last 2000 years. The classical languages are not mentioned, possibly because they
are seen as not relevant to current economic and social needs.
• Learning to discriminate. In line with current
enthusiasms, the principles also require that education should play its part in the
realisation of social ideals as evidenced by references to racism, sexism, the Treaty and
multiculturalism. However, a prime function of education is to teach students how to
discriminate in a positive sense, between the good and the bad, the noble and the ugly,
the substantial and the trashy, the eternal and the ephemeral, truth and propaganda, and
so on. There are only a few indications in the curriculum framework that this is one of
education's objectives.
It may, of course, be argued that these will, in practice, be emphasised
because they are recognised as 'needs' of the student. But it is unfortunate that they
were not thought to be sufficiently important to warrant specific mention.
2.4 Essential Learning Areas and Essential Skills
The descriptions of the various essential learning areas and essential
skills would require extensive analysis beyond the scope of this report. Some broader
issues are discussed below.
2.4.1 Theory of Knowledge
The framework does not explicitly outline the theory of knowledge on
which it is based. Nonetheless, any curriculum statement is bound to have such a basis
and, since the framework is intended to influence subject statements and school curricula,
its theoretical assumptions are likely to be carried forward into teacher education,
curriculum statements and classroom teaching methods. It is important, therefore, to
identify and evaluate these assumptions and consider their possible implications.
In a number of ways these theoretical assumptions reflect the
relativist, student-centred orientation already noted [2.3]. Knowledge in the framework is
largely understood to be knowledge of sensory inputs. For example, language enables people
to "make sense of the world", science is "a universal discipline through
which people investigate ... and make sense of (its components) in logical and creative
ways" and through the "social sciences, students will develop the ... sense of
perspective needed to understand and appraise ... ." The science curriculum
"will recognise Maori and Pacific Islands knowledge about the natural and physical
worlds" (p 12) which could imply that these perspectives of the "worlds"
are understood to be as valid as any other.
The relativist approach (i.e. knowledge and values are not absolute but
are relative to the situation) is also evident in the areas of values. Learning activities
should "respect students' cultural perspectives and customs" (p 16) and the
school curriculum will, inter alia, "respect" the values of all students (p 7).
These requirements could be taken to mean that student perspectives, customs and values
are to have priority even where they clash with respect for knowledge and generally
accepted methods of scientific enquiry. This interpretation may not have been intended by
the authors of the curriculum framework, but it would be consistent with the fundamental
premise that the individual student is at the centre of all teaching and learning.
Interpretative problems could arise especially if the framework is given statutory
recognition.
It should, of course, be recognised that an understanding of how
students arrive at their own views can improve teaching, and assist in motivating
students. But insistence that science is a way of making sense of the world rather than of
seeking to learn about the world may result in concern for truth, knowledge and
intellectual discipline being largely absent (Matthews, 1993b).
Difficulties can also arise when education is limited to those matters
about which students already have some conception. The draft science curriculum statement
was criticised on these grounds. Its insistence that science be taught in context appears
to follow from the curriculum framework's requirement that scientific understanding should
be built on existing knowledge and experience. This approach has some obvious attractions
including making science more immediately interesting. However, as Austin (1993) observes,
it may mean not starting scientific education with the underlying concepts, processes and
knowledge which are necessary for scientific enquiry. While "science might be (made)
more interesting it is also (made) more difficult" and "fewer students think
that being a scientist would be fun" (Austin, 1993). This contextualist approach can
make it more difficult for teachers to "help the student develop a consistent,
coherent understanding of ideas and processes in the limited time available" (Austin,
1993).
The draft science curriculum statement's approach to learning was
criticised on several other grounds related to the description of the learning area.
Callaghan (1993) points out three fallacies: that students can discover for themselves
what the finest scientific minds of the past have discovered; that physics understanding
can be achieved without an ability to abstract key principles and to express those ideas
mathematically; and that physics should be driven by the personal needs of the students.
But these aspects of the curriculum statement appear consistent (or at least not
inconsistent) with the framework description of the learning area.
It has also been pointed out that a view of knowledge as based on
sensory inputs may have far-reaching implications within and beyond education. Some
aspects such as the emphasis on the individual student's engagement in learning and the
importance of the social context are undoubtedly positive. However, it has been suggested
that there can be negative consequences.
Clearly lots of different things can make sense to people, and people
can rightly disagree about whether a particular proposition makes sense to them or does
not make sense. Consequently making sense is a very unstable plank with which to prop up
curriculum proposals and adjudicate curriculum content debates. ... Still further, these
constructivist-relativist ideas have more broad consequences for culture that are seldom
examined. Not all these consequences are happy ones. It is notorious that people have for
centuries thought that the grossest injustices, and the greatest evils, have all made
sense (Matthews, 1993a).
The authors of the draft science curriculum have responded to the
criticism that their document is based on an unsound epistemology (Martin et al., 1993).
There would be appear to be little fundamental disagreement about the pedagogic advantages
of building on the existing knowledge base of students and seeking to understand how they
construct knowledge. However, there clearly remains an area of controversy about the
nature and relationship of knowledge and scientific endeavour which requires much more
consideration. For the purposes of this report it is important to note that the curriculum
framework descriptions of the essential learning areas raise issues that go well beyond
practical ones such as the best way to present material to students. They can raise some
fundamental issues about the nature of knowledge on which people can have strong and
opposing views.
The controversies outlined above highlight the danger of seeking to
describe a learning area without, at the same time, working through very carefully what it
might mean in terms of a curriculum statement. The same point can be made about the
structure of curriculum statements which has been laid down for all learning areas without
sufficient prior consideration as to whether the structure (outcomes, strands, aims,
objectives, levels and so on) will suit all the material to be covered by it [2.6].
2.4.2 The Knowledge and Skill Distinction
The curriculum framework states that skills are to be developed by all
students across the whole curriculum throughout the years of schooling. It notes that the
skills cannot be developed in isolation and must be developed through the essential
learning areas and in different contexts across the curriculum.
Certainly skills cannot, as the curriculum framework affirms, be
acquired in a vacuum. The curriculum framework sets the aim high. It is that students
should acquire the skills necessary for them to achieve their potential and to participate
fully in society, including the world of work. However, the relationship between the
subject matter and the skills that may be acquired as a result of working with it is
difficult to determine in advance. Kramer (1993) says that the traditional subject areas
properly taught and taken together feed the whole person. She notes that they represent
different ways of observing, explaining and understanding the world and are repositories
of different kinds of human experience. Together they engage the whole person -
imagination and feelings and not just the mind and reason.
The interdependence of skills and their knowledge base raises the
questions about the best subject matter to offer to students and the best teaching
methodologies to employ so that diverse needs and capabilities are recognised within the
general aims of schooling and the constraints of the school timetable. The curriculum
framework offers no specific answer to these essential questions. Implicitly its answer is
that its formulation of separately identified essential learning areas and essential
skills offers a better way ahead than the traditional approach via subject disciplines.
It can be readily accepted that schooling involves knowledge acquisition
and skill development, and some explicit recognition of this would be unexceptional.
Problems arise when the skills and learning areas are separately identified in long lists
and their relationship simply asserted but not examined. The essential skills appear to be
a compilation of 'good ideas' with no discernible underlying epistemology. The questions
Marshall (1992) raised in connection with the skills proposed in the national curriculum
discussion document still apply. He asked, for example, whether some skills aren't more
fundamental than others, and whether logic didn't underlie communication and problem
solving. He concluded that the draft list appeared "somewhat arbitrary and
authoritative". This conclusion applies equally to the lists in the final document.
One result of the approach to skills in the curriculum framework could
be a reductionist emphasis in teaching that simply seeks to identify particular activities
with the development of particular skills without recognising the complex interaction
between knowledge and skills. This would lead to a short-term approach to skill
acquisition emphasising immediate competency in limited contexts without the knowledge and
understandings that should underlie competency in any meaningful sense. Hodson (1992) critiques the view that it is possible to divorce
scientific skills from the theoretical understandings upon which they depend.
Another result of the approach adopted in the curriculum framework is
that all skills might be seen as readily transferable across subjects and contexts. In
respect of the transferability of skills, Kramer (1993) advises that:
Over time, (the traditional subject areas) steadily build up a store
of core skills, many of which can be transferred from one task to another, and they
encourage the formation of opinions, philosophies, speculations, arguments and judgment.
One can be quite specific about this. Learning how to follow an argument, or interpret a
poem, or examine historical or scientific evidence, can enable us to read board papers,
follow discussions of diverse subjects, grasp the principles of unfamiliar disciplines,
analyse attitudes, estimate possibilities and probabilities, and venture into new areas -
such as astronomy, or ecology or even chaos theory.
This is quite a different approach to a short-term, activity related
approach to acquiring certain types of skills. These abstract skills are seen as the
outcome of considerable immersion in a range of subject areas over a considerable period
of time.
That good schooling should equip students with at least some of the
general skills required for successful participation in society, including the world of
work, can be readily accepted. However, the very interdependence of skill and knowledge
clearly limits skill transferability. The more the development of a skill depends on
immersion in a particular subject the less readily will it be possible to transfer that
skill out of the context in which it was acquired. Marshall (1992) warns against the view
that skills are general, transferable and not subject and/or discipline related. He
considers that such a view "further limits immersion in subjects and actually knowing
things well, and/or doing some things well ..."(emphasis in original). Similarly,
Hall (1994) advises that "(g)eneric skills cannot be learned in isolation from a
knowledge base or domain; each domain has its own forms and conventions which limit the
direct transfer of generic skills from one context to another."
Marshall (1992) draws the important distinction between "knowing
how" and "knowing that":
... I see the (national curriculum discussion document) as involving
a reduction of knowledge to knowing how rather than knowing that and completely ignoring
the tacit wisdom that goes with the use of either form of knowledge. Knowing that
something is true is difficult and uncertain, whereas knowing how is practical and
(arguably) translatable into behaviourist terms, that can be quantified and measured.
Knowing that is more difficult and the wisdom that goes with both in decision making and
problem solving even more difficult to judge and quantify. An emphasis on skills takes us
down a mealy mouth path that ignores wisdom and intelligent judgment.
This is a strong warning. Marshall draws attention to the ethical
responsibility of knowledge in terms of wise decision making [2.3]. His reference to
"tacit" wisdom [4.7.4] emphasises the complex and personal nature of knowledge
and the corresponding need to avoid simplistic assumptions about the relationship between
knowledge and skills.
Education is easily subverted by attempts to reduce it to its component
parts, to sequence its acquisition or to assign it to various levels [2.6]. The result is
always arbitrary, and important aspects are easily trivialised or lost in the process.
However, given the constraints of the school timetable and the limited capacity of the
human mind, some ordering of material is inevitable. Thus at stake is the question about
how best to deliver the school curriculum, given these constraints.
The curriculum framework discards the traditional approach to education
in terms of subject disciplines in favour of learning areas and skills. While some
explicit reference to learning and skills could have been helpful, the framework has
sought to be far too extensive in identifying the components of education and fails to
encompass them within a coherent epistemology. It is far from clear that this represents a
better way forward than subject divisions which, while never absolute, represent a less
assertive and more cautious approach to the acquisition of knowledge and skills. The
development of some of the learning areas into curriculum statements based on subjects may
reflect this view.
2.4.3 The Balance between Knowledge and Skills
Notwithstanding their generic title, the descriptions of the seven
essential learning areas contain little reference to actual knowledge acquisition. Many
words and phrases refer explicitly to the importance of skill development rather than of
acquiring knowledge. The words "learn" and "learning" are frequently
used but, in many cases, are not firmly connected with the idea that there is a body of
knowledge to be acquired.
The description of the "Language and Languages" learning area
is almost entirely about language skills and their relevance to personal growth, social
skills or New Zealand's economic development. Students are to learn about the structure
and use of language rather than to be trained in its correct use, although this may be
implied. The one reference to literature is in
the context of developing creative and critical faculties (i.e. skills) rather than that
of developing an appreciation of good literature as intrinsically worthwhile [2.3]. The
draft English curriculum statement has more frequent references to skills, activities
(listening, speaking, identifying, analysing, producing, making, designing, working and
many others) and independent learning than to knowledge and teaching. Moreover, what the
skills refer to is often not clear (for example information and problem solving skills on
p 7 and steps in the writing process on p 11).
Science is correctly presented as a discipline, but the only references
to knowledge in the description of this learning area are in the contexts of scientific
method and environmental decision making. Moreover it "helps people to ... establish
the worth of ideas" without reference to the knowledge and conceptual apparatus
required in order to know what observations are worth making (New Zealand Education
Development Foundation, 1992, p 8). The draft science curriculum statement has been
criticised by Callaghan (1993) for being designed to teach "about physics"
rather than to teach physics, and because it will "remove the opportunity for young
people to obtain any real understanding of physics within most of the secondary school
system ... ."
Howson (1994) observes that, while activities have their uses, the
loading of the new mathematics curriculum statement with "ings" (he notes that
on p 45 there appear: learning, exploring, using, extending, relating, talking,
developing, and several others) does not answer any real pedagogical or curricular
problem. "It is right to fight against the view that a curriculum is just a list of
topics to be learned. However, an attempt to teach mathematics solely through activity is
bound to fail, if only because students have to be helped to construct a framework with
reference to which they can organise knowledge ... ." He considers that "the
proposals are stronger on activities than on knowledge", and concludes that the
mathematics curriculum statement "assigns too little emphasis to the clear statement
of knowledge, and could usefully have provided more examples to explain to teachers
exactly what is intended by some of the 'ings' ..."
This emphasis on skills in a discussion on learning areas is partly due
to the difficulty encountered in trying to separate knowledge and skills as two distinct,
though interrelated, categories. Clearly they should be taken together. Good writing, for
example, is a skill but its development may require formal training in grammar and
disciplined and guided exposure by competent teachers to many examples of fine literature.
The curriculum framework notes that all the elements in the framework are interrelated and
should not be viewed in isolation from each other (pp 4 and 17). However, it is the
relative lack of emphasis on knowledge that is of concern.
A further potential difficulty is the limited and mostly utilitarian
range of skills. There is little to suggest that the development of aesthetic skills is
desirable by, for example, exposing young people to the best of their cultural heritage,
or to what Matthew Arnold referred to as "the best that has been known and thought in
the world" [2.3].
2.4.4 Teaching Methods
The issue of teaching methods (pedagogy) does not appear to have been
specifically considered with the development of the new curriculum. Yet clearly the issue
of curriculum content cannot be divorced from the methodology with which it is delivered.
The view that teaching should be child-centred has some merit [2.4.1]. However, the
framework raises child-centredness to a position of great importance with the statement
that the principles it lays down are "based on the premises that the individual
student is at the centre of all teaching and learning and ... ."
A very different approach is recommended by Simon (1981):
... to develop effective pedagogic means involves starting from the
standpoint of what children have in common as members of the human species; to establish
the general principles of teaching and, in the light of them, to determine what
modifications of practice are necessary to meet specific individual needs. If all children
are to be assisted to learn, to master increasingly complex cognitive tasks, to develop
increasingly complex skills and abilities or mental operations, then this is an objective
that schools have in common; their task becomes the deliberate development of such skills
and abilities in all their children. And this involves imparting a definite structure into
the teaching, and so into the learning experiences provided for the pupils ... .This
approach, I am arguing, is the opposite of basing the educational process on the child, on
his immediate interests and spontaneous activity, and providing, in theory, for a total
differentiation of the learning process in the case of each individual child. This latter
approach is not only undesirable in principle, it is impossible of achievement in
practice.
This approach looks for what is common rather than what is unique. It
concentrates on the group rather than the individual student, while allowing for
modifications in pedagogy to meet specific individual needs. One practical outcome of this
structured group approach would be a greater concern to consider where there might be
advantages in grouping students by aptitude and level of attainment so that the
instruction can be the more effective. [The issues of streaming or ability grouping and
grade retention are discussed at 3.8]. Its focus on achieving mastery of skills and
cognitive tasks and their deliberate development is also in sharp contrast with approaches
based on the view that knowledge is individually constructed [2.4.1].
If the current wide variation in student achievement between schools
[2.8] is to be narrowed, it is particularly important that a pedagogy is developed that
suits the interests and abilities of those in the lower achieving groups. Luxton (1993),
writing for a Local Education Authority in the United Kingdom, has expressed concern that
students post-14, particularly in the practical, technical and vocational areas in
England, have been offered the pedagogy that is least suited to their abilities and
aptitudes.
Luxton (1993) advocates less emphasis on experiential and activity based
approaches and on group work. Instead he considers that for many young people "direct
instruction" is to be preferred. Rosenshine (1987) defined this term as referring to
explicit, step-by-step instruction directed by the teacher. This approach is "rooted
in the notion of mastery to the point of overlearning - to the point where knowledge and
skills are automatic". Luxton notes Rosenshine's (1987 and, with Stevens, 1986)
analysis of well-structured teaching and his list of the key elements of a lesson:
1 daily review;
2 presentation;
3 guided practice;
4 correctives and feedback;
5 independent practice; and
6 weekly and monthly reviews.
Luxton says that research indicates that items 1, 2 and 3 should take up
well over 50 per cent of the lesson and confirms his own Authority's evidence that when
pupils are involved in independent practice they are less engaged than when they are in
groups receiving instruction. He quotes three examples of research findings that should be
heeded:
• The research base from experimental studies conducted in
regular classrooms with regular teachers teaching regular subject matter consistently
shows that when teachers modify their instruction so that they do more systematic
teaching, then student achievement improves with no loss in student attitudes towards
school or self.
• When this type of instruction is done well, it is exciting to
watch. It is exciting to watch a class or group move at a rapid pace and to watch all the
students giving correct responses rapidly and confidently. When this instruction is done
well, the demonstration part moves in small steps accompanied by checking for
understanding. The guided practice continues until all the students are responding firmly.
• The third finding is the most significant. The small step
approach which emerges from the research is particularly useful when teaching younger
students, slower students and students of all ages and abilities during the first stages
of instruction with unfamiliar material.
The issue of pedagogy needs to be considered in the context of
curriculum reform. If the above analysis of teaching theory is correct, some aspects of
the curriculum framework need revision. For example, the draft English curriculum has a
very heavy emphasis on student generated group activity rather than on whole class
instruction from the teacher. According to surveys by Elley (1985) and Henson (1991),
cited by Wagemaker (1993), New Zealand primary school teachers typically adopt an approach
that gives very little emphasis to phonics or systematic vocabulary instruction. The draft
science curriculum was criticised for, inter alia, the fallacy that students can make
scientific discoveries for themselves and for the minimal emphasis on the importance of
acquiring a sound understanding of mathematics (Callaghan, 1993). More generally, the
curriculum statements, while not preventing a small step approach, are so vague and all
embracing that they may well encourage a very different approach. Some able students might
do well in such a teaching environment, but others will tend to founder. The casualties
are more likely to be among the less able and less motivated.
The need for more structured programmes, such as Project Read used in
schools catering for disadvantaged children in the United States, has been emphasised
recently by Nicholson and Gallienne (1993) as one of several possible means of raising
reading achievement levels in disadvantaged areas in New Zealand. Project Read is reported to be "a more structured reading and language
programme which taught children 'the rules' of reading - things middle class children
absorbed from their reading-centred backgrounds" (Rivers, 1993).
However, just as teachers need a variety of assessment methods, they
also need a variety of teaching methods and the professional competence to know which
'works' best for each of the many curricular activities and in relation to students' ages,
interests and attainment levels. Asian teachers are reported to successfully employ a
variety of teaching techniques within each lesson (Stevenson, 1992). The problem with the
curriculum framework and some of the curriculum statements is that they point excessively
to one approach and not to other approaches for which there are positive research findings
and which teachers should be equipped to use. They focus on sensitivity to the needs of
individuals rather than on clarity about what is to be taught and learnt.
The pedagogy advanced by Rosenshine and others, and promoted by Luxton,
obviously has implications for teacher training. High quality questioning, discussion and
review require that the teacher can demonstrate considerable command of the subject matter
and is well trained in these methods.
2.4.5 Subjects and Learning Areas
The learning content for schools has been grouped under the headings of
learning areas rather than by the names of the traditional subject disciplines. In fact,
the learning areas are a mix of traditional subjects (mathematics and science), groups of
subjects (language and languages), broad curriculum areas (social science, technology and
the arts) and an area (health and physical well-being) which is an amalgam of everything
("the physical, social, emotional, intellectual and spiritual dimensions of a
person's growth", p 16).
There are a number of educational dangers inherent in this
categorisation of curriculum content:
• The danger of subject imperialism whereby promoters of each
subject seek to interpret the world from within their own frame of reference. This can
result in a collection of learning areas that are far too big for inclusion in the school
curriculum.
• The weakening of subject disciplines. Over time, each subject has
developed its own methodology and purpose. This factor should strongly influence decisions
about the extent to which subjects should be kept separate or combined within a thematic
approach. Certainly it is often desirable to make connections between subject areas, but
the need to avoid fragmentation, already inherent in unit standards [Chapter 4] and
standards-based assessment, and the potential for the weakening of rigorous intellectual
disciplines need also to be born in mind. Newman (1891) stressed the importance of
intellectual coherence: "How many writers are there ... who, breaking up their
subjects into details, destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole in their anxiety
about the parts".
These dangers are particularly present in social studies. The subsuming
of subjects such as history, geography, and economics can easily lead to the mixing up and
weakening of subject disciplines and result in poor teaching and learning. If subject
disciplines are not respected, the material can readily be abused for political purposes.
History, for example, is an intellectual discipline that seeks to reconstruct the past for
its own sake in the light of the evidence available. Using history to discover lessons
for the present, to remind us of past exploitation, and so on is not 'doing' history.
"[S]uch an education may well generate righteous indignation, a sense of belonging, a
motive for altruistic action; but it cannot introduce anybody to history" (Beattie,
1987, p 18). Social studies are particularly prone to abuse because they tend to be a
mishmash of material that doesn't readily fit elsewhere and to be presented with no clear
internal discipline, a well defined knowledge base and a central unifying theme.
If students are to be taught how to think and not what to think, the
social science curriculum statement will need to stress a careful, rigorous and
disciplined approach. Unfortunately, it is far from clear from the description of this
learning area that this is intended.
Howson (1994) refers to a serious omission from the curriculum framework
which is the lack of any guidance about the weightings to be given to the different
learning areas at different stages of a student's progress through school. He asks:
Is time to be divided equally between all seven areas in each year of
education until year 10? Surely not, for in the early primary years, English (and, for
those for whom that is not the mother tongue, languages), mathematics, health and the arts
are likely to be given greater weight than, say, technology: whereas in later years there
will be changes in balance. ... To plead for a 'balanced' curriculum is insufficient: I
have yet to meet anyone who claimed to be offering an unbalanced one. If we have radically
new aims for teaching and assessment, it would seem essential that there should be some
rough 'costing-out' of time. Failure to do this will almost certainly lead to the problem
encountered in England of an altogether over-loaded curriculum.
2.4.6 Technology
Technical and vocational subjects have been an increasing element of
many school curricula following the expansion of the ability and interest range among
senior secondary students that has taken place in recent years. Many innovative programmes
have been developed.
Considerable importance is rightly attached to the new technology
curriculum. The difficulty is that it appears to be aimed at achieving objectives that
are, to some extent, in tension:
• to enhance technology as a desirable area of education and
training for able students and thereby to break down status distinctions between academic,
vocational and technical education and training; and
• to provide education and training pathways for those students
whose abilities or interests do not lie in the traditional academic subjects.
Both are important objectives but they will not necessarily be achieved
by the same means. Able students are likely to be attracted into existing bursary type
science and mathematics courses. Certainly there may be a need to include further
technical subjects at this high intellectual level. The danger, however, is that existing
technical courses, including traditional woodwork and metalwork, will become undermined by
the "progressively generalised and abstract notion of technology" that has
caused difficulties in the United Kingdom (Smithers and Robinson, 1992a).
The Channel Four Commission on Education (1991, p 14) noted:
... we have seen an academic drift or 'inappropriate
intellectualisation' in relation to the teaching of 'technology' in (English and Welsh)
secondary schools. Technology, as defined in the National Curriculum is, as a matter of
principle, deliberately general and 'context-free'. Even in relation to its most applied
part ... no specific materials are prescribed, nor is a degree of accuracy specified in
the making of objects (comparable to the 0.5mm typically prescribed in woodworking classes
in Germany. ... British teachers of the established, more practical technology courses
have expressed ... their serious concern that many pupils of middle and below-average
academic attainment will suffer from these changes. Such pupils may excel in executing
practical work but become dispirited in verbalising 'design briefs'.
Graham (1993, p 55) reported that the United Kingdom's curriculum
working group on technology was "determined from the outset that technology would be
for all, but knew that in the past the component subjects had not been chosen by able
children and that this was going to have to change". He also noted that the
introduction of technology as a curriculum subject required a "certain abandonment of
standards and rigour which were the driving forces of (previous technical) subjects".
As Luxton (1993) has observed, "[t]hat change could have been effected by giving
academic children lasting, practical skills in wood, metal and other materials which so
many still lack, seems never to have been considered". In fact, according to Graham,
the original concept of technology as a subject was that it should "permeate all
subjects and that it may not have needed any of its own space in the timetable". It
is not hard to see how such views can lead to intellectualising technology out of
existence.
Bierhoff and Prais (1991 p 67-8) contrast continental and British
practice. They note the former involves pupils concentrating on learning to use correctly
a range of basic tools, learning the properties of relevant raw materials and producing
finished artefacts of high quality to given designs. British schools have progressively
moved to a more intellectualised approach, emphasising problem solving, design and
evaluation in complex or highly generalised contexts. The British approach reflects the
concern that
... (u)nless practical subjects are intellectualised and linked to
academic subjects and bulky paper-work activities, they continue to be regarded as not
having a wholly legitimate place in the school curriculum in Britain. The element of
making in practical subjects in British schools has consequently been marginalised in
recent years to the point where it is hardly possible for pupils to develop their
practical skills to high levels.
The new British approach was incorporated in its new National Curriculum
for technology issued in March 1990. However, the Secretary of State ordered urgent
revision and new proposals permitting a greater degree of specialisation in a more limited
range of materials, and thus the production of higher quality work, were prepared.
The description of the technology learning area in the curriculum
framework seems likely to lead to similar difficulties as have arisen in the United
Kingdom. The original concept in the United Kingdom's technology curriculum that
technology should permeate all subjects is also found in the curriculum framework's
description of the technology learning area which states that this learning area has
application to all curriculum subjects (p 13). Hence it is likely to become diffuse, a
cross-curricular theme, without a clear content base of its own. This is likely to be
reinforced by the list of skills which it is said to require, most of which (problem
solving, communication, critical thinking, analysis, synthesis and evaluation) are common
to other subjects and learning areas. Moreover, it is envisaged that it will involve what
appears to be the history of science and social anthropology by referring to learning how
technology has influenced the lives of people of different cultures, backgrounds, and
times. It is also to help students make informed decisions about the use of technology in
relation to society, the environment and the economy. Technology education seen as helping
students "to function in a world of rapid change" is likely to confuse
technology with life skills and vocational training. There are some practical requirements
but these are only some among many.
Thus, on the basis of the learning area description in the curriculum
framework, technology could be virtually whatever a school or teacher wants it to be.
Technology is given no clear aim or content. The result is likely to be considerable
confusion among schools and wide variations in courses and their objectives. The task of
consistent assessment across schools and other providers would seem likely to be immense.
A much tighter definition of the nature and content of the technology
curriculum is required if it is to be successfully developed as part of the school
curriculum. The two reports by Smithers and Robinson (1992 a and b) could be usefully
consulted in further work on the technology curriculum. Two of their eight recommendations
were that "to rescue school technology" in the United Kingdom:
• "it should be clearly established as a practical/technical
subject concerned with the design and manufacture of products and systems"; and
• "its content should be specified as a practical organisation
of knowledge and skills" (Smithers and Robinson, 1992a, p 18).
These would seem to point the way forward in New Zealand as well.
2.5 Attitudes and Values
The curriculum framework includes a separate short section on attitudes
and values (p 21). The former are described as feelings or dispositions towards things,
ideas or people which incline a person to certain types of action. The latter are
described as internalised sets of beliefs or principles of behaviour which are expressed
in thinking and actions. The curriculum is to help students develop and clarify their own
values and to respect those of others.
The issue of values is a difficult one in a pluralist society in which
what is valued is contestable. However, it needs to be addressed in the interests of
societal cohesion. A related, but not identical, issue is that of spirituality which is
mentioned in the framework but its implications for the school curriculum are not
addressed. These issues are considered next.
2.5.1 Values
Values education raises two issues:
• which values should be promoted; and
• the underlying philosophical, ethical or religious assumptions on
which values are based.
As to the first issue, the curriculum framework requires the school
curriculum to reinforce commonly held values such as honesty, reliability, respect for
others, respect for the law, tolerance, caring or compassion, non-sexism and non-racism.
The school should clearly promote the values that are essential to the
proper functioning of any society. To go significantly beyond these very considerable
values is to invite difficulties by, for example, intruding into the responsibilities of
parents and community organisations including churches and marae.
The school curriculum is to help students develop and clarify both their
own values and beliefs, but, in context, beliefs and values appear to mean much the same.
The framework envisages students being challenged to think clearly and critically about
human behaviour, and exploring and clarifying their own values. "Activities should
respect students' cultural perspectives and customs" (p 16).
The problem here is the lack of sufficient acknowledgement that values
are closely connected with religious or philosophical belief systems. Values are better
understood as being derived from sets of beliefs than as "sets of beliefs".
Understanding value systems requires an understanding of the belief systems from which
they derive.
As Bennett (1992) notes, clarification of values, unguided by any
underlying belief system, is simply the clarification of individual wants and desires.
With no reference to religious and philosophical belief systems, a purely subjective
process appears to be envisaged. Values are derived from the act of valuing and are
therefore self-chosen. "Self-chosen values are the essence of relativism which is
seen as the only rational stance in a pluralist world where reason has been unable to
establish an agreed moral base" (Habgood, 1990).
Moreover, values determined by an individual may well clash with the
values of other individuals or of the broader society. The framework asserts certain
values but offers no basis for them except communal acceptance. Mere assertion may prove
intellectually inadequate for some and provides no basis for resolving tensions between
values or for critical assessment of value systems. Students cannot, in fact, make
"informed judgments" (p 14) about human behaviour and values without good
information about underlying belief systems.
Further, an understanding of underlying belief systems is essential to
any rigorous intellectual enquiry as to the nature of human life, the roots of truth,
justice, good and evil, the relationships between human beings and between humanity and
the rest of the physical world, and the origins of contemporary cultural and social
institutions. An understanding of belief systems is essential to the investigation of
history and literature, for example. This does not appear to be acknowledged in the
framework.
These observations suggest the following implications (derived from
Hill, 1991) for a secular school system:
• Values education should affirm the values that are widely
regarded as essential to democratic life in a pluralist society. These include, inter
alia, the mutual agreement between peoples of different beliefs and traditions to respect
their differences provided they pose no threat to democratic principles of justice,
equality and liberty of thought and speech.
• Values education should not advocate one belief system over
another. An exception needs to be noted for special character and independent schools.
• Values education should introduce students to the belief systems
(as well as the values that derive from them) which have contributed to the formation of
contemporary New Zealand culture.
The curriculum framework states (at p 3) that the "New Zealand
Curriculum (the framework and the supporting curriculum statements) applies to all New
Zealand schools ... ", but there is no acknowledgement that integrated, special
character and independent schools can advocate one belief system over another. However,
the legal status of these documents does not yet appear to have been settled.
Any reluctance to introduce specific values education and the belief
systems from which they derive might be countered with the observation that all curricula
are value laden, as the framework acknowledges. In terms of the matters they include and
those which they exclude, the curricula give powerful messages as to what is, and what is
not, regarded as valuable. In an age of cultural pluralism, state schools are rightly
constrained in the extent to which teachers can instruct pupils about the respective
merits of belief systems. But schools can give older students the tools to enable them to
decide for themselves.
Schools would need to distinguish, in discussing moral education,
between young children who are unable to engage in abstract reasoning and older children
who can be invited to compare and reflect on different belief and value systems. As Hill
(1991) suggests, young children should be protected from the more unsettling aspects of
pluralism and be provided with a psychological foundation that broadly affirms their
family values.
2.5.2 Spirituality
The descriptions of some learning areas acknowledge a spiritual
dimension to life and that students have spiritual needs and a spiritual dimension (e.g.
at pp 14, 15 and 16). However, it is not clear whether it is intended that there should be
education for spiritual growth.
Most people would agree that there is a spiritual dimension to human
existence, though there will be wide differences as to its meaning depending, inter alia,
on whether or not it is understood within a religious tradition. It would also be
generally agreed that spirituality is not just another name for religious education
(Minney, 1991).
In terms of education within a secular school system in a pluralist
society, the issues to be addressed would seem to include:
• Are there non-religious aspects of spirituality of intrinsic
worth?
• Can such aspects be taught?
• Should they be taught?
• If they can and should be taught, how would they fit into the
curriculum and what are the implications for teacher resourcing and time tabling?
Hill (1989) considers that there are aspects of spirituality inherent in
the human condition which could be discussed in a context free of any specific belief
system. However, it is not clear how spiritual
matters could be specified in a curriculum statement. Nor is it clear how the teaching of
a spirituality, unattached to a respected religious tradition, could be taught in a way
that avoids introducing children to unhealthy, even dangerous, aspects such as the occult.
It would seem preferable for secular state schools to rely on ministers and other
authorised persons from churches that are widely recognised and respected in New Zealand
to provide for specific spiritual education within a voluntary setting.
One way of meeting spiritual needs in a less direct way is through the
provision of a range of literature dealing with the human condition. C S Lewis wrote that
"spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served. Deny it food, and it will
gobble poison." Some commentators consider that much of today's literature is
imbalanced in that it is concerned with the investigation of vice rather than virtue.
Moore (1993) comments:
A literature whose overwhelming preoccupation is with forms of sin
reflects a profound spiritual imbalance. In the work of the greatest writers and their
descendants - some with brilliant, some with 'ordinary', literary powers - there is no
such imbalance. Vice and virtue enjoy an equally powerful hearing ... and virtue is known,
sometimes, to triumph.
2.6 The National Curriculum Statements
The curriculum framework's discussion of the essential learning areas,
essential skills, attitudes and values is set in broad terms. The national curriculum
statements are to define in more detail the knowledge, understandings, skills, attitudes
and values outlined in the framework.
Most statements will follow a subject rather than a learning area
approach. The statement for technology [2.4.6] is likely to take a different approach as
"(t)his area of learning has application to all subjects of the curriculum" (p
13).
Each statement will identify various strands of learning within the
subject area and for each strand sets of specific achievement objectives will be defined.
These achievement objectives will be set out in a number of levels, usually eight, to
indicate progression and continuity of learning throughout schooling from years 1 to 13.
The key features of the new policy in regard to curriculum statements
are thus:
• the breaking down of subject material into strands and
achievement aims and objectives;
• the ordering of achievement aims and objectives into a
progression of levels (usually eight); and
• the emphasis on learning outcomes - what students should know and
be able to do at each level and within each strand.
It will be noted that the structure of the curriculum statements has
been determined before any detailed consideration has been given to their contents. The
implicit assumption is that the structure can be determined independently of content and,
further, that the one structure will suit all curricula. These would appear to be bold
assumptions the validity of which will be tested as subject curricula are developed. The
danger is that content will be determined by structure rather than vice versa.
The structure of the curriculum statements also raises several important
issues about the control over the curriculum and about the nature of knowledge and the
limits of assessment technology. These are discussed below.
2.6.1 The Extent of Central Control over the Curriculum
The discussion of the curriculum statements takes the framework from the
relatively rarefied atmosphere of principles and broad learning and skill areas to
proposals much more directly affecting the life of schools, teachers and students. The
effectiveness of the framework and the related curriculum statements as a vehicle for
effecting change at the classroom level would be minimal without some specification of
objectives and provision for assessment in terms of those objectives. Specific objectives
and assessment procedures anchor the initiative in the classroom.
An important issue is that of the appropriate degree of central control
over classroom education. It raises the issues of whether there should be a core
curriculum, or even a common curriculum to some predetermined level of schooling, and the
place of a national curriculum framework.
A number of commentators have pointed to what they see as the
contradictory movement between the devolution of administrative, including financial,
control to schools and the tightening of central, political and bureaucratic control over
the curriculum supported by assessment procedures. The extent of any contradiction will
depend very much on how specific the curriculum objectives are and the purposes to which
assessment information obtained is to be applied.
Clearly a highly decentralised administrative control and tight
central curriculum control would be neither sustainable nor healthy. It is very doubtful
if boards, principals and teaching staff would be greatly interested in, or maintain
enthusiasm for, administrative responsibility without significant involvement in
curriculum issues as well.
An approach to curriculum reform that leaves much decision making in the
classroom would also seem essential if proper emphasis is to be placed on the less
testable domains such as the aesthetic, expressive, affective, critical, creative and
imaginative domains which require subjective assessment and are not amenable to pencil and
paper testing. It would also seem essential to the maintenance and development of a highly
professional and motivated teacher work force. This approach implies leaving many specific
decisions about content and pedagogy to schools, and often to individual teachers.
There is also the practical difficulty of enforcing central curriculum
control over some 40,000 teachers in 2700 schools. The potential for teachers to ignore,
subvert and avoid central directions is considerable. Desirable changes in teacher
practice are more likely to be effected by persuasion, and by professional, peer and
community pressure. If curriculum changes are to be successful, teachers will need to have
a strong sense of ownership of the changes.
However, control cannot be passed totally to schools. The government has
to retain some responsibility for the curriculum. There are important societal interests
in schooling which require it, as the representative of society, to maintain some
curriculum involvement. In addition, the government has a strong ownership and purchase
interest in schooling and hence accountabilities to the community for the use of the
capital resources involved and the annual appropriations. Thus the aim should be to
achieve an appropriate balance between local and central responsibility that recognises
the accountabilities of the relevant parties and the interaction between administrative
responsibilities and educational leadership. "On the one hand (the curriculum
learning objectives) should be broad enough to allow for the promised flexibility for
schools to plan their own programmes. On the other hand they should be specific enough to
enable teachers to decide, and report to parents, when students have achieved them - 'to
facilitate assessment and monitoring' and 'to chart the progress of individual
students'" (Elley, 1991c). Some tension here seems unavoidable: the aim should be to
ensure that it is a healthy one which probably requires allowing a substantial degree of
local discretion and good information networks about what 'works'.
The appropriate extent of curriculum specification by central
authorities cannot be determined simply by examining the experience and practice of
different countries. The Dutch national curriculum, for example, does little more than
specify the subjects to be taught (Mason et al., 1990, p 6). It is also the case that
Dutch students do well in some international comparisons, so clearly high levels of
attainment can be achieved without detailed specification of the curriculum by central
authorities. On the other hand, it is not the case that tight specification is necessarily
harmful. Some other countries have extensive national curricula and also perform well in
various international comparative tests.
2.6.2 The Division of Learning Areas into Objectives
The nature of knowledge sets some limits on the degree to which
curriculum material can be divided up into specific, measurable learning objectives
without loss of subject coherence and other educational values. In some subjects such as
typing, objectives (in this case in terms of speed and accuracy) could readily be devised
without loss of coherence. But in many other subjects the dimensions of knowledge and
skill may be too many and too complex to enable the establishment of readily measurable
objectives without greatly limiting what is to be achieved and endangering overall subject
coherence. In such cases objectives may need to be broadly specified and assessment
against them will involve professional judgment. Setting specific, detailed objectives is
likely to be most difficult in learning areas such as art and literature.
The setting of specific objectives of the 'can do' and 'can't do'
variety may be appropriate in the normal course of classroom activity but inappropriate in
a national curriculum document because of:
• the great number of objectives that would be required; and
• the potential for specific objectives to limit the curriculum.
On the second point above, some have commented that what is excluded
from the coverage of some of the statutory orders in England and Wales is more significant
than what is included. More general objectives, the interpretation of which is a matter of
professional agreement and custom, may well result in a broader, less limited curriculum.
Some of the most important educational outcomes are higher order
thinking, creativity and imagination and are not capable of precise definition or precise
assessment. Indeed, as Codd et al. (1991) point out, some objectives may not be
predictable at all. One potential danger is that the objectives will tend to concentrate
on the easily specifiable and assessable, which may also be the more trivial, to the
exclusion of educationally more important objectives.
What is already clear is that the "specific objectives"
(Ministry of Education, 1993a, p 22) will not, in fact, be very specific. The draft
English curriculum provides the following achievement objectives for Oral Language:
Listening (Interpersonal listening):
Level 1 Listen to and respond to others.
Level 2 Listen to and interact with others in group discussion.
Level 3 Listen to and interact with others to sustain class and group discussion.
Level 4 Listen to and interact with others to promote class and group discussion.
Level 5 Listen to and interact with others, adapting listening behaviours to different contexts.
Level 6 Listen to and interact with others, adapting listening behaviours to a range of contexts.
Levels 7 Listen as active participants, effectively adapting listening
and 8 behaviours to a wide range of contexts.
Quite obviously this sort of material can mean totally different things
to different people. It cannot possibly be applied consistently to different assessment
tasks and in different contexts. Howson (1994) came to a similar conclusion about the
mathematics curriculum statement:
In general, then, a wish to present the (mathematics) curriculum as
other than a long list of content has led to considerable uncertainty about what content
it is intended that students should be studying and might be assumed to have mastered at
any particular level. I cannot subscribe to the view, Framework (p 5), that learning
outcomes have been clearly defined.
The same problem is emerging with standards-based assessment in the
qualifications framework [4.8.2]. Such broad, ambiguous objectives might, with detailed
examples provided, be of some assistance to teachers in developing programmes, but they
provide little guidance as to what it means to move from one level to another.
2.6.3 The Number of Levels and Sequencing of Learning Objectives
All countries have some system of 'levels' to differentiate the learning
to be taught and learnt and to order it in some sort of hierarchy. In most countries the
'levels' are age related though this is not the case in New Zealand and England/Wales
under their new curricula, though in both cases some rough indication of the percentage of
the age cohort which should be at any particular level is given (Howson, 1994).
The proposal that all objectives be allocated to one of a number of
levels assumes that learning and skill areas can be readily divided into discrete levels
arranged sequentially in the order in which students learn, and that all learning can be
divided into the same or similar number of levels. This may be easier to effect in some
learning areas than in others.
In Mathematics, you must learn number combinations before fractions.
But there are few clear-cut sequences in Social Studies, or English, or Science. Even if
there were, the actual setting of the standards can only be arbitrary in most cases, and
the gaps between them are bound to vary. There is very little research to support such a
system (Elley, 1992).
Elley (1992) notes that many educational aims represent a continuum of
achievement levels with no clear cut-off points. To divide such areas is to risk
considerable educational loss in terms of subject coherence and the creation of artificial
divides. In fact, there is no clear evidence that learning can be readily divided into
stages or even that, in some areas, learning is necessarily sequential. However, it should
also be noted that practical concerns of curriculum delivery have often required the
establishment of learning sequences based on convention and experience.
The progression through curriculum statements from one level to another
is determined by the building of concepts and learning skills. Baker (1993) observes in
regard to Australian curriculum proposals that the structure this imposes conflicts with
the order implicit in each of the traditional disciplines. He notes that each discipline
assumes a hierarchy of knowledge in which some blocks of knowledge need to be mastered
before others, and in which some knowledge is central while other knowledge is peripheral.
Thus, from the perspective of the order and logic of a discipline, the levels may be
arbitrary and non-sequential.
The number of levels (8 is now proposed) needs to be determined in
relation to the purpose of the assessment. As a broad indicator of educational stage, 8
may be satisfactory if other difficulties can be resolved. However, to assist teachers in
setting instructional levels it may be not nearly enough. Elley (1991c) advises that
"(i)n most subjects, it is possible to distinguish reliably at least 10 or more
different levels of performance across the students in a single grade level"
(emphasis in original).
If the system of levels is seen as providing motivation to students and
regular information to parents then it would seem that 8 levels is far too few. It means
for low achievers a move from one level to another every two or more years, and yet it is
for this group that motivation most needs to be provided. Similarly, it will be
frustratingly slow progression for parents who may lose interest in the process.
In practice, teachers follow 'historical norms':
• what teachers have traditionally tried to teach at various
levels;
• their observations about what the 'average' student can handle at
each level; and
• some research indications as to which concepts children might be
able to handle before others.
What the levels and sequencing of the curriculum statements will do to
these traditional practices remains to be seen. They have the potential for introducing an
additional degree of arbitrariness and of undermining traditional disciplines. It is also
hard to see what compensating benefits they might have.
A further problem with the levels approach adopted is that it assumes
that the curriculum statements provide appropriate curriculum pathways for all students
while recognising that some will proceed much further and faster than others. The
curriculum framework proposes a model of curriculum differentiation by individual progress
through the levels independent of student age or ability. This makes a number of implicit
assumptions. First, it assumes that the curriculum for a high achieving 9-year-old can
properly be the same as for a low achieving 15-year-old. It is by no means clear that this
should be the case and that inappropriate curricula for all levels of ability will not
result. Secondly, the model assumes that all subjects are learnt in the same hierarchical
way with a wide dispersion of attainment between students of the same age. According to
Howson (1989), this is a very questionable assumption.
Howson (1994) has, in the context of a discussion of the new mathematics
curriculum statement, stressed the importance of developing coherent programmes for
students of different abilities and aspirations. He quotes a 1947 Scottish report which
includes the following passage:
Whatever be the value of the 'subject' carried to its full term in
university study, they cannot be "achieved for the child of 16 by simply snipping off
a certain length of the 'subject' like a piece of tape". This is a point that needs
to be stressed continually. Every course must have its own unity and completeness, and a
proper realism requires that content and methods alike be so regulated as to reach their
objective within the time available.
The curriculum framework does not directly address the issue of
curricular differentiation. It does, however, require the curriculum statements to provide
the breadth and flexibility to enable schools and teachers to design programmes relevant
to the learning needs of their students and communities and to provide clear information
about what is to be learned and achieved during the years of schooling (p 23). This
appears to mean flexibility within one set of curriculum levels rather than separate
programmes, comprising a coherent body of knowledge and skills, to meet different student
abilities, interests and aspirations.
The curriculum statements give little guidance as to how schools and
teachers should develop different programmes within the parameters they set. The draft
English statement, for example, has little to offer on teaching needs of particular groups
and ability ranges. As regards high ability students, it simply states that teachers
"will need to be alert to the need to adapt learning contexts to suit gifted
students" (p 14). The mathematics curriculum statement appears to envisage curricular
differentiation to be introduced only in the senior secondary school. It expects schools
to "construct (senior secondary) courses according to the particular needs of ...
diverse groups of students" (p 21). Howson (1994) finds it "extremely
disappointing" that no guidance is provided on how mathematics curricula for the
non-academically inclined might be constructed and on what topics emphasis should be
placed.
The science curriculum similarly places responsibility on each school to
make full use of the flexibility available regarding the approach to its aims and
objectives so as to provide a unique programme recognising, inter alia, the character of
the school population (p 21). However, Seymour (1993) argues that the new science
curriculum actually offers very little flexibility in the approach to teaching science. He
refers to its single philosophical base (p 7 "Making sense") and single approved
methodology (p 9 "portraying science as a set of ideas which have been constructed
..."):
Gone is the teacher's professional freedom to choose and implement a
teaching technique appropriate to their class and appropriate to their personality - the
single required teaching method is construct formation (Constructivism). Gone is the
teacher's professional freedom of interpretation as they see appropriate, by the
imposition of a set philosophic base of 'Making Sense' (Sensism) of school science
experiences.
2.7 The Experience of Curriculum Reform in England and Wales
The New Zealand curriculum reforms appear to owe much to developments in
England and Wales in terms of the Education Reform Act 1988. It is, therefore, instructive
to review briefly the experience to date of those developments.
The Act set out a framework for a national curriculum for pupils from 5
to 16 in state schools. Ten subjects plus religious education were specified. English,
maths and science were designated 'core' subjects. Technology, a modern language, history,
geography, art, music and physical education were designated as 'foundation' subjects. For
each subject, attainment targets and profile components were to be identified and defined
in ten levels. In addition, a series of cross-curricular skills, themes and programmes
were identified. Education from 5 to 16 was divided into four Key Stages: KS1 from 5 to 7;
KS2 from 8 to 11; KS3 from 12 to 14; and KS4 from 15 to 16.
These developments are still in the process of implementation. However,
there are a number of difficulties, criticisms and adjustments which can usefully be noted:
• The subject basis has been criticised as narrow and instrumental
and codifying the status quo. Some have argued for broader, unifying categories
such as humanities, arts and sciences.
• A serious problem was the lack of differentiation between
students provided by the 10 level scale (Marks, 1991, p 31).
The development of the curriculum has caused greater than anticipated difficulties at all Key Stages.
• Smithers notes that the main difficulty in all subject groups was
reconciling the age-basis of the curriculum implied by the first four key stages and
testing at 7, 11, 14 and 16 with the 10 levels for statements of attainment. He comments
that conceivably age or 'levelness' could have been used as the basis for setting
out content. However, age and levels, being fundamentally incompatible, could not be
reconciled by any subject group. This basic tension has still to be resolved in the latest
review by Sir Ron Dearing.
• The subject based curriculum in Key Stage 1 offended many in the
primary school sector who were faced with "the prospect of reinventing their
curriculums in subject terms and, like their secondary colleagues, of struggling to force
a quart into a pint pot" (Ribbens and Thomas, 1992). As a consequence, the curriculum
authorities have had to consider the need for "a leaner and more manageable
curriculum, with the current range of subjects trimmed to their essentials" (Hofkins,
1992).
• Particular difficulties were also experienced at Key Stage 4:
- practical problems of fitting so many subjects plus the
cross-curricular themes into a finite amount of curriculum time;
- complaints that it would be very difficult to teach all ten subjects
plus religious education to students of all abilities without incurring student resentment
and opposition;
- difficulty in fitting into the highly congested curriculum the recent
curriculum initiatives in the area of technical and vocational studies which had become
popular as the unemployment situation worsened.
The result was that the government has backed away from making all ten
subjects mandatory for this Key Stage. It appears now that only the 'core' subjects of
English, maths and science plus a modern language and technology will remain compulsory
(Chitty, 1992, p 54).
• The drafting of subject curricula also presented problems because
of the concern of subject specialists to protect and extend their own 'patch'. Also,
"traditional curriculum ideas, particularly in the secondary school sector, are
resistant to change" (Ribbens and Thomas, 1992). Defenders of traditional school
subjects saw the curriculum reforms as an opportunity for consolidating their territory in
terms of a rewritten syllabus. The process of development through subject working groups
"largely left in isolation to define their own parameters of content and status"
added to the difficulties and "had some bizarre consequences. Science, one of the
first subjects to be developed, appropriated major sections of the traditional geography
curriculum" (Sweetman, 1991) [2.4.5].
The New Zealand curriculum developments parallel those in England and
Wales in several important respects, in particular the specification of objectives by
levels. However, there are also differences. The New Zealand curriculum will, on present
proposals:
• apply to all schools and not just state schools;
• use eight levels from ages 5 to 18 rather than ten levels from
ages 5 to 16;
• use essential areas of learning and essential skills rather than
subjects in the framework. However, in practice this may not constitute a significant
difference because the New Zealand curriculum statements (except technology) are to be set
in terms of subjects; and
• apply all seven learning areas to the first ten years of
schooling and thus may present a broader curriculum requirement than appears to be
envisaged at present.
There are several lessons for New Zealand in the English/Welsh
experience. First, there are considerable technical difficulties in defining attainment
targets and allocating them to levels. Secondly, the strength of traditional subject
boundaries and the tendency for subject imperialism can easily lead to excessive
curriculum demands and little or no time for local curriculum initiatives [2.4.5]. This
points to the need to be clear about what is essential in the curriculum and what is not.
Without a clear distinction between essential and non-essential
subject areas, and without specifications on the dimensions of each, the curriculum is
vulnerable to a plethora of demands. Rival groups contend for power on curriculum boards
and push through program changes which teachers are then forced to implement, sometimes
as often as every other year' (Kramer et al., 1992).
It is instructive to note in this regard that the UK authorities appear
to be moving strongly towards a core curriculum approach (essential cores within core
subjects) in Key Stages 1 and 4, because of, inter alia, difficulties in applying the
subject approach at KS1 and maintaining subject breadth at KS4.
Thirdly, the English/Welsh experience at KS4 points to the tension
between maintaining curriculum breadth and maintaining student interest. However desirable
it is to maintain breadth for all students until age 16, attempts to enforce this will be
counterproductive if the result is failure and alienation for a significant group of
students. The original concept of a single stream for all children through to 16 appears
to have broken down; the revised arrangements "were defended as a means of ensuring
that, once again, schools could cater for pupils according to their differing job
prospects" (Chitty, 1992 p 54). It now appears possible that the 10 level system will
be abandoned beyond age 14.
A fourth lesson is the potential for curriculum reform to result in the
loss of well established and successful vocational and technical courses that have been
developed for those for whom the traditional academic route has been unsuccessful.
The Ministry of Education (Perris, 1993) has pointed out that the New
Zealand curriculum framework, in comparison with the English and Welsh developments,
offers "considerably more flexibility and room for local initiative, both in
curriculum development and assessment". It observes that the New Zealand system
"suggest(s) a progression in learning" based on "the clearer specification
of broad achievement objectives, not the narrow 'attainment targets' of the English
system". This is certainly the intention. However, as Elley (1994) has pointed out,
the Minister of Education proposes to use the levels to set targets for the percentages of
students who should achieve given levels of achievement by a certain date (Ministry of
Education, 1993c). He predicts that, as in the United Kingdom, "what started as an
idealistic, teacher-friendly model will rapidly deteriorate into an accountability-driven
unfriendly system".
2.8 Student Performance
In the final analysis, the key question is whether the curriculum
reforms will assist in raising standards of performance in New Zealand schools. According
to international comparisons undertaken by the International Association for the
Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), our standards are generally good in
comparison with those of other OECD countries - very good in subjects like language and
not quite so good in maths (see Elley, 1991a, and Irving, 1991, for summaries of the
results of relevant IEA research).
There are, however, wide variations in achievement levels between
schools and groups in New Zealand. Inter-school variations are substantial and have been
widening in recent years (Elley, 1993b). Nuthall (1993) advises that the latest IEA study
on reading standards shows that, while New Zealand's top pupils are still among the best,
the gap has widened dramatically between the top and bottom pupils and that those at the
bottom are doing badly. The OECD (1993) reports that while New Zealand had the highest
percentage of 14-year-olds in each of the top two categories in reading it was about half
way up the list of participating countries in term of percentages in the lowest two
categories. The between-school component of the variation in the achievement of New
Zealand 14-year-olds was high relative to most other countries.
A recent comparative survey of reading achievement in South and East
Auckland secondary schools (Nicholson and Gallienne, 1993) reports dramatic differences in
reading levels between schools in the two areas and that "a large number of students
are not reading well" (emphasis in original). Wagemaker (1993, p 58) notes
with concern the significant differences in reading achievement between ethnic groups,
between boys and girls and between students whose first language is English and those for
whom English is a second language.
It is unclear whether New Zealand educational attainment standards are
falling behind those of other countries. It would be generally accepted that there is some
cause for concern about New Zealand's relative performance in mathematics, though the
latest IEA data is from 1981. It is understood that science at the primary level is also
widely regarded as weak (Seymore, 1993). It is also relevant that a number of economies in
the Asia Pacific region are rapidly developing their skill and educational
infrastructures.
New Zealand's performance relative to that of other countries may, of
course, mask changes in absolute performance levels. New Zealand lacks good longitudinal
data on school performance. The latest IEA study, however, notes that the performance of
New Zealand students in reading literacy was lower than that reported in the 1970 IEA
study (Wagemaker, 1993, p 57). Some commentators consider that absolute levels in the
United States have fallen. Chubb (1993), for
example, notes that a high school senior ranked at the 50th percentile on the Scholastic
Aptitude Test in 1993 would have ranked around the 33rd percentile in 1963. Thus in
international comparative studies New Zealand's performance is being rated against
performance which in some countries may have been falling in absolute terms.
Of course, complaints that the country's educational performance is low
and falling behind that of other countries are perennial. However, simply to dismiss them
for lack of hard data would be dangerously complacent. Thought needs to be given to
possible weaknesses in educational performance and potential ways to improve it.
One line of investigation in the United Kingdom conducted by the
National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has led to findings that would
seem to be relevant to New Zealand's situation. The investigations have involved detailed
comparative studies of education and training in Britain and continental European
countries and the use made of them by industries in those countries. The findings have
been summarised as follows:
What these studies suggest is that productivity gains associated with
education are not so much to do with quantitative differences but qualitative ones - not
so much with the amount of education workers have undertaken but with how well-grounded average
students are in mathematics, science and other aspects of general education, and with
the type, duration and thoroughness of the vocational training they receive once they have
entered the workforce. For example, Prais and Wagner (1983) showed that in the German
school system significantly greater attention than in British schools is given to
'pre-vocational' training and to improving the mathematical attainment of average and
below average students. Prais (1987) found that at the end of compulsory schooling there
is a much higher mathematical and scientific competence amongst average students in Japan
than there is in Britain (Maglen, 1992).
These studies suggest that in the United Kingdom greater attention needs
to be given to the grounding of British students in the 'basic' subjects such as literacy,
numeracy and science. Even though the same studies have not been conducted for New Zealand
education, it is hard not to surmise that very similar conclusions apply here in
mathematics and possibly in other subjects as well. Even in reading, in which New Zealand
traditionally does well in international comparisons, there appear to be, as noted above,
a significant number of students who are not achieving at satisfactory levels.
2.9 Conclusions
There is much that is positive about the aims of the reforms of the New
Zealand curriculum. They seek to provide clearer directions about learning and teaching in
schools while at the same time ensuring breadth and coherence at least up to and including
F5. But there are concerns about the particular reforms now underway.
The first concern is the pervasive view promoted in the curriculum
framework that values and knowledge are not absolute but determined by context or
situation and, in particular, by the interests of the individual student. Putting the
interest of the individual student so explicitly and without qualification as the central
premise of all teaching and learning is a
considerable extension of present educational practice. If taken seriously, it would
undermine education in New Zealand which, notwithstanding its child-centredness, still,
for the most part, views the individual child as part of a broader society with an
extensive culture and a long history and in which duties, responsibilities, traditions,
institutions, authorities, and a common morality are all essential aspects of living and
learning.
This relativist view of knowledge and values may well be held by many.
However, it is certainly not universally held, and it is unwise of a democratic government
in a pluralist society to seek to impose a particular philosophy. This presents a dilemma
in that virtually all broad statements about learning, including national curriculum
frameworks, will, at least implicitly, have some philosophical underpinnings which will
not be universally accepted. In a democratic, secular society the problem is best
addressed by affirming only those values necessary to the proper functioning of such a
society and promoting a view of education that is consistent with those values. In going
beyond these limits, the curriculum framework sets up unnecessary problems and invites
opposition and rejection.
The framework's relativism is apparent in its treatment of the purposes
of education which are couched in terms of need - of the individual, society and the
economy. These needs are certainly important, but the curriculum framework leaves
unaddressed key questions about the basis on which these needs are to be addressed and how
conflicts between them might be resolved. It omits certain key values traditionally
thought to be important such as a respect for knowledge for its own sake, the development
of critical faculties with which to discriminate between, for example, truth and
propaganda, and the search for wisdom.
The framework's relativism is particularly apparent in the area of
values. The curriculum framework rightly requires the promotion of certain widely accepted
values. But it confuses the issue by its cultural relativism. The requirement that the
school curriculum will respect the values of all students is astonishing,
but is, it could be argued, consistent with the curriculum framework's central premise
that the individual student is at the centre of all teaching and learning. The lack of any
reference to the belief systems which underlie value formation will hinder students in the
clarification of their values. The traditional notion that education should lead to an
'examined' life appears to have been discarded in favour of the view that education should
lead to the self-fulfilled life.
The division of the curriculum into essential learning areas and skills
poses potential problems such as the undermining of subject disciplines. It may well
exacerbate the existing over-crowding of the school curriculum, particularly as no rough
'costing out' of time allocations is suggested. Technology poses a particular set of
issues. Its present description in the curriculum framework is far too diffuse and, on
that basis, the subject is not likely to be successfully introduced. Its aim and content
should be much more tightly defined.
The structure of the curriculum statements, including the eight levels,
has been decided prior to the determination of their contents - a procedure which risks
forcing curriculum material into unsuitable moulds and which could distort or exclude
important material. It is also difficult and sometimes impossible to define curriculum
outcomes in the very specific terms that the curriculum framework requires without
trivialising or excluding important educational values.
The curriculum statements produced thus far suggest that the outcomes
will be vague and may be of little assistance to teachers in planning programmes. The
distinctions between levels are often also quite unclear, and with only eight levels for
all the 13 years of schooling this is, perhaps, inevitable. While providing a desirable
degree of flexibility they seem unlikely to provide sufficient guidance to schools and
teachers about how to construct different programmes for students with different
abilities, interests and aspirations. The potential motivational advantages of a system of
levels will not be attained with only eight levels across 13 years of schooling.
The issue of the teaching methods by which the curriculum should be
delivered in the classroom has not been explicitly considered in the framework, probably
because it is seen as a matter for individual schools and teachers and not appropriate for
inclusion in a broad framework document. However, the child-centredness promoted by the
framework points in the direction, evident in some of the curriculum statements, of
individual project and team activity. Unfortunately this approach may not suit lower
achieving students. Overseas research suggests that a direct, whole class instructional
approach with regular practice, feedback and review has considerable advantages in terms
of teaching and learning especially for such students. The curriculum framework and
statements do not exclude such methods, but they do point excessively in a different
direction.
The curriculum statements would achieve far more if they simply and
clearly stated in as much detail as possible the basic requirements in core subjects and
at each form level. Setting essential requirements in core areas would free up the
curriculum for much more school-determined programmes. In the early years of schooling the
essential requirements in core subjects might be as much as two-thirds of the curriculum.
Over subsequent years this proportion would fall.
Setting essential requirements fits well with the whole class
instructional approach. However, it carries with it the risk that minimum requirements for
progression will become the maximum requirements as well. To avoid this possibility, it is
important to retain high quality, rigorously assessed, 'exit' certification.
Setting firm expectations in simple, clear language as to what students
should know and be able to do at various stages is essential if the problem of the wide
variability in achievement is to be addressed. Concentrating on content rather than
methodology would leave open the approach to be adopted to the professional decision of
the classroom teacher. It also addresses the difficulties caused when problems are pushed
further up the school system as when, for example, inadequately prepared primary children
transfer to secondary school. Higher attainment among lower achieving students will also
be important if the technical and vocational pathways, discussed in the context of the
senior secondary school [Chapter 5], are to attract well prepared students and to lead to
highly valued qualifications. These pathways must not be allowed to be simply the route
for those who are inadequately prepared in basic education.
The curriculum framework has good aims and intentions. However, many
important implications of its proposals do not appear to have been sufficiently thought
through. It needs substantial revision. The following guidelines for revision are
suggested:
• The purposes of education should be broadened. Education should
be placed within a relational, historical and cultural setting, and not centred
exclusively on the individual student. Its purposes should include the promotion of
learning as intrinsically valuable.
• The framework should balance concern for the social and personal
development of the student with concern for the acquisition of subject knowledge and the
reinforcement of the academic component of education.
• The framework should promote only those values essential to the
proper functioning of a democratic, pluralist society.
• Curriculum statements should state simply and clearly the
essential course requirements at each form level in core subjects up to and including F4
after which students would chose a programme within one of several pathways as discussed
in Chapter 5. The statements should provide practical guidance about how coherent
programmes might be constructed for students of different abilities and aspirations.
The issue of assessment for 'exit' certification is considered in
Chapters 4 and 5. However, in a revision of the curriculum framework as proposed here it
will be important to explicitly provide that:
• High quality, rigorously assessed, 'exit' certification will be
retained.
2.10 Recommendations
1 The New Zealand Curriculum Framework should be revised and
given broader aims. It should place the education of the individual within a relational,
historical and cultural context. It should balance concern for the social and personal
development of the student with concern for the acquisition of subject knowledge and the
reinforcement of the academic component of education. It should promote those values
essential to the proper functioning of a democratic, pluralist society. It should uphold
the importance of high quality, rigorously assessed 'exit' certification.
2 The curriculum statements for the core subjects of English, maths, the
social sciences and science in primary and secondary schooling should describe in simple,
direct language the essential knowledge, understandings and skills that should be acquired
at each form level by all students up to and including F4, and provide practical guidance
about how coherent programmes might be constructed for students of different abilities,
interests and aspirations. The levels approach would be dispensed with.
3 The essential content of each core subject would reduce from, say,
two-thirds of each subject in the primary years to, say, half in the junior secondary
years with the remainder to be decided by each school.
4 The description of technology should be reconsidered with the aim of
establishing the subject as a practical/technical one concerned with the design and
manufacture of products and systems, the content of which would be specified as a
practical organisation of knowledge and skills.
5 Schools should adjust teaching methods where necessary to ensure that
the essential learning in each subject is mastered.
3.0 ASSESSMENT IN SCHOOLS
3.1 Introduction
Assessment procedures will be the critical determinant of the extent to
which the curriculum statements are effective in enhancing the quality of teaching and
learning in the classroom.
3.1.1 Purposes of Assessment
Assessment can take various forms. At the level of the individual
student these are:
Diagnostic. The aim of diagnostic assessment is to identify
learning difficulties so that appropriate remedial help and guidance may be provided, and
to discover which educational processes work best.
Formative. The aim of formative assessment is to identify the
positive achievement of students so that the best next steps for the students' education
can be discussed and planned.
Summative. The aim of summative assessment is to record the overall achievement of the student in a systematic way at the end of a specific period of schooling.
Assessment may also take place at the level of the school or the system.
The purpose of assessment at this level is to assess the effectiveness of aspects of the
school's or system's educational service.
One assessment instrument may serve more than one purpose. For example,
an instrument designed to provide formative information is likely also to provide
information that will assist in the identification of learning difficulties. On the other
hand, it is important to recognise that it is most unlikely that any one instrument can
provide all the information required. For example, some excellent diagnostic instruments
are ineffective for evaluating classes or schools. Elley has pointed out that "good
diagnostic testing is often unstandardised; one probes with tasks that are tailor-made for
the individual child. But summative assessment requires standardised tasks, given under
standardised conditions (whether appropriate for the individual child or not)".
The question of costs and teacher time are also relevant. While some
formative or summative data might be aggregated up to provide evaluative data on a
national basis, it may well be more cost efficient to undertake specific evaluations
through light sampling techniques [3.5]. Similarly, the introduction of some assessment
tasks can make excessive demands on classroom time.
3.1.2 Types of Assessment
Assessment of student performance is, of course, an everyday and
inherent part of teaching. Teachers assess their students frequently using a variety of
methods ranging from classroom observation to formal examinations.
In very broad terms, formal testing is of two types:
• norm-referenced tests which test a student's performance
against the performance of other students being tested or against a previously tested
reference group; and
• standards-based tests which measure performance
against some predetermined standards or criteria [3.3]. Competence-based and
achievement-based assessment are forms of standards-based assessment.
It may be necessary to employ both types of assessment if it is
important to know what a student has achieved in terms of specific skill and learning
objectives, and to compare the student's performance with that of the larger group.
In practice, the distinction between the two types of assessment may be
blurred. Some forms of standards-based assessment use grades which are norm-referenced.
Standards and criteria may relate to norms achieved in previous years, and then seek to
measure current performance against those criteria. Standards-based assessments are thus
usually based on underlying normative assumptions.
3.1.3 Types of Certification
Certification is essentially a summative statement made at the end of a
specific period of education or training. Certification may take one of two forms -
credentials and qualifications. The main features of the two types of certificate are:
• Credentials. These are normatively based which means that
they distinguish between students in terms of abilities. Credentials recognise the
competitive nature of education systems and of the labour market. The existence of
reliable credentials reduces the costs of tertiary institutions and of employers in
selecting new entrants.
• Qualifications. Qualifications describe the holder's
ability to perform certain tasks; they are certificates of competence. There is no
necessary educationally predetermined limit on those who can be awarded a qualification.
Qualifications are often a precondition of entry into a trade or profession or to perform
a task such as driving a car. Professional entry requirements are clearly qualifications,
but the entry requirements into courses with restricted entry (e.g. medical courses) are
usually set in terms of credentials. Because qualifications generally relate to specific
occupations, their relevance to general schooling is limited.
Thus credentials and qualifications provide different kinds of
information and tend to serve different purposes. In practice, however, these terms tend
to be used inter-changeably. In New Zealand, education authorities have traditionally used
the term 'qualifications' to refer to credentials such as the School Certificate, Bursary
and degrees. In this report 'qualifications' is similarly used to refer to both types of
certificate.
3.1.4 Internal and External Assessment for Qualifications
Qualifications, to be effective descriptors of students' abilities or
competencies, need to be consistent in standard. Tertiary institutions and employers need
to be confident that a qualification means approximately the same thing whoever holds it
and whichever education or training provider was attended. If they do not have this
confidence in existing qualifications, they may institute their own entry assessment
procedures.
Education and training providers and examination agencies commonly use a
number of methods to ensure reasonable consistency in standards:
• external assessments;
• internal assessments with external moderation;
• a combination of internal and external assessment; and
• the use of scaling devices to even out differences between
markers, between subjects in terms of difficulty, and to ensure that assessment data are
consistent from year to year.
The degree of difficulty in ensuring reasonable consistency in standards
will depend on what is to be assessed. The assessment of many aspects of students'
knowledge and skills is subjective and some variation between markers is inevitable.
Variations can be limited by the use of marking schedules and scaling devices.
If no attempt is made to ensure that assessment instruments are of
comparable difficulty as between different subjects, there will be a tendency for some
students to take the relatively easy subjects in which they have a better chance of
passing or scoring high grades. There are,
however, theoretical and practical problems in making the necessary adjustments [5.6.4].
Putt (1985) considers that "... the scaling of bursary results, introduced for the
purpose of producing comparable mark distributions in disparate subjects, has now led to
serious and undesirable distortions in the operation."
Most aspects of students' work can be readily assessed externally either
by written examination or, in the case of oral skills and practical work, by the use of
external examiners. If undertaken as part of teaching, internal assessment is likely to be
less disruptive to the school curriculum, less costly, able to cover aspects of learning
not assessable by written examination, and more likely to encourage a high level of
student endeavour throughout the school year. It is, however, open to abuse in that it is
not always easy for teachers to adjust for assistance received by the student from parents
and others especially where assignments are undertaken out of class (Hanson, 1993b). For
'high stakes' exit certificates most educational jurisdictions insist on at least some
external element to maintain standards and to ensure fairness and consistency.
External assessments may be perceived by employers as more reliable in
terms of inter-student comparisons. However, well moderated internal assessment undertaken
at school may be as good a predictor of subsequent performance as a single examination. It
is also the case that it is possible to moderate internal assessment in most subjects
effectively.
3.2 Assessment Procedures in the New Zealand Curriculum Framework
The curriculum framework proposes a range of assessment procedures to
meet different purposes:
• A variety of school-based assessment for diagnostic purposes
is envisaged. Improvement in teaching and learning is expected to result from diagnosing
learning strengths and weaknesses, measuring students' progress against the "clear
learning outcomes" provided in the national curriculum statements, and reviewing the
effectiveness of teaching programmes. The curriculum statements are to include assessment
examples which "suggest a range of appropriate assessment procedures for classroom
teachers to use and build on". The information gained is to assist teachers and
provide feedback to students and parents.
• Transition point assessments are to help identify the
needs of groups of students as they enter new phases of schooling and to assist in the
targeting of resources. They will be undertaken at school entry, the start of year 7 (F1)
and the start of year 9 (F3). The curriculum framework advises that school entry
procedures will be "based on a more systematic use of current diagnostic procedures
for five-year-olds" and are to "provide teachers with information on the entry
characteristics of children" to enable appropriate decisions to be made "about
each child's learning programme". For the years 7 and 9 assessments, item banks of
nationally standardised assessment tasks will be developed to enable schools to assess the
relative performance of students against national standards.
• Summative assessment of school students at F5 and for
school 'exit' qualifications is discussed in Chapter 5 of this report.
Records of achievement will also be developed. These will provide
cumulative information about the assessments of the students' achievements against the
learning objectives, skills development, performance in national examinations and
qualifications, personal qualities and involvement in school activities.
• The monitoring of the school system as a whole will be
undertaken by the assessment of a representative national sample of students at ages eight
(year 4) and twelve (year 8) on a four-year cycle. This national monitoring is designed to
provide information on national standards over time and to identify where improvements
might be needed.
Assessment is to "recognise the differences in gender, culture,
background, and experience that students bring to their learning. Every effort will be
made to ensure that assessment procedures are fair to all students ... " (p 24).
The diagnostic, formative and evaluative assessment proposals raise a
number of issues which are discussed below.
3.3 Standards-based Assessment
While schools are expected to continue to employ a range of in-school
assessment methods, they will also be expected to measure student progress against the
"clear learning outcomes" to be provided in the curriculum statements. As a
national system, standards-based assessment is a relatively new assessment method for New
Zealand schools and is to be used for diagnostic and formative assessment. Its use in
summative assessment is discussed in Chapters 4 and 5.
The extent to which standards-based assessment will assist in diagnosis
is, in fact, debatable. Elley considers that reporting students' progress against defined
achievement objectives may assist in summative assessment but will rarely assist
diagnosis. He notes that teachers employ a wide range of specific, often tailor-made,
tasks for this purpose which are not helped by general level statements.
In theory, standards-based assessment has considerable attractions in
terms of descriptive power. It seeks to provide accurate information about the knowledge
and skills that the student has actually acquired rather than to compare the student's
performance with that of other students. It would be wrong to infer, however, that
norm-based assessment is devoid of this kind of descriptive power.
If Mary scores 95% in School Certificate mathematics, we know from
our knowledge of the system of grading that she is outstanding at the kinds of skills
assessed in that Examination. If John scores at the 10th percentile in Listening
Comprehension, we infer he is not a good listener to verbal messages. In such cases, the
norm of the group provides the comparative standard (Elley, 1992).
Standards-based assessment is also claimed to reduce or remove the
emphasis on competition with other students. The student is compared against preset
achievement levels and against his or her past performance. This can motivate and reduce
the sense of failure. But again the claimed advantage over norm-based assessment can be
over-emphasised. From a very early age, students come to recognise where they are, at
least approximately, in the ability range represented within their class or age group
whether there is formal streaming or not and whether there are norm-referenced assessments
or not. As already noted, standards have underlying normative assumptions, and if the
assessment incorporates achievement levels, then comparison with other students is
explicit. In fact, it is important that the standards for school work are based on the
'norm' for the relevant age or stage otherwise they have very limited value and, indeed,
may mislead and result in wrong and damaging decisions about the student's future
educational programme.
Standards-based assessment has some specific problems that limit the
extent to which it can be used. One fundamental problem is that standards may be very hard
to define.
The standards themselves will necessarily be general and vague. [For
example] most curriculum standards in ... New Zealand's Sixth Form Certificate's
achievement based schemes are either relative statements (more fluent, increasing
accuracy, a wider range of facts) or vague (can understand x, can use appropriate
strategies). So, questions can be set at many different levels of difficulty which are
ostensibly measuring the same quality. This is not good enough for an examiner. There is
too much slippage between statement and question (Elley, 1992).
Precisely these problems of generality and vagueness have emerged over
the use of achievement-based assessment in some academic subjects (Hanson, 1993, and
Thompson, 1993) [5.10.1].
In some parts of the curriculum it is possible to set more specific
criteria. In typing, for example, it is possible to set any number of precise criteria in
terms of combinations of speed and accuracy. It would also be possible to do so in some
limited areas of maths and for readily defined tasks such as reading a thermometer. It is
most difficult in expressive and aesthetic areas of the curriculum such as English
composition and art because of the many dimensions involved and the degree of professional
judgment that must be employed in assessment. Further, even in subjects like mathematics
and science the question of whether the student has reached the one right answer is not
the only one to be addressed in assessment; issues of methodology and presentation, in
which some subjective judgment has to be employed, also arise.
Using standards for assessment may lead to the trivialisation of some of
the most important education objectives which cannot be specified in specific outcome
terms.
The ability to write fluently on a wide range of topics, to read critically texts of different genres, to draw inferences about characters' motives, to devise a strategy to solve a numeric problem, to detect hidden assumptions in an advertisement, to speak clearly to an audience, to interpret a historical document - traditionally these are widely accepted goals of education. None of these lend themselves to clearly-specified standards, suitable for examining. Are we to abandon such praiseworthy objectives to achieve tighter assessment? If so, standards-based assessment would be a tragedy (Elley, 1992).
A likely outcome of any such trivialisation is the lowering of standards
since the more difficult objectives such as the understanding of concepts will tend to be
omitted. This has been one of the criticisms of the National Statement on Mathematics
for Australian Schools which was released in 1990. Australian academics were reported
as
... saying that the new curriculum profiles, which establish a
framework for judging student progress, turn maths into mush, with insufficient attention
to the hard stuff of calculation (The Age, 1993).
The specification of standards is easiest when small and well defined
domains of skill and knowledge are involved. It becomes much more difficult when dealing
with complete courses, subject areas or broad generic skills. If standards-based
assessment were to result in a multiplicity of discrete units, the problem of maintaining
overall coherence in a course of studies and of avoiding repetition could become acute
[2.6.2 and 4.7.1].
Standards-based assessment in the context of levels within a framework
might imply that all students learn in the same sequence. As already noted [2.6.3], there
is little research evidence to suggest that this is always the case.
The conclusion is that setting standards for assessment must be
approached with considerable caution. Standards can usefully be set for this purpose in
some of the more easily testable domains and generally at lower levels of achievement.
Beyond relatively straightforward tests, the number and complexity of objectives
inevitably leads to reliance on relative judgment and not on specific criteria. In
particular, the appropriate use of standards for 'high stakes' assessment in academic
subjects is very limited.
We cannot generalise from a specific test question - or two or three
such questions - to the particular standard they purport to assess. Another question
designed for the same achievement object would tell a different story. Norm-referenced
tests avoid most of these problems, because they do not attempt to generalise from the
students' answers to pre-specified standards which are independent of the test (Elley,
1992).
Whereas teachers are generally very good at ranking students in order of
ability across a range of tasks, they have much greater difficulty in describing what they
can or cannot do in relation to pre-determined criteria. Where precise objective levels
cannot be set, students have to be tested on how well they have mastered complex knowledge
and skills and have understood concepts and ideas. Thus judgments are often relative, not
absolute, and are norm-referenced assessments. Even if the criteria are clear, the
conditions in which the assessment is made may vary widely from school to school, or class
to class, and lead to widely varying results.
Many employer needs are met by norm-referenced information. It may be
more important for them to know that, for example, a job applicant is in the top 5% of the
ability range in mathematics than that he or she has achieved specific attainment targets.
On the other hand, information that an applicant is of high ability and has
specific job-related skills would obviously be useful. In terms of wider attributes and
experiences, a record of achievement such as is being developed by the Ministry of
Education would clearly be of assistance to employers and tertiary institutions.
Using standards for teaching is, however, another matter (Elley,
1992). Teachers generally appreciate the limits of standard setting and teach and test
accordingly. Their assessments will derive from many types of assessment made over time
and therefore are likely to be more accurate. Within the classroom teaching context,
"[s]tudents learn rapidly when their teachers set them feasible standards to aim at,
and the students sense that they are progressing towards them" (Elley, 1992). The
results of such assessment provide useful information. They can inform students and their
teachers and parents about the level of achievement in each aspect of a particular subject
area. For example, it might provide information that a student is achieving well in
geometry but, assuming comparable standards, is performing poorly in algebra. The
establishing of standards and teaching to them accord well with the teaching method
discussed in Chapter 2 of direct instruction aimed at mastery with regular review and
practice [2.4.4]. However, the curriculum framework's 8 levels over 13 years of schooling
are unlikely to be enough to provide this form of motivation [2.6.3].
It is quite unclear how assessment is to recognise differences in
gender, culture, background and experience that students bring to their learning.
Assessment is to be against the "clear learning outcomes" of the curriculum
statements, so one possible implication is that the outcomes will be interpreted
differently according to the student. In this case the outcomes are far from standard and
clear. Alternatively, the student will be only tested against outcomes perceived as
"fair" to the individual student. The basis for such judgments is also obscure.
Presumably it requires something more of teachers than that they should, in the light of
the general principles of teaching, avoid gender or other forms of bias in their
assessment practice.
3.4 Assessment and Curriculum Delivery
Decisions about assessment procedures to be adopted are likely to have
major implications for curriculum planning and time tabling. To provide comprehensive
standards-based evaluation of student achievement in any one subject area, assessment will
need to take account of:
• the number of dimensions of the subject material. This can be
very high. The authors of one of the School Certificate maths schemes determined that it
was necessary to assess students in over 50 different topics.
• the fact that variations in assessment conditions will affect
results. To ensure fairness, assessment would need to take place in a variety of
circumstances and modes (e.g. pen and paper, observation, group discussion and so on).
Further, students' performance is variable from day to day. Moreover, as Elley (1992) has
observed, their performance in writing essays may vary according to topic and genre.
Thus, to achieve comprehensive and fair assessment, a considerable
investment (teacher time, training and resources) in testing would be required. For
diagnostic and formative purposes this should not constitute much additional investment as
it should already be a part of regular classroom activities. If the assessment is to be
used for accountability or summative purposes, it could have considerable implications for
curriculum delivery, and assessment could quickly dominate classroom activity.
3.5 Monitoring the System
If assessment is to be undertaken for system evaluation, it would be
essential that the assessment method used provides results that are comparable from year
to year. Two possible methods are:
• aggregating the results of the assessments of all students in the
particular age or education level cohort; or by
• sampling.
The difficulties of the former method would be considerable.
• It would be necessary to set questions of comparable difficulty
each year. However, the difficulty which students experience depends not only on the
characteristics of each question, but also on a wide range of contextual factors such as
the range of questions, the choices allowed, their wording, and the order in which they
are placed on the test sheet. It is necessary to control for these factors if reliable
year-to-year comparisons are to be made. This poses considerable technical difficulties
which virtually rule out any approach other than a sample based one in which these factors
can be carefully controlled.
• Some form of moderation between schools would be required to
ensure comparable results. While there could be substantial benefits in terms of the
professional development of teachers, it would pose enormous logistical problems.
• Assessment procedures for formative and diagnostic purposes may
be incompatible with procedures geared towards providing for public accountability.
Clearly, the light sampling method proposed in the framework is the
appropriate approach and can be welcomed. It should eventually build up a much more
objective picture of trends in educational achievement at the school level than is
available at present. Furthermore, by separating assessment data required by the state
from that required by schools and students, it avoids some of the tensions that have
arisen in the United Kingdom [3.6].
3.6 The Experience of Assessment Reform in England and Wales
The curriculum reforms in England and Wales were discussed at section
2.7. The development of the assessment procedures was undertaken after the decision to
introduce a national curriculum had been made. The task was given to the Task Group on
Assessment and Testing (TGAT). The main components of the TGAT's proposals were the
Standard Assessment Tasks (SATs), which would be applied at the end of each of the four
Key Stages, and a system of levels of attainment. The SATs were intended to be
sufficiently wide ranging to avoid curriculum distortion and to allow differentiation,
variation, and progression. It involved the classroom teacher in the assessment task and
avoided the notion of externally-assessed pass/fail tests.
There was much to be commended in the TGAT recommendations. However, it
became quickly clear that, whatever their merits, they were also costly, cumbersome and
time-consuming, with the result that the "story of assessment since 1988 has been one
of gradual abandonment of the Task Group's complex proposals" (Chitty, 1992, p 58).
At Key Stage 1, for example, there were to be in English, maths and science, 32
"attainment targets", and 227 "statements of attainment". For a class
of 30 7-year-olds, a teacher would need to grapple with as many as 6810 "statements
of attainment" (Chitty, 1992, p 59).
The KS1 testing was substantially simplified in 1991 to involve only
nine instead of the original 32 attainment targets. Even so the tests were controversial.
It was claimed that even the much reduced testing requirement was disruptive to useful
education (Marks, 1991, p 30). It was also claimed that the testing did not provide
significant additional information to what was already known about children's abilities.
The tests at the end of Key Stage 2 (11-year-olds) will be introduced in 1994 and will be
only in English, maths and science. These are to be formal and written and will last a
total of four and a half hours. Testing at the end of Key Stage 3 (14-year-olds) was
trialed in 1992 with the intention of extending it to all state schools in 1993. The tests
are pencil-and-paper tests only in English, maths, science and technology.
Smithers notes that a dilemma which has still to be resolved is that the
government has wanted to use tests of children's performance to measure the system's and
teachers' effectiveness, whereas the teacher unions have only wanted to accept diagnosis
of each child's strengths and weaknesses as a basis for teaching.
3.7 Assessment at Key Transition Points
The proposal for more formalised assessment at key transition points is,
in principle, an excellent one. However, such a testing regime will inevitably intrude
into the school curriculum and it is important that the benefits achieved outweigh the
costs of disruption to the normal life of the school. The English and Welsh experience has
shown up the importance of striking a balance between:
• too much formal assessment, which is costly and disruptive of
good education, and so little formal assessment that additional worthwhile information is
not obtained;
• classroom teacher involvement in formal assessment, which is
desirable in the interests of teacher professionalism, and external assessment in the
interests of rigour and national consistency; and
• formal assessment in a broad range of subject areas in the
interests of curriculum breadth and formal assessment in only a limited number of core
areas in the interests of minimising costs, curriculum distortion and disruption to
education programmes.
It is a difficult matter of judgment to determine the optimal balance
point. It should be noted that there are many highly successful school education systems
that do not use curriculum and assessment systems such as those which are being introduced
into England and Wales and in New Zealand. It is also salutary to note that, as in the
case of the curriculum reforms [2.7], the English and Welsh assessment reforms have been
progressively simplified from the original proposals. The simplifications appear to have
been driven substantially by pragmatic educational concerns rather than by ideology. It
came to be realised that what might seem to some to be ideal on paper in terms, for
example, of curriculum coverage and the frequency of formal assessment, may not produce
net educational benefits when translated to the real world of the classroom.
In outline, the key point assessments proposed are similar to the regime
in England and Wales to the extent that, with School Certificate at year 11 (F5) four
assessment points are proposed - school entry, and years 7(F1), 9(F3) and 11(F5). However,
there is an important distinction in that their purposes are different. In England and
Wales the assessments appear to have an accountability purpose, whereas in New Zealand the
transition point assessments at F1 and F3 will be at the beginning of the year and are
intended to guide programme development and teaching. The proposed development of resource
banks of test items for use in a standardised way at F1 and F3 should greatly facilitate
classroom assessment by teachers.
Although the New Zealand proposals are much less extensive than the
English and Welsh ones, it would seem desirable, in the interests of minimising disruption
to normal classroom activity, for formal, mandatory assessments after school entry and
before School Certificate (which is considered in Chapter 5) to be limited to core areas
such as English, maths, the social sciences and science. Narrowing the area to be tested
does run the risk that this will lead to a two-tier curriculum. However, this should be
avoided as long as the tests are not for 'high stakes' but for diagnostic and formative
purposes.
3.8 Implications for Curriculum Delivery
The aim of the curriculum and related assessment procedures is better
teaching and learning. This is to be achieved by better diagnostic and formative
assessment. Teachers, by assessing performance against the curriculum objectives, are
presumably expected to be better able to determine the level at which teaching should be
pitched for each student in each subject area. Further, each student is expected to work
his or her own way through the levels of the curriculum statements in each strand of each
subject or learning area.
An important issue for curriculum delivery is that of differentiation,
that is the steps to be taken to cope with variations in ability and attainment between
students. Curricular differentiation is one response to this problem, and the
possibilities for developing coherent programmes for students of different abilities,
interests and aspirations within the levels system were considered at 2.6.3. Other
responses to the problem of differentiation are ability streaming and grade retention and
these are discussed in this section. However, the framework, while not explicitly
rejecting these options, appears to advise against them - "(i)n any one class,
students may be working at a range of levels, both in the different learning areas, and
within a single learning area. They will work at their own rate while being encouraged to
strive for higher goals" (p 23).
The curriculum statements also appear to assume multi-level teaching
while not explicitly ruling out other options. For example, the draft English curriculum
statement notes that "students within a single class may operate at different levels
of learning" (p 17). The diagrams on p 17 of the mathematics curriculum statement and
at p 15 of the science curriculum statement assume that students will be working at a
variety of different levels in each form and, presumably, in each class.
The assumption of multi-level teaching has considerable implications for
curriculum delivery. Of particular importance is the implication that all curricular
differentiation will take place within the class and not between classes. The practical
consequences for teaching and learning of students working at perhaps as many as five
different levels within the same class are
obviously considerable. It would seem to put an unjustified burden on all but the most
able teachers. The practical outcome is likely to be considerable stress on individualised
work programmes rather than direct, whole class teaching [2.4.4]. This approach is in
marked contrast with most continental European models.
The reference to multi-level teaching and learning in each class appears
to incorporate within the new national curriculum an uncritical acceptance of the existing
wide variation in attainment for students in each age group. Quite apart from the problems
of teacher stress, pedagogy and optimal class organisation, this fails to address a
significant problem - an apparently long tail of low achievers.
Another important implication of the curriculum framework's model is
that students will progress from form to form irrespective of their level of attainment.
This means that any linkage between a student's age and any concept of the minimum
knowledge and skill that should be acquired by that age will be dispensed with. Without
any clear expectations about what should be achieved by most reasonably hardworking
students by various ages, will this model not exacerbate the already significant and
apparently widening variation in attainment between students and schools (Nicholson and
Gallienne, 1993, OECD, 1993, and Elley, 1993b)?
At present a number of schools are working on programmes that allow
quicker learners to progress faster than the average, for example to take School
Certificate from F4. The objectives/levels approach of the curriculum reforms would
presumably promote such arrangements but within a system that maintains social promotion
between forms. However, curriculum levels are likely to be so broad and their definitions
so unclear that their effects on progression are difficult to predict.
The absence of social promotion is, in fact, the norm in a number of
other education jurisdictions. Making students repeat years if they fail to reach the
requisite standard for progression is the norm in Europe.
As in most parts of the European Continent, and in contrast to
Britain, minimum attainments are required in each class before moving up to the next
class; otherwise the class is repeated, or the pupil moves to a less demanding type of
school. Only one or two pupils are usually affected in each class; this seems to be
sufficient to encourage pupils to reach the required standards, and to encourage teachers
to concentrate on those standards (Mason et al., 1990, pp 9-10).
The important point is that such arrangements institutionalise high
expectations within the education system. Green and Steedman (1993, pp 14-15) report that:
... norms and expectations for all children ... give clarity and
purpose to the educational process. ... The practice of grade repeating, which is
widespread in Germany, France and Japan, serves to underline the expectation that certain
standards are required at each level for all children. The practice has been criticised
for the supposedly damaging effects that such 'labelling' may have on pupil confidence and
motivation. However, recent research in France indicates that at the secondary stage
'redoublement' does not noticeably damage pupils' self-esteem and that for a proportion of
those repeating a class, subsequent progress is better than for those of similar
attainments who do not repeat (Robinson, Taylor and Piolat, 1992). Grade repeating may be
seen, therefore, as a practice which embodies an important educational principle: whilst
some children may take longer than others, all are capable of achieving.
Such features can cause difficulties for students, parents and teachers.
But, as a distinguished group of British educationalists have observed:
... the impact of these (and other) difficulties should not be exaggerated. In France by age 16, half of all pupils have had to repeat a year, yet 90 per cent of 16-year-olds choose to stay in full-time education. Equally, in Holland virtually all pupils having to repeat a year go on to complete their school leaving diploma successfully at 16 and many of these choose to stay on in full-time education. In Germany, perhaps as many as a third of those reaching university have done so despite - or perhaps because of - repeating a year (Channel Four Commission on Education, 1991, 2.9-2.15).
However, the research on the effects of promotion and retention is far
from unanimous. Holmes and Matthews (1984) reviewed data from 44 studies of the effects of
grade-level retention on elementary and/or junior high school pupils in the United States.
Their finding was that, on average, promoted children achieve higher than retained
children on the various outcome measures employed. Clearly there are cultural and other
issues that suggest that particular institutional arrangements may work better in some
societies than in others.
While social promotion is the norm in New Zealand schools, it is not the
norm for transfer to university; and access to certain senior secondary classes often
depends on fifth form results. At least one New Zealand secondary school is extending what
is already common practice in other parts of the education system:
It is an educational nonsense to expect a child who has missed a big
proportion of days at school, to progress to a higher level, particularly if the high
absence rate has resulted in an abysmal attainment rate. I also become increasingly
impatient with those (very few) students whose behaviour, attitude, punctuality, work
habits and social ignorance interfere with the learning of other students. Choices have to
be made, and if a student chooses not to cooperate, and learn, then the school's choice is
simple - stay back a level until you are ready to co-operate and progress (Raffills,
1993).
One issue that schools would need to address if minimum requirements are
set for each age level in core subjects [as recommended at 2.10] is what should determine
progression from year to year - a satisfactory requirement in all subjects, a satisfactory
average score or some other requirement.
There are no obvious answers to these questions. At the primary transfer
point the aim should be to bring as many children as possible up to the minimum
requirement in all core subjects. Any advantages in holding them back for more than a term
or two could be more than offset by the disruptive effects of having older teenagers in
primary or intermediate schools. However, it also the case that promoting ill prepared
children on the basis of age alone is simply passing on to secondary schools problems that
should have been addressed earlier. Research suggests that in some areas these problems
are considerable. Secondary schools are
generally not well equipped to address basic deficiencies in literacy and numeracy and
cannot reasonably be expected to be.
A substantial advantage of setting minimum requirements will be to show
up much more clearly inadequacies in primary schooling, and to signal to secondary schools
the need for special reception classes for such students and for the additional schooling
they require. Primary schools should do all they can to enable students who are failing to
meet minimum standards by providing additional schooling in the weekends and school
holidays.
In the junior secondary school it will be important that students reach
the minimum required standard in order to progress. Specifying minimum requirements in
each core subject will help to ensure that students achieve mastery of the essentials
before they are allowed to progress. Progression should depend on achievement across all
core subjects. Nor should students be allowed to give up a subject, say maths, because he
or she doesn't like it.
In the middle and senior secondary school it is of increasing importance
that schools develop different pathways along which students of different interests and
capabilities can progress. This is important for the morale of students, especially those
presently under-achieving, and their teachers as well as in the interests of raising
achievement levels generally. However, students should be educationally equipped to embark
on a pathway and this means that they need to have reached a satisfactory level of
attainment before being allowed to choose between the various options. This issue is
discussed in Chapter 5.
The assumption in the curriculum framework that students will be working
at several different levels within the same class poses considerable practical problems
for teaching and learning. Without some ability streaming, teachers would have to continue
to pitch most of their 'whole class' teaching at the level of the average student in the
class. This would be too advanced for the slower learners and frustratingly slow for the
quicker learners. In practice, as already noted, following the curriculum framework model
is likely to lead to a reliance on small group or individual teaching rather than whole
class teaching. This is contrary to the teaching methodology outlined earlier [2.4.4].
Teaching groups of roughly similar abilities is also commonly found in
continental European countries. The high attainment of Dutch school students in
international tests has been attributed by a Dutch educational expert precisely to the
extreme differentiation of the Dutch schooling system which, in his view, permits
instruction levels to be better equated with the varying capabilities of the students. The
research evidence is, however, not unanimous about the achievement effects of streaming
(Slavin, 1987 and 1990). Presumably much will depend on how successfully teachers adapt
their pedagogy to a situation of greater homogeneity of ability in their classes. The
introduction of streaming without change in instructional practice is not likely to be
beneficial. For senior secondary students, the availability of various learning pathways
appropriate to the abilities, interests and attainment levels of different students is
also crucial to successful teaching and learning. Thus the issue of streaming needs to be
considered within the wider context of pedagogy and curricula differentiation.
Many New Zealand schools are reluctant to introduce formal streaming,
presumably in keeping with the child-centred approach and, in particular, to preserve the
self-esteem of their students. There is, however, some de facto streaming on the
basis of student subject choice when, for example, more able students take Latin. The
reluctance in many New Zealand schools to introduce more formal streaming for pedagogical
effectiveness would seem to be unwarranted given continental European experience. Concern
about student esteem should be balanced by concern to maximise the effectiveness of
teaching and learning.
It is also worth noting that there is another substantial source of de
facto streaming. This is the 'streaming' by geographical location, for example between
schools in South and East Auckland (Nicholson and Gallienne, 1993). This is clearly not
the outcome of conscious decisions to improve pedagogical effectiveness. It raises serious
social, as well as educational, problems for certain communities and, more generally, for
social cohesiveness.
If school catchment areas are highly differentiated in terms of
educational attainment, it would seem likely that in areas of generally low attainment
young people will have limited views about job opportunities, and social networks will
tend to reinforce low expectations of life beyond school. Moreover, they are likely to
have much less access to job search facilities than are available to better-off families.
In some areas difficulties will be compounded by language and cultural barriers. These are
problems that might be addressed by various methods of compensating for lack of in-school
socialising across ability levels and socio-economic groups, including school-business
links and career guidance.
On the issue of ability grouping, the United Kingdom's Channel Four
Commission advise that:
With a narrower spread of pupil attainment, it will become easier for
the teacher to spend a greater proportion of each school-period teaching the class as a
whole; rather than breaking each class into groups working at different levels. This
should make it easier to maintain systematic teaching. We also recommend that teachers
modify their teaching styles to promote a more ordered teaching environment as observed in
continental schools (Channel Four Commission on Education, 1991, recommendation 7, p 28).
Thus the Commission's emphasis is on a narrower spread of student
attainment in each class and a greater reliance on direct, systematic teaching of the
whole class [2.4.4].
Schools should, however, be open to situations in which classes of mixed
ability can be educationally worthwhile. At the extreme ends of the attainment spectrum
the case for streaming is clear. For example, there is little point in trying to teach as
a group 13-year-olds who have read several novels by Dickens and those who can barely
read, or those who are ready for calculus and those who cannot add. In mathematics, and
presumably also in subjects such as physics which have a strong mathematical base, ability
streaming seems to be particularly important for successful teaching and learning. It is
within the broad middle ability spectrum, and particularly in the humanities, that there
can be profitable opportunities for a mixed ability approach. One experienced teacher notes that she has "repeatedly found that
well-conducted seminar discussions in English, history, and other humanities subjects
engender first-rate performance in students normally considered mediocre by both their
teachers and their peers."
The age at which streaming begins varies in continental European
countries. However, it is usually not introduced until the late primary school years
presumably because of the large differences in maturation rates of younger children. There
is also some variation by subject. For example, one of the German Land introduces
separate classes for core subjects - mathematics, the national language and the first
foreign language - from the age of 10 for low attainers (Prais and Beadle, 1991).
Ability streaming and limiting progression to students who are ready for
it add considerably to the responsibilities of teachers. The over-riding questions
become: Is this student ready to move up to a higher form? and In which class will this
student learn most? Decision making carries risks - in this case of making the wrong
decisions and of locking students into the wrong form or stream. It is much easier to
avoid such questions by maintaining mixed ability classes and social progression on the
grounds that these procedures are perceived to be in the best interests of all students.
But a decision to ignore these questions is, of course, a decision - and one which is at
least equally capable of adverse consequences for teaching and learning. These questions
are precisely the kind on which professionals are expected to decide and to be held
accountable.
3.9 Conclusions
Assessment is an essential part of teaching and learning, and any
additional assistance for the teacher and learner in this activity is to be welcomed. The
proposals for the development of records of achievement and for national monitoring are
excellent. Proposals to publish data banks of assessment data for use in the classroom
context can be readily supported.
The reliance on standards for diagnostic assessment is not well founded.
This form of assessment may assist in diagnosis when complemented by other assessment
methods better tailored to the task. The breadth of the level statements and the vagueness
of the objectives suggest that the standards in the curriculum statements will be of
little practical assistance.
There are considerable technical difficulties with standards-based
assessment for general academic subjects in which objectives, especially the more
important ones, are hard to define with any precision. Thus the current enthusiasm with
standards-based assessment for all levels of school education gives cause for considerable
concern that school education will be degraded because important objectives will be
trivialised or disregarded.
The limitations of standards-based assessment in academic subjects are
most obvious in summative assessment, especially for high stakes assessment such as those
leading to school leaving, or 'exit', certificates, except in very limited subject areas.
The implications of the assessment proposals for pedagogy were discussed
in Chapter 2 [2.4.4]. Other implications have been drawn out in this Chapter. A major aim
of better and more frequent diagnostic assessment is to enable teachers to target the
level of instruction more accurately. But maximum use of this advantage will not be
achieved unless students are grouped according to level of attainment. This is important
for a whole class instructional approach, and will also assist teachers to achieve a more
ordered classroom environment. There can, however, be profitable exceptions to this
general approach to the issue of differentiation.
If the curriculum objectives and related assessments are to be effective
in improving teaching and learning, it will also be necessary to relate progression more
clearly to satisfactory minimum levels of attainment. Progress through the school system
should be dependent on reaching a specified level of attainment in core subjects which
should be within the ability range of the great majority of students provided they work
hard.
It would appear that a significant number of primary pupils are moving
on to secondary school without acquiring the necessary foundation, with the result that
their early secondary school work is still at the primary level. Clearer specification of
expectations of attainment at various stages would enhance motivation and, as noted in
respect of grade repeating [3.8], emphasise the important principle that all are capable
of achieving.
Stricter attention to student progress would require greater
specification of minimum attainment requirements in the core areas as recommended in
Chapter 2. Assessment should be internal, assisted by nationally standardised assessment
data banks, except for decisions about progress through school and for the key transition
point assessments which should employ reliable external tests.
The concept of assessment at key transition stages has considerable
merit, but the English/Welsh experience suggests that care should be taken to avoid
burdening teachers and students with excessive testing. It should, therefore, be limited
to core areas.
All teaching practice, including assessment, should, within general
teaching principles, allow for modification to meet specific individual needs. This should
require taking care to ensure that tests are constructed to avoid bias and also to ensure
that special facilities are available for those with physical disabilities. However, to
lay down an unspecified but unlimited requirement that assessment "will recognise the
differences in gender, culture, background, and experience that students bring to their
learning" is unwise, likely to be demeaning of students, and detrimental to rigorous
education especially of those most in need of assistance.
3.10 Recommendations
6 Primary schools should provide the foundations of subsequent learning
at secondary school. Primary schools should assess children's readiness for secondary work
in terms of core knowledge and skills in English, maths, the social sciences and science
using reliable external tests, and provide extra tuition if required to enable them to
acquire mastery of the essentials in each subject.
7 Progress through junior secondary school should be related to the
achievement of core knowledge and skills across a range of subjects at a level which
should be within the scope of the great majority of students provided they work hard.
Additional tuition should be made available to assist slower learners to achieve the
required levels.
8 Assessment for progress should employ reliable external tests.
9 To avoid over-burdening teachers, the proposed key transition point
assessments at the start of years 7 and 9 (F1 and 3) should be limited to the core areas
of English, mathematics, the social sciences and science.
10 Classes should be organised so that, as far as is practical, students
in them have reached similar levels of attainment, though opportunities for successful
mixed ability teaching should not be overlooked.
4.0 THE QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK
4.1 Introduction
The impetus for the implementation of a comprehensive system of national
qualifications originated in dissatisfaction with aspects of the previous system for
certifying vocational skills combined with enthusiasm for many aspects of the system that
was introduced into Scotland in the mid-1980s by the Scottish Vocational Education
Council, or Scotvec.
The problems with the previous New Zealand systems do not appear to have
been analysed in any depth. There has been a general perception that the level of
acquisition of qualifications has been too low. More specific criticisms included:
• the multiplicity of certifying authorities;
• delays in identifying changes in the skills needed in industry
and commerce and in making the necessary adjustments to qualification requirements;
• lack of recognition of awards not covered by the Authority for
Advanced Vocational Awards (AAVA) and the Trade Certification Board (TCB);
• limited provisions for cross-crediting, lack of linkages between
school and post-school qualifications and lack of recognition of relevant experience; and
• restrictive and inequitable entry criteria to some occupations,
and some course requirements that emphasised time-serving and associated employment.
It should, however, be noted that there were a number of good features
of the previous system. For example, under it a number of highly regarded qualifications
have been developed including the NZ Certificates. These certificates do not lack quality,
though it might be argued that the number of people acquiring them are too few.
The New Zealand interest in the Scottish system led in 1985 to a visit
to Scotland by the then Minister of Education and a senior Education Department official.
It was followed in 1987 by a visit to New Zealand of the Chief Executive of Scotvec.
Considerable interest was expressed in the Scotvec qualification system which, as reported
by the Achievement Post School Planning Committee (1987), was based on:
• a modular programme of study;
• a single national certificate;
• assessment based on specified performance criteria and cumulative
performance;
• a range of points of entry to, and exit from, education and
training;
• greater freedom of user choice;
• better opportunities to change areas of study while retaining
credit for earlier achievement; and
• closer links among all providers of post compulsory education and
training.
Important issues were raised by the Achievement Post School Planning
Committee in 1987 about aspects of the Scotvec system in relation to the New Zealand
context. These included the potential for conflict between centralised control and the
desire for local initiative, the role of industry in course content, the disjunction
between the norm-referencing within the school examination system and the standards-based
assessment of Scotvec, and the problem of recognising excellence in a standards-based
assessment system.
Most of the main features of the presently emerging framework were set
out in the government's policy paper Learning for Life Two of August 1989. These
were clearly influenced by the Scotvec model. However, the framework went much further in
one important respect. Whereas the Scotvec system only included vocational education and
training, mostly at non-advanced levels, the New Zealand system was to coordinate
vocational and academic qualifications at all levels from those at F5 upwards. The
qualifications system was to be based on a student-centred approach to learning and
assessment which stresses the competency of students to understand and apply their
acquired knowledge (Learning for Life Two, p 44).
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) was established under
the Education Amendment Act 1990 which incorporated the main features of the proposed
qualifications framework.
The NZQA published discussion papers in October 1990 (NZQA, 1990) and in
March 1991 (NZQA, 1991a) setting out proposals to flesh out the statutory provisions. A
report summarising the responses to the discussion papers and the decisions of the NZQA
Board was published on 24 September 1991 (NZQA, 1991c). The framework was officially
launched in November 1991 when a number of descriptive booklets were published. In May
1992 a more comprehensive consultation package (NZQA, 1992g) was published which included
a number of documents detailing proposals for managing the quality of provision of
nationally recognised qualifications.
One striking feature of the development of the New Zealand qualification
framework is the lack of in-depth analysis of the problems within the previous system and
of the costs and benefits of the various ways of addressing them. The critical decisions
appear to have been made in 1989/90 and consultation documents put out subsequently have
been largely descriptive and concerned with the details rather than analysis of issues and
options. There appears to have been an early decision to concentrate on the Scotvec model
which was unfortunate as other educational jurisdictions have lessons to offer. European
countries, for example, have quite different systems which enjoy a high reputation in the
vocational and technical education and training areas in which the United Kingdom is
widely regarded as relatively weak.
The introduction of the National Certificate was one of the key
components of the National Party's 1990 education manifesto entitled Skills for the
1990s. However, it was described in the manifesto as a certificate that would ensure a
better integrated system of vocational education which would provide a bridge from
school to polytechnics. The extension of the National Certificate to include
academic subjects appears to have been a later and much more ambitious objective and based
on the view that there are no significant differences between vocational and academic
courses at least in regard to assessment and certification requirements. As Elley (1993b)
points out, this extension is a crucial difference between the Scotvec and NZQA models. It
is, as discussed later, an extension that has led to very considerable difficulties.
Current criticism of aspects of the framework reflect this lack of
analytical input before key decisions were made. Many of the main concerns were
identified, at least in outline, in 1987 but, in some cases, such as how to recognise
excellence in the assessment process, are being considered during the course of
implementation.
The existence of a good system of qualifications may not, of course, be
enough if New Zealand is to achieve its social and economic objectives. Ultimately the
demand for, and prestige of, technical curricula and qualifications will depend on factors
outside the education arena. It will depend on "the extent that New Zealand is able
to develop and sustain a vigorous industrial knowledge sector economy. To the extent that
it does, so will the task of negotiating appropriate curricular reform in New Zealand
schools be enhanced" (McKenzie, 1992). Further, as argued in Chapter 5, institutional
changes at the secondary school level are needed, in addition to changes to the curriculum
and qualification systems, in order to promote high quality technical and vocational
teaching and learning.
One aspect which could usefully have been considered before decisions
were made is the government's interest in certification for the award of qualifications.
This is considered next.
4.2 The Government Interest in Certification
There are a number of parties to the process of certifying skills and
knowledge, and their interests are not identical. The interests of students will be in
qualifications which are widely recognised in the area of activity in which they are
engaged or wish to enter. The qualifications should signal to employers or institutions of
higher learning that their holders possess the knowledge and skills required for entry to
it or for progression within it.
Students, whether in work or new entrants to the labour market, may seek
qualifications that have worth in a range of occupations and which will allow movement
within and between firms and industries. For a qualification to be of worth in the job
market it is likely to require scarcity value; if it were to be too readily available it
would not assist employers in screening applicants. Thus students may want qualifications
that open doors to them but not to others.
Employers will seek qualifications that accurately signal to them that
the employee or job applicant has the ability, attributes, knowledge and skills required
for entry or progression. The employer will look for qualifications for entry that signal
trainability for specific skills while the requirement for progression might be
qualifications that certify that those skills are already possessed.
The interests of the employer and employee may diverge. Employees
without a commitment to a specific vocation often have an interest in a general
education as a foundation on which a variety of specialist skills can be later developed.
Employers, however, may have an interest in the special skills needed for the
particular work in hand (Prais, 1989, p 53). Their interests will tend to be in
qualifications that signal attributes required in the interests of their firms which may
not coincide with the long-term interests of new entrants and employees.
The interests of an industry body may not be identical to those of all
its constituent firms, many of which will be in competition with each other for specialist
labour. An industry group will seek qualifications that signal information to the group as
a whole but not to other industry groups. There would seem potential for tension between
the specific skills required in the industry and specific skills required in a firm. The
industry group may wish to include skills that individual firms prefer to make firm
specific.
Professional and technician groups will also have their own interests
which might include the protection of the labour market power of existing qualification
holders. Thus there may be a tension between the concerns of existing qualification
holders and potential new entrants to the group. Existing holders who usually run the
professional or technician registration bodies may, for this reason, be slow to adjust
entry requirements particularly if adjustment eases entry.
Providers are concerned to provide training that leads to qualifications
that are widely sought after by students and employers. To the extent that they have
commercial objectives, they will seek to maximise the content of training courses (for
example by lengthening training periods) in order to maximise income. Providers may also
have an interest in developing their own brands in the market for education and training
skills. Thus a provider may seek to develop distinctive curricula and delivery and
assessment systems which can be clearly distinguished from those of other providers.
The public interest, as represented by the government, is not likely to
be identified with those of any one of the other parties. The government's concern will be
in qualifications which:
• are not based on arbitrary barriers to entry;
• are readily transferable;
• signal accurate information about the attributes required in the
labour market or by institutions of higher learning; and
• can be obtained at minimum cost.
The development of the qualifications framework is intended to be a
co-operative enterprise between a government agency, the NZQA, and industry, professional
groups and providers. It is important in this development for the government and its
advisers to appreciate that it is co-operating with people and institutions who may at
times wish to see the framework develop in ways that suit objectives at variance with its
own.
4.3 Outline of the Qualifications Framework
The framework is described in s. 253(1)(c) of the Education Act 1989 as
one which applies to national qualifications in secondary schools and in post-school
education and training and in which:
• all qualifications (including pre-vocational courses) have a
purpose and relationship to each other that students and the public can understand; and
• there is a flexible system for the gaining of qualifications,
with recognition of competency already achieved.
Clearly there could be a range of methods of meeting these requirements
depending on how precisely the relationship between qualifications is to be defined.
Methods at the more minimal end of the range would concentrate on encouraging clearer
statements of objectives for qualifications, providing information about the meaning of
qualification titles, and facilitating and promoting the transferability of credits. The
method chosen is at the other end of the range and involves the development of an
extensive range of unit standards, each of which leads to credits assigned to one of only
eight levels and which, in various groupings, form qualifications. This goes, in fact,
well beyond the establishment of a framework.
The NZQA framework is designed to enable the classification of all
educational and training qualifications into one of eight levels ranging from the F5 level
(level one on the qualifications framework) to post graduate work (level eight on the
qualifications framework). Levels one and eight are conceived to be open-ended "while
the intervening six levels are meant to be hierarchical, separate and of increasing
complexity, while corresponding to approximately one year's worth of study by mainstream
(career path) students" (Wagner and Sass, 1992, p 18).
The basic pattern is shown in Figure 1 below:
LEVEL |
||||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | |
| National Certificate | National Diploma | Higher degrees; higher certifica-tes & diplomas |
||||||
| Initial degree culminating at level 7 | ||||||||
Figure 1: Levels of the New Zealand Qualifications Framework (Source:
Hall, 1994)
The description of the levels is thus an important aspect of defining
the framework. The descriptions aim to enable existing courses to be fitted into the
framework and guide developers of new courses in setting the objectives in line with the
anticipated qualification level (Wagner and Sass, 1992, p 18).
The level descriptions apply to the unit standards [4.7.1] which make up
qualifications in the framework. There will eventually be over 6000 unit standards, each
consisting of learning outcomes, accorded a certain number of credits usually between one
and three, and assigned to one of eight levels according to the skills required. Groups of
unit standards, as determined by industry and professional bodies, will make up national
qualifications.
Unit standards will be entered into a national catalogue and will
include basic information such as the number of credits, the level, the qualification(s)
for which the unit carries credit, its purpose, prior education and training required, the
competencies and skills a learner will acquire and the standards against which the
learner's performance will be measured [4.7.1]. Delivery details will consist of the
teaching methods and resources to be used and will be developed by each provider of the
unit. The NZQA will check that the provider has the capacity, including management of
quality, to deliver to the standards before accrediting the provider.
There will be various levels of qualification. The National Certificates
will cover levels one to four and the National Diplomas levels five to seven. Initial
degrees will be placed at level seven and other degrees, higher certificates and diplomas
at level eight.
Unit standards will be determined by national standards setting groups
to be approved by the NZQA. These groups represent all major user bodies connected with a
field, sub-field or domain and have responsibility for the development, evaluation and
endorsement of all unit standards and qualifications in the relevant sphere of knowledge
and skill (NZQA, 1992b). The content of each unit standard will include a number of
outcomes (called "elements") and for each outcome there will be a number of
performance criteria. In some unit standards there may be a range statement elaborating on
the performance criteria.
Unit standards and qualifications will be registered for a specified
time and will be reviewed before the end of the period. This arrangement is to ensure that
the unit standard or unit standard combination remains relevant (NZQA, 1993c).
It is important to note that the new qualifications framework seeks to
be comprehensive by requiring existing qualifications and qualification systems to adjust
to its structure, in particular to adopt a unit standard format. In addition, unit
standards and qualifications have to be registered and providers accredited.
There is, of course, an existing qualifications framework of
considerable size and complexity - the university approval system for co-ordinating its
qualifications and courses. As Hall (1994) points out, this system involves some 500
separate qualifications and some 9000 individual courses and papers. There is an
established approval system for new university programmes and for the oversight of
regulations on the criteria that must be met if new programmes are to be mounted. In
addition, there are systems for quality assurance using internal review and external
examiners. As Hall notes, it is a system that has developed over time to provide
comparability of standards between universities. While the university qualifications
system may need improvement, it has not been demonstrated that it is fundamentally flawed.
This raises large questions about the appropriateness of replacing an established system,
developed over many years, by a totally untried system about which there are, as discussed
later, considerable doubts.
It is understood that existing certificates previously administered by
AAVA and the TCB and now administered by the NZQA will be replaced as industry groups
develop new national qualifications within the framework. At present they remain outside
the framework.
4.4 The Extent and Scope of the Qualifications Framework
The NZQA framework is extraordinarily ambitious. In particular it aims
to:
• provide relationships between all qualifications even though they
have widely differing contents, intellectual demands and approaches to learning;
• link all credits to unit standards which would be assigned to one
of eight levels according to the outcomes to be achieved and which can be assembled into a
large variety of qualifications; and
• assess all education and training against pre-established
criteria (i.e. employing standards-based assessment).
The NZQA's control over the system is buttressed by statutory powers of
course approval, the registration and accreditation of providers, powers to set and
conduct examinations, and to control the use of certain terms such as 'university' and
'degree'. Exceptions to the NZQA's authority for course approval and accreditation are
made in the case of universities and certain other classes of provider.
The apparent advantages of the framework now being developed are as wide
ranging as the changes themselves, and include:
• comprehensiveness in that it will embrace within one system all
nationally recognised qualifications, thereby helping to break down the
academic/vocational divide;
• flexibility in that it will provide linkages between
qualifications and thus encourage and enable the development of a variety of pathways to
qualifications between which students can move with appropriate credits as their
interests, abilities and requirements change;
• emphasis on competency thereby enabling the recognition of prior
knowledge and skills, and avoiding any linkage with mere time service;
• greater understanding about the meaning of qualifications through
the publication of clear national standards and the consistent and logical use of titles;
• establishing levels thereby enabling access to qualifications
pathways at various entry points including the senior secondary school;
• involving industry and the professions thereby building in
responsiveness to changing education and training needs; and
• the cumulative effect of fostering an education and training
culture, which will promote the highest standard of individual achievement, life-long
learning and rising participation rates in higher levels of education and training.
It might well be asked why, with the very considerable apparent
advantages that are claimed for it, has the system not been introduced long ago and in
many countries. Part of the answer must be the conservative nature of education systems. But this is not all. There are real problems, mostly to
do with the nature of knowledge and the limitations of existing assessment technologies,
that curtail the degree to which qualifications can be constrained within a single
framework without significant educational cost.
The concept of a single framework for all national qualifications
spanning the senior secondary school as well as all post-school education and training is
extremely attractive for the sorts of reasons outlined above. However, some commentators
have warned that while in "theory it is a concept with considerable plausibility; in
practice, however, it may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve"
(Codd et al., 1991).
A number of general reasons for caution should be noted:
• It is, in practice, difficult for educational providers to
control their own internal processes because courses and programmes tend to take on a life
of their own (Codd et al., 1991). This is inevitable and desirable unless teachers are to
be understood as technocrats delivering pre-digested curricula rather than professionals
using their learning and skills to meet the varying needs of their students. It is all the
more difficult for external agencies to exercise extensive control over courses and
programmes without seriously undermining the professional nature of teaching. The NZQA
does not intend to control courses but rather to leave delivery matters to providers
subject to meeting quality requirements. However, it is as yet uncertain to what extent
this approach will be able to be maintained in practice.
• A highly specified framework could quickly become inflexible and
unresponsive to changes in education and training needs. The larger such a framework
becomes, the more costly is systemic change and the larger the bureaucracy whose own
commitment and interests will tend to rest with the status quo. The danger is that
more and more resources will be applied to shoring up weaknesses in the system, and the
less open will be those responsible for it to examine criticisms objectively. The
Association of Polytechnics in New Zealand (APNZ) considers that the NZQA "has been
trapped by the logic of centralism which requires central control over all educational
processes in order to achieve national consistency" (APNZ, 1991).
• A standards-based framework assumes that the outcomes of learning
can always be prespecified in advance. Smithers has commented that this is not only stultifying, but is to fundamentally misunderstand the
nature of education. Moreover, atomising education programmes in this way always reduces
opportunities for seeing how well students can integrate learning from different areas.
• The comprehensiveness of the framework requires some degree of
monopoly control (either by the NZQA or the national standards setting groups), yet
monopoly powers will limit the degree to which quality and user satisfaction can be
tested. If education and training providers are obliged to use NZQA unit standards and
qualifications because, for example, funding is tied to courses that lead to NZQA
certification, then there may be no effective market in assessment criteria and
certification procedures in which the NZQA would have to test the quality of its own
systems and services. Present arrangements give the NZQA considerable control over
qualifications including school examinations. It also controls the providers that can
deliver to unit standards through its registration and accreditation procedures. The
response of monopolists to criticism tends to be to seek still more monopoly power even
though it may be monopoly power itself that is the root cause of problems.
• The extent of the NZQA's powers that are necessary to give effect
to an all-embracing national framework may be corrosive of institutional autonomy and of
academic freedom in some respects. Against this it can be argued that the NZQA's focus on
outcomes and performance criteria offer considerable autonomy in delivery and assessment
matters. This autonomy is seen as part of the academic freedom accorded institutions by
section 161(2)(d) of the Education Act 1989. Also the Industry Training Act 1992 envisages
industry training organisations having responsibilities for assessing trainees. In
practice, however, the registration of outcomes as part of the unit standards imposes
considerable difficulties for curriculum delivery [4.7.3].
• The qualifications framework might encourage one form of
curriculum delivery, even though technically the unit standard is a unit of certification.
The potential problem, as pointed out by Codd et al. (1991), is that unit-based outcome
and assessment systems are likely to have effects on curriculum organisation and planning
which carry the risk of conformity and of restricting diversity and innovation.
• The NZQA is both an examination agency in its own right and has
controls over the qualifications offered by private examination agencies. This raises the
possibility of a conflict of interest which is considered further in Chapter 6 of this
report.
There is also an inherent contradiction in the approach to a national
qualifications framework that has been adopted. Its comprehensive coverage is intended to
ensure flexibility of movement between a very wide range of education and training
pathways. Yet comprehensiveness requires the imposition of a common building block or
approach (in this case unit standards) which will limit the types of pathway that can be
offered. Moreover, if that building block is unsound the whole structure is at risk. As
discussed later, there are concerns that this is, in fact, the case.
4.5 The Vocational/Academic Divide
An important feature of the framework is that, as required by section
253(1)(c) of the Education Act 1989, it seeks to incorporate all types and levels of
learning. Traditionally education has been seen as falling into one of two broad and often
overlapping categories - academic and vocational. The NZQA appears to have accepted that
the categories exist in its March 1991 discussion document (NZQA, 1991a). In that document
it talked about broadening the draft level descriptions, which then had an
"employment focus", to incorporate general and higher learning which was
presumably a reference to general or academic education. However, the same document, in
describing the status of the National Certificate as equal with that of the Bursary
examination, refers to the "discredited distinction between academic and vocational"
(p 32). In another and later booklet (NZQA, 1992c) it refers to the National Certificate
as "combin(ing) academic and career learning".
More recently, the NZQA's acceptance of the distinction has been thrown
into question by the Chief Executive's statement that "... the use of education and
training as with academic and vocational, is no longer appropriate" and arguably
"were never appropriate" in that they represented outdated social class
distinctions (Hood, 1992). A subsequent statement by a senior NZQA official viewed the
difference between education and training as one of emphasis rather than of contrast
(Barker, 1993). The same statement went on to endorse the view that vocational programmes
should combine in their total curriculum elements of both vocational training and general
education.
Thus the official view appears to be, on the one hand, to deny the
existence of an academic/vocational distinction and, on the other, to say that it
exists but can be ignored because certification of both types of achievement enjoys equal
status. The problem as regards status is, of course, that
... governments do not have the power, which they sometimes imagine
they do, to decree qualification status. ... those who in the name of the State declare
that all distinctions between academic and vocational qualifications are
discredited, speak in voices which are often impotent. The real message, which is not to
be confused with the rhetoric, is that curriculum issues are political issues that lie
deeply embedded in our social structure; a social structure that reformers ignore at their
peril (McKenzie, 1992).
The distinction between 'academic' and 'vocational' as descriptions of
approaches to education is, in fact, a real one and not, as noted by Hitchen and Sands
(1993), "merely an anachronistic remnant of inappropriate social theory". The
important point, as Smithers has observed, is that all employment draws on a reservoir of
general education. For some employment specific vocational training can come earlier
because it does not rely on a substantial basis of general education. For other
occupations, such as engineering or medicine, a much longer period of general education is
required before specific vocational training can commence.
There are other reasons for maintaining the distinction between general
or academic education and vocational education. First, it emphasises that knowledge has
its own end apart from any benefits in terms of employment or wealth either to the
individual or to the wider community. This has been a view upheld by thinkers from
classical times to the present day. Promoting a respect for learning is a proper objective
of education apart from any vocational utility it may have [2.3]. Secondly, as Kramer
(1993) observes, whereas general education rightly conceived always leads to the
possibility of a vocation, vocational training doesn't necessarily provide a good general
education.
The third reason for maintaining the distinction is that without it
there is a risk that vocational education will become, or continue to be, a diluted form
of academic education and will not develop its own distinctive features and methods
(Clarke, 1992).
Achieving more equality of esteem between vocational and academic
education is important since no value or merit judgments should be associated with the
choice. However, greater relative esteem for vocational qualifications will not be
achieved by legislation, administrative mandate, or by watering down academic education.
One thing that can and must be ensured for vocational training is the establishment of
qualifications of credibility and real worth in the employment market, and realistic and
accessible pathways to those qualifications. Unfortunately there are real concerns with
the qualifications framework in regard to these requirements.
4.6 The Skill/Knowledge Distinction
The appropriate balance between skills and knowledge will depend on what
is to be certificated. However, there is a complex relationship between skills and
knowledge. The effectiveness with which skills are used will depend on the depth of
knowledge acquired, an appreciation of the context in which they are to be used, attitudes
and values. Moreover, there are limits to the degree to which skills acquired in one
context can be transferred and used in another context. Thus skills and knowledge should
be seen as two interdependent parts of a whole rather than "incompatible
alternatives" (Hitchen and Sands, 1993, p 14)[2.4.3].
The level definitions proposed are largely couched in the language of
skills [4.7.5]. The only explicit reference to knowledge is under the heading
"cognitive skill". Moreover, "the current criteria for Level
Definitions only refer to 'cognitive skills', not to the range and diversity of cognitive
knowledge itself" (Hitchen and Sands, 1993, p 15). Indeed 6 of the profile of 16
components used to distinguish between the 8 levels are couched in the language of the
workplace. These include components such as "Instructions received" and
"Financial control" (see Wagner and Sass, 1992, for elaboration). While
allocating unit outcomes to levels is to be undertaken on a 'best fit' basis [4.7.5],
which means that not all the criteria will apply in every case, it is hard not to conclude
that the level criteria are mainly aimed at trade certification and work-based training.
Consequently, it will be difficult to apply the level criteria on a consistent and
realistic basis to unit standards and programmes that have a different orientation. This
reflects the difficulty of applying general level descriptions across a wide variety of
knowledge and skill areas.
4.7 Curriculum Delivery
The building blocks of qualifications are to be unit standards based on
clearly identified and published learning outcomes. Each unit is to set out the standards
to be achieved as a logical group of learning outcomes and performance criteria. Standards
are to stress competencies and focus on educational outcomes rather than inputs.
The delivery of curriculum developed from unit standards raises many of
the concerns that have already been mentioned in the context of the curriculum framework
[2.6.2]. These concerns are of greater importance in the qualifications framework to the
extent that the aim is formal summative assessment leading to the award of qualifications
and not assessment as part of a broad range of diagnostic tools aimed at better teaching
and learning.
A key feature of unit standards is that they will focus on outcomes.
This has enormous implications for assessment as the NZQA (1992g, section 5) has pointed
out:
Perhaps the biggest changes in assessment will be in the mindsets of
the teachers - to the ideas that assessment will be focused on outcomes instead of
content/knowledge, ...
The NZQA does allow knowledge and understanding to be outcomes but its
preference is for them to be interpreted or applied in a specific context where possible.
For example, the NZQA (1992g - Writing unit standards) provides examples of unit standard
writing in horticulture. It advises that the element description "Know basic growth
requirements for plants and methods used to modify the environment" should be
replaced by "Modify the plant environment to sustain basic growth requirements".
Similarly, the performance criterion should not be "Understand plant growth
requirements and methods used to modify the environment" but "Specified
environmental maintenance programmes are followed: Changing environmental factors are
recognised and appropriate corrective action is taken". Thus knowledge and
understanding are to be inferred from practice. The NZQA comments that while it is
feasible to include a knowledge-based outcome, "it is necessary to generate
performance criteria which make clear the nature of the knowledge/understanding required
(e.g. 'recall' or 'interpretation/application')."
It would seem that in most unit standards (except possibly those in
general academic subjects), knowledge and understanding will not be directly assessed. In
these cases the assumption is that if students can perform a certain task they must
necessarily have acquired the relevant knowledge and understanding. The focus is on what
students can do rather than what they know or understand. This is a considerable shift in
the approach to education, the significance of which may not yet be widely understood in
New Zealand. Some of the features of the new system which is now being introduced are:
• student-centred learning in the interests of flexibility, with
the process being left to the individual student and provider;
• emphasis on achieving competence in a wide range of individual
tasks;
• little emphasis on acquiring knowledge or understanding separate
from acquiring the ability to perform the task - knowledge and understanding having to be
inferred from outcome statements;
• emphasis on outcomes, performance criteria and range statements
and not on course syllabuses, prescriptions and textbooks;
• the possibility of taking a test without necessarily attending
any course of instruction;
• assessment as and when the student is deemed ready, by the
provider and in a manner to be determined by the provider (subject to some NZQA
requirements), and no limits on how often a student can be assessed;
• no specified periods in which a course has to be completed; and
• no conventional examinations or even compulsory written tests.
A fundamental weakness in this approach is that only in a limited number
of cases, for instance the ability to drive a car, can knowledge and understanding be
adequately inferred from demonstration of competence in performing a task and the process
of acquiring competency ignored. The result in the United Kingdom has been a considerable
decline in emphasis on knowledge and understanding as matters to be specified and assessed
separately. The effect of this on general education is discussed elsewhere in this report
[4.8.4 and 5.3.2]. Even where knowledge and understanding are specified as outcomes, their
fragmentation into numerous little bits may well leave them unrecognisable as general
education.
In a recent report, the Centre for Education and Employment Research of
Manchester University (Smithers, 1993) has drawn attention to similar features in the
United Kingdom's National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) system of National
Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) and General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs).
The authors of the report warn that instead of solving acknowledged problems, some of the
changes introduced by this system threaten a "disaster of epic proportions".
This warning must be taken very seriously in New Zealand. Some of the issues are discussed
in greater depth below.
4.7.1 Unit Standards
Each unit standard is to contain a list of the learning
outcomes/achievements which must be demonstrated by the learner for successful completion
of the unit and award of credit. It will also list administrative details such as the
credit value, entry information, accreditation and moderation options.
The unit standards are not teaching packages and contain no information
about how the unit should be taught.
Figure 2 below provides an outline of the information in a unit
standard.
| Domain | Broad area to which the unit standard relates (e.g. Shorthand); |
| Title: | Title of unit standard (e.g. Write and transcribe shorthand - 60 words per minute); |
| Data: | Level, credit rating, final date for comment, expiry date; |
| Sub-field: | Sub-field of the domain to which the unit standard relates (e.g. Office Systems); |
| Purpose statement: | A brief explanation of the purpose of the unit; |
| Entry information: | Prerequisites - the educational and other requirements for entry; |
| Accreditation option: | Method of accreditation (e.g. evaluation of documentation by NZQA); |
| Moderation option: | Description of procedures for moderation; |
| Special notes: | Information which helps contextualise the unit standard; |
| Elements: | The skills and knowledge to be acquired; |
| Performance criteria: | The standards against which performance on each element will be measured; |
| Range: | Information which clarifies the application of performance criteria (e.g. the equipment and material that should be used, the environmental conditions which should apply, etc.). |
Figure 2: Information specified in a Unit Standard for the
Qualifications Framework (Source: Hall, 1994)
Each industry will have a national standards setting group (usually its
Industry Training Organisation (ITO)) which will set national skill standards and
administer its own training arrangements under the qualifications framework. Organisations
are approved as ITOs by the Board of the Education and Training Support Agency under the
Industry Training Act 1992. A government taskforce has developed a list of critical steps
that industry groups need to follow to become ITOs (Framework Update Nov. 92, Issue
4, p 2).
Under the Industry Training Act, each ITO will set national skill
standards for its particular industry and develop and monitor its own industry training
arrangements. The standards will relate to generic skills and core competencies relevant
to the industry, as distinct from those practices which are specific to individual members
of the industry.
The usual first step in the transition to the new arrangements will be a
Training Needs Analysis (TNA). Training aspects of an industry that are to be converted
into unit standards will be determined by a TNA undertaken by an industry advisory group (Framework
Update Nov. 1992 p 2).
Unit standards in areas of general education will be developed by
advisory groups consisting of industry representatives, academics in the subject area, and
the Ministry of Education. Once unit standards have been approved by the advisory groups
they will be submitted to the NZQA for registration on the framework.
Questions that arise are:
• whether the unit standards will be reductionist, that is, will
they reduce the competent person to no more than the sum of the elements derived from job
analysis; and
• whether or not the unit standards will meet the longer-term
training needs of the student or trainee.
The response to the reductionist criticism is that the TNA will seek to
establish "a functional analysis of an occupation with its duties and roles as well
as its tasks. ... Directly related knowledge and functional attitudes and values are
incorporated into the elements where appropriate." Also, "occupational and job
analysis makes little sense unless it is done within the holistic framework of the systems
approach to curriculum development where every ... Unit of Learning is a dynamic part of
the whole occupation or job. ... The competency charting that results from ... (TNA) is a
heuristic designed to deconstruct the occupation or job so that learning and teaching can
be targeted more effectively, but more importantly, to ensure that nothing is left
out" (Wagner and Sass, 1992, pp 5 and 7).
It is unclear as yet whether, in practice, it will be widely recognised
that competence is not the same as the sum of numerous individual competencies resulting
from the 'deconstruction' of an occupation. A reliable view of competence to perform in a
given occupation may not be given by a collection of credits gained for a large number of
unit standards possibly obtained over several years at different providers. This could
simply encourage a checklist mentality. The notion of coherence is central here. Hall
(1994) points out that there are two levels of coherence - the way an individual course
complements other courses within the programme, and the way the course hangs together
internally by linking its content, presentation and assessment framework with the learning
outcomes. The unit standards approach may make the achievement of coherence at these two
levels very difficult by the disaggregation of learning and skills and the setting of
objectives independently of content, presentation and assessment.
The unit standard approach seems likely to encourage an excessive
disaggregation of learning and skills. Hall (1994) reports on an exercise at Victoria
University designed to consider how the unit standard approach might be applied to
university courses. One finding was the tendency to over-specify the objectives of a
course. The participants reported that this was easier to do for the practical and
technical aspects of their courses than for the theoretical aspects. Similarly they found
it easier to specify performance criteria for laboratory and other activities than for
"more covert intellectual processes".
As discussed in relation to the school curriculum [2.6.2], an outcome
focus will tend to lead to a concentration on measurable outcomes to the exclusion or
trivialisation of those that are not readily measurable. Hall (1994) points out that in
most general education, and indeed in many professional contexts, objectives should be set
out in a form that emphasises understanding, argument, analysis, integration and problem
solving rather than highly measurable behaviours such as 'define', 'list' and
'demonstrate'. The problem is not necessarily that these objectives are hard to define
individually, though that will often be the case. The difficulty is more in finding ways
to assess how well students can integrate a range of knowledge, skills, concepts, theory
and understandings. This ability to integrate is not capable of being reduced to a simple
outcome statement for incorporation in a unit standard. A range of assessment tasks is
required, each with its own assessment criteria, and professional judgment is needed for
overall evaluation of student performance.
The procedures adopted by the NZQA put the responsibility for unit
standards on industry and other groups, and it is not entirely obvious that they are
always the best people to undertake this. One possibility is that national standards may
codify existing standards even when these are inadequate, thus perpetuating rather than
improving them.
The other main concern is that the unit standards may, in practice, be
based on the immediate training concerns of the firms in the industry or professional
group rather than on the longer-term needs of the student. The approach of the Industry
Training Act which places standard setting responsibility with industry groups certainly
has the advantage of ensuring that standards are set by those closest to the work place.
However, the probability is that standards will emphasise current user requirements which
may suit existing workers with a strong commitment to a particular industry but are less
likely to be in the longer-term interests of the new entrants [4.2, 4.8.4 and 5.3.2]. A
narrow industry-based approach to training will not help to reduce any 'esteem' gap
between academic and vocational education. Indeed it could reinforce it.
4.7.2 Size of the Unit
The concept of a unit standard as the basic building block requires that
it be reasonably small in terms of its outcomes. The NZQA (1992g - Introducing units)
describes units as being "relatively small amounts of learning". This is stated
to have motivational advantages in that it provides students with "frequent tastes of
success", and units "are well suited to self-paced learning which encourages
better performance". It is understood that more recently the NZQA wishes to stress
that unit standards can be of any size.
Credits associated with unit standards are to be set at approximately 10
hours per credit (based on hours of student activity) in order to provide comparability.
As has been noted, this "presents a contradiction in that time is not supposed to be
fixed in competence based education, but is a convenient unit of credit in that it
corresponds roughly to one hour of class contact time in a typical 10 week term
course" (Wagner and Sass, 1992, p 21).
On the assumption that most unit standards cover relatively small
amounts of learning, the issue arises as to the extent to which subject material can be
broken down without education loss. Some of the problems associated with the proposed
system of unit standards are (Codd et al., 1991):
- the arbitrary compartmentalisation of learning; and
- fragmentation of the larger domains of knowledge.
The seriousness of these problems will be different for different areas
and kinds of learning. In some areas,"[t]he overall quality of a subject may derive
as much from the mortar as from the bricks" (Codd et al., 1991).
The problems of arbitrary compartmentalisation and fragmentation of
knowledge might be addressed, at least in part, by suitable design of qualifications so
that a coherent, mutually reinforcing group of units are taken together. A survey of
assessment and delivery of the Scottish National Certificate found that where modules were
taught and assessed as integrated clusters, teachers thought that this gave them more
freedom to teach and deal with students' problems (Clarke, 1992, p 68 and Black et al.,
1991). Clearly this problem could be addressed in the same way within the NZQA framework,
and it is understood that the NZQA is developing principles for the packaging of unit
standards to avoid fragmentation. National standard setting groups will, presumably, be
involved in 'packaging' decisions taking into account their assessment of the
qualification needs of the various sectors. However, it is not clear that disaggregating
learning into small bits and then reassembling them into larger packages can be achieved
without losing something in the process. Nor is it clear that this procedure has net
advantages over the traditional approach of determining coherent programmes in terms of
both content and objectives considered together.
4.7.3 The Unit Standard and Curriculum Delivery
Unit standards are primarily units of certification and not units of
learning. However, in practice the distinction may become blurred. This has occurred in
Scotland where "the practice of delivering (modules) as free-standing, individual 40
hour units is widespread" (Clarke, 1992, p 68). This practice was seen as appropriate
for the purposes of employers and part-time students but less so for full-time courses for
16-18-year-olds particularly in areas where learning concepts and principles depend on a
spiralling, rather than a linear, process (Clarke, 1992).
Concerns have been raised about the effect of modularisation on the
learning process. Some employers and teachers in Scotland consider that single unit
certification provides insufficient challenge and test of the staying power and
determination of students and encourages short-term aims (Clarke, 1992).
Holborow (1993) and Hall (1994) have raised a number of difficulties
with the unit standard approach in the context of university education, though some at
least of their comments have wider application across general education. One issue is the
relationship in time between the identification of the unit standard and the development
of unit delivery.
The NZQA process of unit standard development involves a two stage
process - the identification of the standard on the basis of a needs analysis and then
the development of delivery by the provider. Holborow (1993) does not agree that the two
aspects should be separated. In his view the curriculum is primary in planning much
university study. He points out that the universities' aim is to introduce and develop an
understanding of a body of knowledge, and that the definition of the learning objectives
flows from an understanding of the knowledge that is at issue. This contrasts with the
view that there are independent learning objectives for which appropriate material is then
gathered. He advises that the universities are not willing to construct qualifications
from unit standards regarded as defining the elements of a university qualification.
Hall (1994) points out that a critical pedagogical issue is the extent
to which the two stages are coordinated. If, in the process of course development, flaws
or improvements in the unit standards are identified then it should be possible to change
them. An iterative process is required with the development of unit standards and delivery
being closely integrated. Hall advises that in the universities the recommended approach
is to identify the major content components and then to draft related objectives. In the
iterative process that follows, content and objectives may change several times. Also,
different objectives may be negotiated with different students. In any case,
"permanency is not an expected characteristic of the objectives of most university
courses."
The imposition of the NZQA format for the development of unit standards
and independent and later development of unit delivery would obviously impose a damaging
degree of rigidity on university programmes. The issue is likely to go wider than
universities and apply to a wide range of courses and programmes. In any general
academic-type courses, the curriculum should normally have priority - subject curricula
are not just vehicles for delivering skills. In some vocational courses, it may be
possible to give priority to the identification of outcomes and to allow their
identification to be independent of content. However, this cannot be taken for granted.
A similar issue arises over the registration of outcome objectives, or
'elements'. The NZQA requirement is that elements be registered as part of the unit
standard. Hall (1994) points out that current university practice allows teachers to vary
the objectives from year to year to take account of different emphases, previous course
evaluations or recent developments in the subject. He also points out that a new teacher
might want to redirect the focus of the course in line with the particular strengths he or
she brings and that, to a certain extent, what a teacher emphasises is arbitrary. Thus
conformity with the NZQA requirement for the registration of elements would introduce a
degree of inflexibility, and the approval system for unit standards would significantly
delay the introduction of changes in elements which might be required for any one of a
variety of reasons. Hall (1994) suggests that the necessary control over changes in course
objectives should be effected through a university's internal monitoring procedures rather
than through the centralised system proposed by the NZQA.
Hall's observations on the registration of objectives for university
courses also have wider relevance. There are likely to be a wide range of courses offered
by a variety of institutions for which a degree of flexibility is required as regards the
determination of, and adjustment to, course objectives and for similar reasons as those
that apply to universities.
The association of performance criteria with objectives raises still
further problems, quite apart from the problem of inflexibility if they are to be
registered as part of the unit standard. The NZQA requirement is that performance criteria
be associated with each objective. Hall (1994) argues that this encourages the assessment
of each objective in isolation and will lead to a checklist mentality. He stresses that:
... most academics (and indeed practitioners) would argue that
learning and teaching should be directed towards the acquisition and integration
of knowledge, skills and values. This suggests that assessment criteria should be
associated with the tasks that the students undertake ... and that the tasks should be
structured so that the different learning objectives can be sensibly related through
intellectual processes such as composition, argument, design, problem-solving and
research.
Hall's point is that pedagogically it makes sense to relate the
performance criteria with the tasks rather than with the objectives. This raises the issue
of the time at which performance criteria are stated. Problems will arise if criteria are
specified too early in the course design process.
4.7.4 Specification of Objectives.
The success of the unit standard approach depends critically on the
ability to specify clear objectives - and then to determine the necessary
curriculum. There is much to be gained in terms of better teaching and learning from a
clearer focus on what is to be achieved from the process. However, as already discussed in
the context of the school curriculum [2.6.2] and unit standards [4.7.3], this can present
considerable difficulties.
Some of the problems to be considered in specifying objectives are:
• Complex and hard-to-specify curriculum goals may be trivialised
or omitted.
• Unanticipated outcomes can be as important as those that are
planned.
• Some outcomes are open-ended and not specifiable in terms of
precisely what has to be learned. These may include components of higher level thinking,
including creative thinking, evaluation, analysis and synthesis.
• Some goals can only be described in relative terms employing
descriptors such as 'good', 'fair, 'most', and so on. Assessment has to be left to the
judgment of experienced markers and to the process of inter-marker moderation to determine
what these terms actually mean in practice.
Moreover, as Smithers observes,
the purpose of much of education, for example art and literature, is illumination rather
than being able to do things, and cannot be pre-specified as outcomes. He also notes that
much knowledge is 'tacit' in the sense used by Polanyi and cannot be articulated or easily
framed in words.
The extent and seriousness of some of these difficulties are likely to
be less pronounced in vocational areas than in general or academic education.
Subjects like English, geography, biology, chemistry, economics and
other popular subjects with a mix of knowledge, skills and conceptual understanding, do
not lend themselves to brief 'descriptors' of standards attained. They are
multi-dimensional. They contain few clear-cut 'ladders of achievement' which students move
up progressively. Students' achievement is represented in clusters of partially mastered
knowledge and skills, not all or nothing standards (Elley, 1991b).
However, these problems are not absent in vocational and technical
domains even at non-advanced levels. Frequent difficulties were found in specifying domain
definitions in modules of the Scotvec National Certificate (Black et al., 1989). It was
found that even in areas such as electronics where exact specifications are possible it
can be impractical to adopt them because the resulting set of specifications would be very
cumbersome. In other areas it may not be possible to define domains with any degree of
specificity. Such areas include those with learning outcomes which demand some form of
open-ended response.
It may be possible to say what type of behaviour is required, and
to recognise it, but not to specify in advance what it should consist of other than in
very broad terms (Black et al., 1989). Examples within the Scotvec communication modules
include outcomes such as ability to "evaluate the effectiveness of a
communication" and to "employ forms of communication appropriate to purpose and
audience". Black et al. (1989) observe that "It is difficult to define in
advance the limits of what constitutes an 'evaluation' or what is an 'appropriate' form of
communication". They also note that those modules which are intended to be flexible
enough to apply to several occupational areas must necessarily leave significant room for
judgment as to the outcomes that may be required in each area, and this requires a
"certain amount of slackness of definition".
Difficulties in defining outcomes generally increase at higher levels of
learning. As already noted [4.7.1], many outcomes of university education are not
generally definable in simple descriptors. It may well be, however, that universities
should do more to define course coverage, the expectations they have of their students,
and the basis for assessment. But the dominant university aims include such 'hard to
define' ones as the development of critical thinking and understanding, research skills
and the advancement of knowledge. Such 'outcomes' will be very hard to define with any
precision.
Even where it is possible to define precise outcomes, this approach
presents other difficulties. For example, both the NZQA and the United Kingdom's NCVQ
systems deliberately require that qualifications should not be designed with reference to
any particular mode or period of study. This has clear advantages in avoiding mere time
service and in recognising prior experience. But it may also restrict the mobility of
students between courses and providers because the syllabuses are likely to be different.
The outcomes approach also has potentially serious consequences for
general education if, as in the case of the NCVQ system, it means that core skills are
embedded in the outcomes of vocational units. Green (1993, p 33) comments that, in the
case of the NCVQ, this results in the range of what is learnt being rather more limited
than in the subject-based general education of other countries [4.8.4 and 5.3.2]. He also
notes that, while there has been considerable interest in the NCVQ system, none of the
countries he surveyed (Germany, France and Japan) has attempted to express its learning
objectives in vocational areas in terms of precise and detailed work-related competencies.
Nor, he notes, have any abandoned the practice of assessing vocational skills and
knowledge through written examinations [4.8.3].
The problem of defining excellence is particularly difficult given the
NZQA's focus on competence which suggests a can do/can't do type of assessment. The very
word 'competence' suggests, at best, a satisfactory level of performance in relation to
some task. As Hall (1994) observes, it is far easier to recognise excellence after the
event than to define it in advance. He considers that it will "remain an elusive
concept to define but one which will nevertheless be employed in order to classify fairly
the high quality of work submitted by some (university) students."
4.7.5 Level Descriptions and the Allocation of Unit Standard Credits to Levels
The description of the levels of the framework follow two principles:
• The description should refer to the outcome of instruction rather
than the content or form of the instruction.
• The description should reflect the representative outcome in
terms of occupational function required by the person at the level of occupation for which
the training or education is aimed. The reason is that specific tasks or procedures change
over time whereas functions remain more stable along with the complexity, difficulty,
autonomy and management responsibility associated with the function.
The level descriptions are to follow a profile approach in which a
number of components are used to define a coherent sequence of eight levels. Attributes
from more that one component are used to describe each level. The attributes are those
generally used to distinguish among levels of workplace complexity, and include
equivalence with existing qualifications and workplace or further study destinations.
Unit standards will be matched against the qualifications framework on a
'best fit' basis. In other words, the level chosen for a particular unit will be the one
where there is the greatest correspondence between the outcomes of the unit standard and
the level description. The final decision as to the level will be determined by
negotiation between the relevant national standards setting group and the NZQA.
The NZQA has been concerned to describe the levels in ways that are
compatible with the Australian Standards Framework in the interests of allowing the
interchange of workers between the two countries. The levels do not appear to be
consistent with those employed in continental European systems. The NZQA level one, for
example, is set at a very basic level which would probably not be regarded as part of a
vocational qualification in European systems. This is in accordance with section 253(c)(i)
of the Education Act 1989 which requires that prevocational courses be included in the
qualifications framework.
The definition of the first level unit standards is, however, important
for the prestige of the qualifications hierarchy. If the first rung of the ladder is seen
as fit only for the less able, improving the relative esteem in which vocational
qualifications are held will be that much more difficult. This is a criticism that has
been made of the NCVQ framework in England and Wales:
A European might wonder whether the NCVQ's Level 1 qualifications
will eventually be regarded by the public as showing that the candidate has taken the kind
of 'test' which requires neither reading or writing, and thus confirms ... the candidate
as being of limited ability and certified as such, to boot; and the possessor of such a
qualification will find it harder to move to higher levels. The long-term consequence of
all this activity will be that real skill-levels of the workforce will not be raised to
European standards (Prais, 1989).
It is to be hoped, however, that the quality of the destination will
prove to be more important than the starting point. It is also the case that the first
qualification, the National Certificate, will require level 3 unit credits. However, the
above comment on the NCVQ's level 1 raises a question about its NZQA equivalent.
The problems of allocating objectives to specific levels were discussed
in relation to the curriculum statements [2.6.3]. The same problems apply to the
qualifications framework. In addition, questions have been raised about the adequacy of
the two-dimensional nature of the framework - across domains and up and down levels
(Hitchen and Sands, 1993). Points of concern are whether such a framework can adequately
distinguish between:
• various levels of depth in an area of study;
• various approaches to learning as exemplified by the different
objectives inherent in degree and diploma programmes; and
• various mixes of skill, knowledge and approach [4.7.1].
Hitchen and Sands (1993) have observed that:
The Framework at present does not readily recognise these fundamental
differences. In fact, it appears to deliberately blur these differences. To suggest, as
the Framework does, that the first two levels of the National Diploma (levels 5 and 6)
equate with the 100 and 200 levels of degree courses, is to deny this possibility of depth
at the same level in a Diploma. It also risks overlooking the important differences in
approach between a degree and diploma ... .
They consider that the qualifications framework lacks criteria with
which to distinguish between "three approaches summed up by descriptions such as:
data gathering and basic (often rote) learning for intelligent involvement; descriptive
analysis, synthesis and comparison for technical competence; and critical evaluation,
abstraction and theorising for professional competence." They point out that the
level definitions are required to fulfil two different tasks - those of assigning each
unit standard to a level and of assigning each qualification or combination of unit
standards to a level. If, as they point out, a qualification is simply the sum of its
constituent parts this would present no problem. However, the way in which units are
approached and integrated is crucial in determining the appropriate status of the
qualification, and the framework level definitions do not appear to recognise this.
Whether this difficulty will be recognised and dealt with by diploma and degree
regulations in a satisfactory and consistent way is not yet clear.
The system of levels poses particular problems for universities in that
all postgraduate programmes are to be registered at level 8. There are three broad
categories of postgraduate programme - honours, masters and doctorate with other
qualifications such as diplomas and certificates being related to this structure according
to their purpose and composition. Hall (1994) points out that the framework is totally
inadequate for dealing with different levels and the progression that exists within and
between postgraduate programmes. He concludes that "(i)n its present form, the
framework is far too coarse for dealing with the detail and complexity of most university
programmes".
4.8 The Type of Assessment
The type of assessment to be employed is standards-based (NZQA, 1991c, p
14). The limitations of this type of assessment in terms of the school curriculum [3.3]
should also be noted in relation to the qualifications framework. They also arise in
connection with the introduction of the National Certificate in the senior secondary
school [5.9].
Standards-based assessment can be of two types:
• competency-based assessment which recognises only pass or fail;
and
• achievement-based assessment (ABA) which recognises different
levels of performance.
Initially, the NZQA appeared to favour the use of ABA for general
subjects (NZQA, 1991a, p 58). However, in its August 1993 Framework Update, it
announced that ABA "is not the model of assessment that will be used for the
new Qualifications Framework" (emphasis in original). However, it also made clear
that there would be merit awards which will presumably require higher performance
criteria. Further, it was envisaged that at the school level advisory groups could provide
descriptors that identify stages of learning which may be used in school reporting but
which will not form part of the standards. This would seem to imply the ongoing use of ABA
on an optional basis and only for internal assessment outside the framework.
4.8.1 Achievement-based Assessment
Achievement-based assessment will be already familiar to most secondary
school teachers. It incorporates descriptions (standards or criteria) of what the learner
has to do or know. The standards can be set at a number of grade levels and for each area
of skill or knowledge. The learner is graded by comparing the actual level achieved
against the grade criteria.
Achievement-based assessment has advantages in assessing and reporting
on the actual achievement levels of the learner and in deciding future learning goals.
However, the difficulties with outcome specification as outlined in the discussion on
curriculum statements [2.6] apply to a greater or lesser extent depending on the learning
or skill in question. These difficulties suggest that this form of assessment is
unsuitable for summative purposes except in very limited domains. The NZQA's decision
referred to in 4.8 suggests that it would agree with this conclusion.
The use of ABA even for internal school use will have its limitations
because of the vague and ambiguous definitions of the levels that are likely in most areas
of general education. The NZQA (1991a, p 91) provided the following example of grade
related criteria for assessment (Planning an Investigation in Biology):
Level 1 Presents some ideas which could lead to a plan.
Level 2 Presents a plan.
Level 3 Presents a logical plan which could lead to a feasible investigation.
Level 4 Presents a logical plan which is feasible and could lead to a sound conclusion.
Level 5 Presents a logical plan which is feasible, comprehensive, and
could lead to a sound conclusion.
What is a 'plan', what is 'sound', 'logical', 'comprehensive',
'feasible' and so on are matters of subjective interpretation which, without much more
specific guidance, will vary from teacher to teacher and school to school. These criteria
provide very little assistance to the classroom teacher.
When summative assessment is undertaken, difficult decisions may also
have to be made on:
• which assessments should count for the grade; and
• how to weight the assessments of different outcomes when these
have to be combined to give an overall grade.
It is highly improbable that achievement-based assessment, with only 4
or 5 levels of achievement distinguished, can provide the differentiation between
students' performance that is valued by higher education and by employers for recruitment.
The system also makes the doubtful assumption that there can be reasonable consistency of
assessment across the many providers.
4.8.2 Competency-based Assessment
The debate about competency standards started very recently and is
mostly concerned with vocational education and training though its application to general
and, in particular, higher education is increasingly under discussion. It is understood
that greater attention is being given to this form of standards-based assessment as
difficulties with achievement-based assessment become more apparent.
Competency-based assessment operates where a particular standard is set
which candidates must meet if they are to be judged as 'competent' and therefore given
credit for the unit of learning. The standards are specified in terms of skill and/or
knowledge. To be judged as competent means competent to perform the task, or to do or know
what the unit aimed to teach (Peddie, 1992, p 25). Essentially it is a pass/fail system
though merit can be awarded to students who meet higher criteria.
Discussion on competency standards tends to be unfocused with the
concept meaning different things to different people. Moreover, the discussion does not
always distinguish between competency-based assessment and competency-based education. On
this last point, it should be noted that the NZQA is only concerned with assessment and
not with particular forms of curriculum delivery. This does, of course, mean that most of
the burden of quality control falls on the assessment process.
The main arguments in favour of competency-based assessment are:
• It enables recognition of competency to be recognised
irrespective of the way in which competence was achieved. This promotes maximum use of
skills, including those acquired overseas.
• It provides clear public guidance as to what standards can be
expected in trades and professions. This enhances public confidence, and helps to
demystify trades and professions.
The main arguments against competency-based assessment are:
• It tends to adopt a behaviourist approach which atomises work.
Competence is seen as consisting of observable behaviours, and demonstration of such
behaviours is equated with competency.
• Competency standards can reduce an occupation to a myriad of
standardised, routine, discrete tasks or skills ignoring higher order aspects such as
critical reflection and analysis. This would trivialise the practice of the occupation.
• Professional work and higher levels of general or academic
education may be too complex to be captured adequately by a set of standards.
• Competency standards may lead to a uniformity of occupational
practice.
• The adoption of competency standards for assessment may result in
competency-based training consisting of little more than a series of practical modules.
• Adopting minimum competency standards may encourage striving for
the minimum rather than the pursuit of excellence. Further, it may tend to entrench the status quo whereas higher education
should challenge existing knowledge and practice.
• Competency-based assessment is concerned primarily with skills
rather than with knowledge or attitudes. It may also ignore the process of education which
is a critical part of university education.
It can be well argued that some of these objections are not peculiar to
competency-based assessment. Further, assessment can be devised which uses competency
standards but which avoids some of the difficulties outlined above. Gonczi argues, in the
context of the professions, that such an approach should look:
... at the complex combinations of attributes (knowledge, attitudes
and skills) which are used in combination to understand the particular situation in which
professionals find themselves. That is, the notion of competence is relational. It brings
together disparate things - abilities of individuals (deriving from combinations of
attributes) and the tasks that need to be performed in particular situations. Thus
competence is conceived of as complex structuring of attributes needed for intelligent
performance in specific situations. Obviously it incorporates the idea of professional
judgement. In this model evidence for the possession of competencies must come from a
variety of sources and must adopt a judgmental or probabilistic model, based on a legal
rather than a scientific paradigm.
This wider, integrated view of competency is a far cry from the
simplistic, behaviourist approach. It clearly has much to commend it, not only for higher
levels of learning and professional training but also for lower levels of vocational
education and training. However, it is not yet clear whether current arrangements will
avoid the potential shortcomings of a narrower competency approach. The wider approach
advocated by Gonczi would only seem likely to operate well within a system which considers
groups of units that should be undertaken to meet the requirements of a particular
profession or occupation. Its emphasis on professional judgment of competence assumes that
there will not be clear-cut performance criteria in all aspects to be assessed and that
relative judgments need to be made. It also assumes quality moderation over assessment
processes.
It is not clear how this wider competency model would work in terms of
the NZQA framework in which all qualifications are to have "a purpose and a
relationship to each other ... " and in which there is to be a "flexible system
of gaining qualifications" (s.253(1)(c) of the Education Act 1989). Such a framework
has been assumed to require the adoption of a common building block (the unit standard)
and a system of levels to which all elements of competency can be related. However, as Fox
(1993) has noted:
... competency standards can only be identified within the context of
a specific profession or occupation. This being so, it is very hard to see how
an assumption of equivalency between units of competence in different domains can be
sustained, especially when the assignment of competencies within each domain to any
particular level of the framework is an entirely arbitrary act (emphasis added).
Fox (1993) has also expressed concern with the "presumption that
the identification of competency standards by the professions should drive the curricula
of university degree courses ... (towards) ... a more practical orientation to the
workplace". He argues that what is valued in an academic degree is that the degree
itself is the unit of competency, and that the structure and substance of such a degree
remove the basis for an assumption of equivalence between it and other types of degree.
The use of competency-based assessment, now referred to by the NZQA as
'standards-based' assessment, suffers from the same problem that applies to
achievement-based assessment [4.8.1] - lack of clear standards. As Elley (1994) has
stated:
What we want are clearly stated standards, in academic subjects, that
teachers can agree on, and apply consistently, when teaching different courses and using
different assessment tasks, administered under different testing conditions - in a context
where they frequently want to show their boards high pass rates. For this is what is
required if teachers, employers and tertiary institutions are to have faith in the system.
Elley also points out that the 'clearly specified standards' that have
emerged thus far from NZQA and ministry documents do not meet these requirements.
Reference has already been made to the broad and ambiguous objectives emerging in
curriculum statements [2.6.2]. Unit standards for general academic subjects have not yet
been published. However, an indication is given by the example in Peddie (1992) from a draft
unit standard for listening in a foreign language unit. The draft outcome is:
Level 2 Listening: Listen to and analyse information heard in the target
language about recreational situations and respond appropriately.
As for the curriculum statements, additional information will, no doubt,
be available to the teacher. Even so, it is hard to see how such objectives can be
consistently applied using different assessment tasks and in different contexts. These
objective statements might be of some use to teachers in developing programmes. They are
certainly not suitable for high stakes 'exit' assessment of general education leading to
the award of qualifications.
4.8.3 Quality Control of Assessment
The range and number of assessments to be applied before the learner is
awarded credit is a matter for each provider to determine (NZQA, 1993b). This raises the
potential for considerable diversity between providers in assessment processes. Even in
the application of straightforward competency tests of the can/can't variety there is room
for difference in the performance required for credit. For example, does the learner have
to demonstrate the required ability only once or more often? And in what circumstances and
contexts will the assessment be conducted? Will success in some tests be allowed to
compensate for failure in others? Will the tests be written or oral? Will assessment be
internal or external?
Without national standardisation of assessment processes, which does not
appear to be envisaged, it will be impossible to compare credits given in different
industries or by different providers. For example, an employer in industry A will have no
way of knowing, short of considerable investigation, whether applicants from industries B
and C have achieved competence at similar levels of difficulty in their respective fields
even if their credits are at the same level. This will, of course, undermine one of the
main objectives of the framework which is to allow recognition of unit credits across
pathways.
Comparability has, of course, long been an issue among New Zealand
institutions. Problems of comparability arise between, for example, the degrees offered by
the seven universities. The problem of ensuring reasonable comparability is likely to be
considerably compounded by the very much larger number of accredited providers of unit
standards in the qualifications framework. The total will certainly be in the hundreds -
possibly over 1000 - though the number offering any one unit standard will be much fewer.
There are important differences between the NCVQ and European systems in
assessment practices which are potentially instructive. In Europe, assessment is well
established and rigorous. In Germany, for example, the main vocational qualifications are
awarded following three years of apprenticeship combined with day release at college. The
qualification is based on success in final examinations and there is a limit on the number
of times they can be repeated - usually only once or twice. Examinations are both written
and practical and are taken during and at the end of the apprenticeship period. About half
a dozen subjects, including general subjects, are usually involved. The practical
examination may extend for more than a day and usually includes an oral test. The
practical is externally marked, usually by three examiners, none of whom may know the
examinee. In addition, the trainee has to produce a record of satisfactory completion of
the centrally specified tasks required as part of the apprenticeship.
NZQA qualifications could suffer from lack of national and international
credibility if similar strict assessment requirements are not laid down and enforced.
However, this would be contrary to the underlying thrust of the framework, including its
statutory basis, which is industry control over unit standards and performance criteria
and provider control over curriculum delivery with industry led moderation.
The NCVQ system in the United Kingdom, which is similar to the NZQA
system in a number of key respects, has come in for criticisms of its assessment and
certification methods. For example, it lacks any requirement for an externally set and
graded exam. NVQs are awarded on the basis of 'evidence indicators' collected together in
a portfolio, and often do not have externally set examinations. The only requirement, in
striking contrast with continental European practice, is "an assessment in the
college or workplace by the trainee's own college lecturer or supervisor without
necessarily any written test" (Oulton and Steedman, 1992).
4.8.4 General Educational Content of Vocational Courses - Lessons from the NCVQ
A major criticism of the NCVQ system is that there has been a reduction
in the general educational content of British training courses and that this is
increasingly putting trainees at a disadvantage vis-a-vis European trainees [5.3.2].
French vocational courses require all students to follow formal,
compulsory mathematics courses for at least four hours a week. This requirement is
fundamental to ensuring progression and transparency within post-compulsory vocational and
general systems of education and to improve students' mathematical attainments as a result
of vocational education and training. By contrast, British courses of post-compulsory
education increasingly (do not require) the study of mathematics in post-compulsory
education. This neglect of a core subject area hinders progression within the
qualifications systems, depresses attainment and lowers aspirations of both teachers and
students (Wolf, 1992).
Oulton and Steedman (1992) have criticised the NCVQ for "squeezing
out the general educational element from the vocational syllabus, in favour of a
collection of narrowly defined 'skills' such as ability to answer the telephone".
Another criticism of the English/Welsh situation, which might eventually
also apply to the NZQA system, is that, by relaxing quality control in the interests of
incorporating all qualifications into one system, NCVQ accreditation will eventually be
seen as meaningless. This has been described as a high risk strategy in the NCVQ context
for "if any and every qualification is NCVQ approved, then where is the added value,
what does NVQ status imply, and why should it be sought and paid for? The NCVQ was meant
to be more than a bureaucratic hurdle and an additional levy on certificates" (Cross,
1991, p 172).
The push by central authorities for increasing numbers to undergo
training may also have adverse consequences on quality control and general educational
content. The aims of the United Kingdom's City and Guilds, Germany's Berufsabschluss and
France's CAP building qualifications were focused on practical trade requirements for
building calculations and all aimed for a similar standard. The change in 1991 from City
and Guilds to National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs) has resulted in a drastic
reduction in the mathematics content in British training courses. The drive by the
Department of Employment to increase numbers qualifying has been identified by Steedman
(1992) as one of the principal reasons for the reduction in the general educational
content of British training courses.
The political momentum behind the current thrust towards training and
the rapid implementation of the qualifications framework give cause for concern that
similar trends will emerge in New Zealand. It will be particularly distressing if existing
high quality certificates such as the New Zealand Certificates are degraded in the way
that appears to be happening in Britain as a result of the adoption by well regarded award
bodies of the NCVQ philosophy.
4.8.5 Moderation
Given the difficulties inherent in standards-based assessment, it would
be expected that considerable attention would be given to moderation which is the process
aimed at ensuring consistency of assessment in relation to the required standard [3.1.4].
NZQA documentation (NZQA, 1992a and b) provides that both internal and
external moderation is to take place. Internal moderation procedures will presumably be
reviewed as part of the accreditation process [4.10].
National standards setting groups may have either a centrally
established and directed national system of external moderation or a national system of
local moderation networks. The NZQA may be involved in central moderation systems.
Alternatively, such systems may be designed and operated by professional associations or
national industry organisations. Local networks will normally be established by groups of
providers, although there may be links to the relevant professional association or
industry.
It would appear that a major emphasis in the NZQA thinking on moderation
is that reliance can be placed upon systems and processes with little or no reliance on
the moderation of actual demonstration of performance. Putting reliance only on processes
will require enormous effort to coordinate the work of those involved in accreditation,
unit standard writers, national standard setting groups and providers.
It is highly unlikely that reliance on processes can be expected to
produce sufficiently reliable results. If
performance criteria could be precisely specified with minimal scope for subjective
judgment, confidence in processes might be justified. However, given the range of
interpretation open to many performance criteria, it would seem highly probable that
moderation of processes will still allow very considerable differences in marking
standards between assessors.
If 500 teachers in 500 institutions are making judgements about
whether students have attained a particular standard, we have a problem. If we were
assessing students' height, or running speed, or blood pressure, we could do it. But we
are not. Assessment of ability is a very inexact science (Elley, 1991b).
If there is appreciable variation between assessors, the credibility of
the system and the certification (unit credits and qualifications) that emerge from it
will be at risk. There is already much questioning of the comparability of standards
across providers in the Scotvec system [5.3.2].
4.9 Qualifications
Qualifications are to consist of groups of unit standards as determined
by the national standards body of the industry or professional group.
The new National Qualifications Framework will be made up of
thousands of units covering every conceivable area of training and education.
Each industry will have a National Standards Body or Industry Training Body which chooses
the units to make up their own qualifications. They will pick the combination that best
suits their industry's needs (Framework Update, November 1992 - emphasis added).
It is not known how many separate qualifications will emerge from the
qualifications framework. It is understood that there could eventually be some 200
national standards setting groups which is similar to the number of Lead Bodies created
under the United Kingdom's NCVQ framework and which, according to Green (1993), is
expected to lead to some 900 different National Vocational Qualifications. If the United
Kingdom experience is a reliable guide and if, as seems reasonable to assume, most
national standards setting groups develop several qualifications for their particular
industry or profession, a similar number of qualifications might also be developed in New
Zealand.
Again comparison with practice in continental European countries, with
their much larger and more diversified economies, is informative. For a start, the smaller
number of qualifications, usually about 400, makes comparisons between them easier. The
United Kingdom's NCVQ system has been criticised by Green (1993) for being:
... over complex and confused and lack(ing) adequate co-ordination.
The multiplicity of different institutions, courses and qualifications reduces the
transparency of the system and inhibits access, choice and progression. Many young people
do not understand what courses they can do, where they can do them, and what
qualifications they may lead to. Employers are often equally confused about the value of
different qualifications which reduces the utility of qualifications as passports to
employment. Many institutions cannot provide a full range of academic and vocational
courses ... .
If this is a valid criticism of the NCVQ system which is designed for a
much larger and more diversified economy, it is hard not to conclude that the NZQA
framework, with its much more extensive coverage of qualifications, is far too elaborate
for New Zealand's requirements and will result in considerable confusion. It would appear
to be envisaged that eventually students, along with their parents, teachers and other
advisers, will be faced with a choice of unit standards from a list numbering many
thousands - well over 10,000 if university courses are included - and some 1000
qualifications - or perhaps about 1500 if university qualifications are included. The
potential for utter bewilderment is considerable.
The smaller number of qualifications in the continental approach results
from the demand that breadth is maintained on all approved training courses in the
interests of nationwide standards and the transferability of skills. By contrast, the
approach of the NCVQ in the United Kingdom emphasises the tailoring of qualifications to
meet, as far as possible, the varying needs of employers (Prais, 1991, p 88).
The Netherlands model, applying to one of the smaller European
economies, is an example which New Zealand might profitably examine. The Dutch are in the
process of reducing the number of national bodies responsible for vocational courses to
fewer than 15 for apprenticeship training and 19 for full-time vocational courses.
According to the report of the Centre for Education and Employment Research of Manchester
University (Smithers, 1993), the Dutch consider that if there were any more than this
"the resulting vocational awards (would) be too narrow to provide the broad academic,
theoretical and occupational skills seen as essential for the future".
The composition of qualifications also needs consideration. Requiring a
range of units in occupational skills to be acquired before a qualification is granted
will not necessarily ensure a wide general training. The question has been raised in
regard to similar developments in the United Kingdom whether such qualifications are
appropriate as targets to be attained by young people in initial training - as opposed to
existing employees with a firm commitment to a particular vocation. The concern is that,
"by concentrating exclusively on occupational skills and omitting to build upon and
extend trainees' capacities in mathematics and English, NVQs represent a retrograde step
in the development of provision of vocational education and training for young people in
Britain" (Steedman, 1992, p 8).
Similar concerns could arise with the NZQA qualifications. If the number
and mix of units required to complete a qualification are left to national standards
setting groups, it can reasonably be expected that they will reflect the interests of
employers. The incorporation of general education units would counter any tendency to
grant qualifications for skill based units alone, but there appears to be no intention to
make this a general requirement. Whether general education is specified and assessed
separately or is left to be inferred from other assessment processes is also critical
[4.8.4 and 5.3.2].
As already noted [4.8.4], a matter for considerable concern is the
potential for the loss or degrading of existing high quality qualifications such as the
New Zealand Certificates. These set demanding standards in a broad range of subject areas.
They are valued by employers in a number of industries because of their broad nature and
the signals they provide about overall competence including mathematical and written
communication skills. Requiring them to conform to the framework, as appears to be
intended, could be retrograde as it has been for certain United Kingdom qualifications.
Many of these qualifications are, however, in need of revision and updating. It is
understood that, in some cases, work on them has been held over pending their reformatting
into unit standards and incorporation within the NZQA framework.
4.10 Accreditation of Providers
Anyone offering unit standards must be registered and accredited by the
NZQA to do so and agree to quality management procedures, laid down by the NZQA and
industry, designed to ensure high standards of delivery (NZQA, 1992d). This accreditation
process is seen as a major part of the NZQA's quality assurance of the framework.
Accreditation is the process for approving providers to deliver to unit
standards. Accreditation may apply to individual unit standards or, more usually, to
groups of unit standards or even to a full qualification. Accreditation is offered for a
period of time, normally three to five years, after which re-accreditation becomes
necessary.
To make a decision on accreditation, the NZQA or its agent requires
information on teaching programmes, resources available, staffing, student entry
requirements, student guidance/support, arrangements for off-site components, assessment
and reporting.
The accreditation process is a statutory function of the NZQA. It is
understood to be adopting a systems approach to the control over internal provider
processes such as staffing and resources. The issue is whether such controls, however
exercised, will remove doubts about consistency and reliability in certification through
standards setting and the moderation process [4.8.5]. Fundamental problems with the
definition of standards and assessment against them [4.7.3 and 4.8] will not be addressed
by control over internal processes alone.
4.11 Costs of Developing and Maintaining the NZQA Qualifications Framework
One of the functions of the NZQA is the development and maintenance of a
national catalogue of units along with relevant details of each including credit value,
outcomes and performance criteria. Clearly this is an essential task. However, because of
the number of units that are likely to be required to cover "every conceivable area
of education and training", the maintenance of such a register and the recording of
student performance will be a formidable and expensive undertaking.
The merging of the existing university qualifications framework [4.4]
would pose very considerable development costs, as well as educational costs [4.7.3].
Similarly, there will be costs of reformatting other existing qualifications, such as the
New Zealand Certificates, into the new framework.
An essential part of the maintenance of the framework will be the
updating and revision of units - the standards, performance criteria and range statements
- and the composition of qualifications. In addition considerable resources will need to
be applied to the development, implementation and monitoring of systems for quality
assurance, credit transfer and the recognition of prior learning. Communicating between
several hundred providers, the ITOs and other national standard setting groups will pose
considerable logistical demands and costs.
The efficiency with which the system is maintained will depend very much
on the commitment of industry and professional bodies and the resources they are prepared
to put into the development and maintenance of the system. At present Industry Training
Organisations are funded by the government to undertake the necessary development work. It
is understood that government funding will not be available beyond the present development
stage. A test of user commitment to the framework will come when industry, professional
and trades bodies have to fund their own framework expenses including the revision of
standards and the development of new ones as technology changes. In fact, some ITOs are
reported to be already in serious financial difficulty (Boyd, 1993).
The overall costs and the centralism of the framework have, perhaps, yet
to be fully understood. One United Kingdom agency comments on these aspects as follows:
Moreover the (NZQA) framework appears to require an enormous state
bureaucracy to register units, institutions, and students. New Zealand has a much smaller
population than Britain but it remains to be seen whether the constituent institutions
will be persuaded by such apparent centralism (FEU, 1993).
Willyams (1992) reported that Sweden was developing a three year
vocational course consisting of core subjects and modules to be chosen by students from a
range of only 16 specialised subjects. It was expected that there would be between 200 and
300 of the modules spread over the 16 specialisations. He noted the Swedish opinion that
... it was impractical and too expensive to have a large number of
modules in a country the size of Sweden and that the Scotvec and New Zealand concept of
maintaining up to 4000 individual modules was not a realistic policy.
It will be realised that the number of unit standards currently under
development is 6000 - not 4000 - and that Sweden's population is, at 8.6 million, over two
and a half times that of New Zealand's.
4.12 Conclusions
The aims of the qualifications framework are highly commendable. There
is certainly a need to rationalise the plethora of certificates in the senior secondary
school and post- school. Recognising prior learning, providing additional flexibility in
terms of entry points, multiple pathways, cross-crediting arrangements, and breaking down
unhelpful attitudinal distinctions are all very desirable.
The qualifications framework involves a revolutionary shift from course
syllabuses, examination prescriptions and textbooks to outcomes, performance criteria and
range statements. This is a radical departure from traditional practice, but should not be
dismissed on that ground alone.
The framework has many design features which appear to be well
aligned with its commendable aims of addressing widely acknowledged weaknesses in the
certification of education and training. However, the foregoing analysis suggests that
there are serious design problems in the framework. In fact, it is hard not to conclude
that the momentum that has been built up in pursuit of commendable aims and the speed of
development have led to the construction of a qualifications framework that is
fundamentally flawed. The result could be calamitous for virtually all education and
training in New Zealand, particularly if degrees and existing quality vocational awards
are incorporated into the framework. Far from raising the status of vocational education
it could bring much of it into disrepute.
The framework seeks to embrace all education and training. This
introduces an element of internal contradiction. The more all-embracing the framework, the
more essential it is to enforce a common approach; in this case the use of a common
building block, the unit standard, and common levels to provide equivalence across all
education and training. But this common approach necessarily excludes the possibility of
flexibility through the employment of different approaches to assessment for the award of
qualifications. It limits, and possibly prevents, evolutionary development through
experience with different options. Moreover, it forces all education and training to fit
into a prespecified mould. Making the content of education and training subservient to the
certification process leads to other problems.
There are problems with the basic building blocks themselves. The unit
standards are expressed in outcome terms. For most unit standards, the assumption here is
that achievement of the outcome must necessarily mean that the necessary knowledge and
understanding are also present - that what students know and understand can be inferred
from what they do and the process by which they achieve competence is relatively
unimportant. Many commentators consider this assumption to be erroneous. Even where
knowledge or understanding is specified as an outcome, the piecemeal unit standards
approach is likely to reduce its value as general education. The registration of
objectives and performance criteria raises serious problems for rigidity in curriculum
delivery. Divorcing content from course objectives and assessment tasks raises other
problems.
Certainly the implications of this radical new approach to education and
training have not been sufficiently examined and debated. One result for the NCVQ system,
which adopts a similar approach, has been a drastic reduction in emphasis on core skills
such as maths and English. Commentators point out that this lack of emphasis on core areas
as requiring separate instruction and assessment is reducing standards and restricting,
not enhancing, progression and continuity. It has yet to be seen whether unit standards in
general subjects will adequately provide this separate instruction in, and assessment of,
knowledge and skills.
The wholesale adoption of standards-based assessment leads to further
difficulties which are compounded by weak control over assessment procedures.
Standards-based assessment will not provide clear and specific standards in academic
subjects. It poses substantial problems in many technical and vocational areas as well.
Thus consistent assessment against standards is extraordinarily difficult. The fact that
there will be several hundred providers employing different assessment tasks in different
contexts and applying different rules will compound the difficulty enormously. In these
circumstances consistent assessment - crucial to the credibility of any qualification -
cannot be expected.
The notion of equivalence across the levels is also of limited validity.
Qualifications should be seen as more than the aggregations of unit standards. The
selection of curriculum content and objectives and the way in which they are approached
and integrated are crucial in determining the appropriate status of a qualification.
This chapter has also drawn attention to the logistics of the
qualifications framework. With over 6000 units, possibly a thousand qualifications and up
to two hundred national standards setting groups, it is going to be an enormous and costly
structure to maintain in good order with regular review and updating of unit standards and
qualifications. The incorporation of university and other existing courses into the
framework would increase its size, cost and complexity still further.
The commitment to the framework of the many industry and other groups
will only be properly tested when government funding for the development and updating of
unit standards comes to an end. The framework appears likely to be very costly, unwieldy,
confusing and far too big in relation to the size and diversity of the New Zealand
economy.
The framework should be reviewed as a matter of urgency and redesigned.
It is suggested that the following guidelines should be adopted for the review:
• The assessment process must suit the material (the mix of skills,
knowledge and understanding) to be tested.
• The assessment process must be rigorous, and ensure consistency
and hence the credibility of qualifications. It should include common criteria on matters
such as the number of re-sits, the requirement for written examinations and the use of
external examiners. Examination for award purposes should be independent of teaching.
• The framework should evolve slowly, initially incorporating the
learning areas which experience and research suggest are most suitable, with expansion and
adjustment in the light of experience.
• The range of curricular material to be covered, the different
levels at which students are to be tested, the many different objectives of courses and
programmes, the variety of mixes of skill, knowledge, understandings, values and attitudes
in courses and programmes mean that one tightly specified framework cannot successfully
incorporate all qualifications. What is required is acceptance that, for very sound
educational reasons, there needs to be several qualifications systems (e.g. school,
vocational, university). The concern should be to enhance communication between different
systems within a looser overall framework. This might well turn out to be, as suggested by
the Auckland University Senate (1994), "more comprehensive, more practical and more
effective".
• Existing quality qualifications should not be changed simply to
comply with the qualifications framework.
• Qualifications must be seen as valuable in their own terms and
not rely on spurious equivalence or comparability with other qualifications seen as having
higher current status.
• Course requirements should describe what students should know and
understand as well as be able to do. They should be simply and directly stated in terms
that students, teachers and employers can readily understand.
• Programmes should contain courses incorporating an appropriate
mix of skills, knowledge and understanding in the longer-term interests of both students
and employers.
• The number of national standards setting groups and
qualifications should have regard to the small size of the New Zealand economy and the
need for simplicity and cost effectiveness.
The implications of some of these guidelines are drawn out in the
recommendations in the following section.
4.13 Recommendations
11 The national qualifications framework should be reviewed and
redesigned.
12 The assessment process must suit the material (the mix of skills,
knowledge, values, attitudes and understanding) to be tested.
13 The assessment process must be rigorous, and ensure consistency and
hence the credibility of qualifications. This requires common criteria on matters such as
the number of re-sits allowed, the use of external written examinations and external
examination of practical work. Examination for award purposes must be independent of
teaching.
14 The framework should evolve slowly, initially incorporating the
learning areas which experience and research suggest are most suitable, with expansion and
adjustment in the light of experience. It should, therefore, concentrate initially on
vocational awards at non-advanced levels. Existing qualifications should not be changed
simply to comply with the qualifications framework.
15 It should be accepted that there needs to be several qualifications
systems. The task is not to force all qualifications into one system but to facilitate
means by which different systems can communicate with each other in terms of credit
recognition.
16 Course requirements should describe what students should know and
understand as well as be able to do. They should be simply and directly stated in terms
that students, teachers and employers can readily understand. General educational
objectives should be separately specified and assessed.
17 Programmes leading to qualifications should, in the longer-term
interests of both students and employers, contain courses with an appropriate mix of
skills, knowledge and understanding aimed at raising the general educational attainment of
students as well as their vocational capability.
18 The number of national standards setting groups and qualifications
should have regard to the size of the economy, the need for simplicity and cost
effectiveness, and the importance of avoiding a narrow occupational focus. This will
require a substantial reduction in the numbers that are likely to result from present
policies.
5.0 SENIOR SECONDARY SCHOOL CURRICULUM AND QUALIFICATIONS
5.1 Introduction
The senior secondary school has become a focus of debate in New Zealand
and in other countries. Many issues centre
around the curricula and the certification of achievement given the increasingly diverse
senior secondary school population and the education and training needs of a modern, open
economy.
One of the key problems in the secondary school has been a lack of clear
pathways for students for whom the academic route, via bursary to university or
polytechnic, is not suitable. Schools have generally responded well to the challenge of a
rising participation rate with a widening range of courses in F6 and F7 to meet the
requirements of the much more diverse group of students. However, there is still a lack of
clearly demarcated and nationally recognised pathways suitable for the non-academically
inclined which will connect with employment opportunities or further education and
training beyond school. Given the danger of categorising young people too sharply or too
early in terms of their abilities and likely post-school destinations, it is important to
keep bridges open between pathways. The qualifications framework is intended to address
this situation.
One issue that does not appear to have been addressed explicitly is
whether different pathways to suit the more diverse senior school population can be
accommodated within single, multicurricula (i.e. comprehensive) secondary schools. New
Zealand secondary schools have not always been comprehensive. In the first few decades of
this century there were technical high schools in the major centres. "It was argued
that these schools, freed from the conventional examination incubus, would provide better
programmes for those many students who failed to benefit from the standard literary
fare" (McKenzie 1992).
Over time the technical schools came under critical attack on several
grounds. In particular, they were criticised because their intake tended to be
differentiated in terms of social class and because they perpetuated these distinctions
through the type of occupations for which their students were prepared. The view that
curricular differentiation should take place within a common institution eventually
prevailed.
The aim of greater equality of status of the various types of curricula
and qualifications has arisen again in terms of the NZQA's concern to dispense with
"the discredited distinction between academic and vocational (since) both are equal
in their worth" (NZQA 1991a). This distinction will not, however, disappear on
bureaucratic command [4.5].
Frequently, ... it is perceived vocational opportunities which
dominate people's curriculum choice - the one best knowledge. Technical curricula can have
no privileged status here. It will become a preferred choice if it is seen to lead to
worthwhile career opportunities. This is a matter of policy beyond the schools. ... The
future (of technical curricula) will be determined to the extent that New Zealand is able
to develop and sustain a vigorous industrial knowledge sector economy. To the extent that
it does, so will the task of negotiating appropriate curricular reform in New Zealand
schools be enhanced (McKenzie, 1992, p 38).
Present plans affect the content and delivery of the senior school
curriculum through the introduction of curriculum statements and changes to the
certification of achievement arising from the introduction of the National Certificate and
changes to School Certificate and Bursary. It is a period of schooling in which the focus
is more on a 'high stakes' summative assessment for 'exit' qualifications, increasingly at
F6 and F7, rather than on assessment for the diagnostic and formative purposes of earlier
years. Hence the certification changes are likely to be particularly influential on the
curriculum and the method of delivery at this level of schooling.
5.2 Proposals for Reform
In outline, the present arrangements for the senior secondary school are
that:
• School Certificate will remain as an external examination but
without scaling of any kind and, from 1997, with prescriptions along traditional subject
lines derived from groups of unit standards at level one of the qualifications framework .
• Bursary will remain as an external examination, but from 1997 with its prescriptions along traditional subject lines derived from groups of unit standards at level three of the qualifications framework.
• School Certificate and Bursary will be optional and additional
to, not instead of, units standards in the qualifications framework. They were originally
intended to be outside the qualifications framework, but consideration is being given to
some formal linkages with it.
• Prescriptions for School Certificate and Bursary will be based on
elements within the unit standards that are examinable by external written examination.
• Unit standards in the National Certificate will be available to
F5 students progressively from 1994 as curriculum statements are gazetted, with level 6 of
the curriculum framework equated with level 1 of the qualifications framework.
• The government supports the concept of a scholarship examination
providing a greater challenge than Bursary for the most able students.
• The entrance requirement for undergraduate courses is set by the
NZQA and will be 3 Cs in Bursary as from the 1994 academic year (previously 4 Ds).
University entrance will also be achievable by an appropriate performance (as yet
unspecified) in National Certificate unit standards.
• The Ministry of Education is responsible for the development of
the school curriculum while the NZQA is responsible for certification at the school level
including the administration of the National Certificate, the School Certificate, Bursary
and Scholarship [Chapter 6].
5.3 Contrasting Systems - England and the Continent
This section compares and contrasts curriculum and certification systems
in England with those on continental Europe. The English system and the reforms now being
implemented have encountered some trenchant criticism particularly from researchers in the
National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR). Since the emerging New Zealand
system shares many aspects of the English (and Scottish) arrangements, it is important to
note these criticisms carefully.
The United Kingdom's Channel Four Commission on Education (1991) notes
that the English school system contrasts strongly with the systems in continental Europe.
They advise that when teachers on the continent are asked to account for the higher
attainment of most of their young people, they usually refer to features common in their
systems but which are absent in the English system. The Commissioners advised that those
systems, subject to some variation as to detail, generally include:
• Different pathways, reflecting academic, technical or
vocational goals, open to youngsters from the age of 12-14 onwards; invariably the
vocational tracks, and often the technical tracks, begin with basic, practical studies
before progressively introducing higher technology, (precisely the approach now being
forced out of British schools).
• Access to the pathways is by choice; teachers provide parents
with guidance (assessment tests are also used for this purpose) but parental choice is
paramount.
• Progression along pathways depends on performance and there is
often a settling down from more demanding tracks to less demanding ones.
• Bridging and transfer mechanisms exist which allow youngsters
to move from one part of the system to any other point, although this will often involve
some pupils taking longer.
• The mark at the end of the school year, which determines
whether a pupil is ready to move on to the next year, depends on all his subjects; a pupil
cannot give up on a subject, say maths, simply because he or she does not like it.
• There is a range of school leaving diplomas closely tied in
with future job opportunities.
• The labour market is so organised that clear standards are
demanded in all occupations, standards that are highly dependent on success in the
education system.
It is also the case that in European systems there are different schools
for different pathways. Dutch children, for example, move at the age of 13 from
comprehensive elementary schools to one of a great variety of secondary schools for a
further 4 to 6 years. The schools are generally of four types:
• about 35 per cent attend junior vocational schools;
• about 30 per cent attend middle general schools leading to
administrative or higher technical positions;
• about 15 per cent attend selective schools (not teaching Latin
and Greek) leading to higher education at polytechnics; and
• about 15 per cent attend classical grammar schools leading to
academic courses at universities.
Other European countries have different types of secondary schooling
though not as many as in Holland (Mason et al., 1990). Germany, for example, has three
different types of school - the Gymnasium, Realschule and Hauptschule - each catering
specifically for different levels of ability.
One effect of the variation of schools is that students have to give
serious thought to career options from an earlier age than in Britain - or in New Zealand.
Such decisions are never easy. In continental systems they can be reconsidered though
usually at a cost in terms of length of schooling. It should also be noted that research
overseas does not appear to support such early differentiation as takes place, for
example, in Holland. In this context it needs to be noted that the years of early
adolescence are very significant in developmental terms and children vary considerably in
rate of development. Early decisions may severely prejudice the life chances of slow or
late developers especially if they become locked into a particular track and bridging
facilities prove difficult to access in practice.
The possibility of developing distinctive pathways in British secondary
schools has increased with the publication of the report of the Channel Four Commission on
Education (1991) which recommended, inter alia, three inter-connecting pathways from age
14 (for most students). Sir Ron Dearing's review of the English/Welsh National Curriculum
and its assessment (Dearing, 1993) gave further encouragement to pathway development. In
his review, Dearing notes that one option for addressing problems encountered at Key Stage
4 (14- to 16-year-olds) would be to reduce the statutory core "thus leaving the
remaining teaching time for choice of distinctive pathways, whether academic, broadly
vocational, or a combination of them". A number of the secondary schools in one Local
Education Authority have been preparing to set up educational pathways post-14 for some
time (Luxton, 1993).
5.3.1 An Example from the Continent - the French System
In France there are three levels of pathway - courses that lead to the
Baccalaureates (the general, the technical and the vocational); those that lead to the lower (craft) level Certificat d'Aptitude Professionel
(CAP) and those that lead to the Brevet d'Etudes Professionelles (BEP). The characteristic
shared by all these awards is that each constitutes a complete programme of study rather
than, as in Britain (and possibly intended in New Zealand), over-arching certificates
which may consist of combinations of study options chosen by students. There are eight
general baccalaureate courses, sixteen technological baccalaureates and twenty-nine
vocational baccalaureates. There are several hundred CAP programmes, of which many attract
only a few entrants and forty-seven BEPs of which only twenty attract sizeable numbers of
entrants.
All these courses have a compulsory element. General education is seen
as an essential part of all levels of education including apprenticeships. Almost all
students study mathematics and French, and all programmes include some or all of science,
social studies, sport and arts. The over-riding concern of the French education
authorities is to maintain the value of state recognised post-secondary qualifications in
the labour market and in higher education.
Education is not only organised in a number of hierarchical levels but
is also highly centralised with courses uniform across the country in terms of both
content and time commitments. There is a strong belief in the value of general education,
which is widely shared by employers, as essential for a labour force undergoing constant
change in response to technological and other pressures.
5.3.2 The General Educational Content of Vocational Awards - English and
Continental Systems
A number of features of the United Kingdom's NCVQ system contrast with
the French system. They are especially worth noting in the context of New Zealand's
current reforms which resemble the NCVQ system in several respects. The NCVQ system, like
the NZQA framework, was intended to provide a properly structured system of qualifications
and progression routes while making the content and standards of each award extremely
clear. NIESR researchers argue, however, that the move to the system of NVQs has actually
tended to exacerbate the problems of an important aspect of the English system - that of
the general educational content of vocational awards (Wolf, 1992, and Steedman,
1992)[4.8.4].
Research has led to the conclusion that the NVQs, which have replaced
the older craft courses, have reduced rather than strengthened mathematics teaching and
training (Steedman, 1992). Further investigation led Wolf, 1992, to the conclusion that
this result "follows ineluctably from the current NVQ model". Her reasons for
this conclusion were:
• The establishment of industry bodies to draw up standards which
encapsulate the level and content of 'occupational competence' in the industry concerned
militates against long-term planning or the inclusion of general education in vocational
programmes.
• Employers are asked what is required for immediate competence in
particular occupations - not what they look for in hiring young people.
• Because standards are drawn up for particular occupations and
industries in isolation, there is no mechanism for considering progression either within
the same vocational field or across to another track altogether (possibly an academic,
technical or vocational programme in another sector).
• Setting standards within the context of a particular occupation
may not be to the detriment of those with a firm vocational commitment but may well be
highly disadvantageous to the young new entrant. Ironically, the system which was intended
to remove impediments to progress is "actually tending to create a new set of
barriers to progression".
• The way standards are specified and NVQs delivered and assessed
compound the problems:
- The formal definitions of occupational competence are very broad and
could be interpreted to include quite general skills. However, the format adopted involves
detailed specification of outcomes defined in behavioural terms. This, especially at lower
levels, produces long lists of very narrowly defined competencies which become the
trainer's first priority.
- The NCVQ has set itself against separate specification of the
mathematics involved in an occupation and this has to be inferred from the performance
criteria. This provides little incentive to trainers to set time aside for teaching
mathematics and other subjects separately.
Surveys of British colleges of further education offering vocational
courses confirmed that mathematics teaching was still appreciably less than in France, had
not increased and in a number of courses had declined. There are no overt assessment
requirements for mathematics and consequently very little incentive for students to work
hard at it. Several lecturers expressed the view that the lack of mathematics meant that
"the new award risks actually reducing the extent to which award holders are equipped
to progress to higher levels within their own occupational field or to transfer to other
occupational areas" (Wolf, 1992).
General National Vocational Qualifications (GNVQs) are also not seen by
the researchers as meeting the need for general education. GNVQs are meant to provide a
broad general education with a vocational focus, with the same modular design as NVQs, and
also with highly specific outcomes and performance criteria. They contain core skill units
in application of number, communication and technology on which all students will be
assessed. Researchers have expressed the following doubts about their efficacy:
• because core skills are expressed in the usual outcome terms, it
is very doubtful whether:
- lecturers will have an incentive to deliver separate and well
presented mathematics lessons; and
- the outcome specifications can deliver the standardised and
transparent levels of achievement claimed for them.
• Core skill units are not separate parts of courses. Hence there
is no obligation to provide separate teaching on core skills including mathematics and
English on which to base the assessment. Instead "students are to be assessed on
their level of core skills as displayed across the whole of the programme: that is on the
basis of skills which they display more or less incidentally in the course of other
activities" (Wolf, 1992).
• It is effectively impossible to 'extract' particular skills from
different activities (especially from project work on which much of GNVQs will be based)
and reach consistent judgments about their level of difficulty (Wolf, 1992, citing Pollitt
et al., 1985, and Wolf, 1991).
5.4 International Comparisons of Achievement
The contrast between English and continental European school education
leads naturally to the question of whether there are differences in achievement levels and
whether any differences that do exist are attributable to the fact that the English system
is predominantly comprehensive and the systems in Europe are selective.
Like England, New Zealand has a comprehensive system [5.1]. Also,
international surveys of achievement by the IEA indicate very similar levels of
achievement in England and New Zealand in mathematics (Elley, 1991a, Irving 1991,
Robitaille and Garden, 1989). Any conclusions that can be drawn may have implications for
New Zealand, though all international comparisons require some caution as regards the
interpretation of results. Some of these results date back 20 years or so since when there
have been changes in educational systems (including curricula and examinations) and in the
context in which education is situated.
Marks, 1991, examined studies of the effects of the move from a
bipartite system of secondary modern and grammar schools to comprehensive schools which
began in the early 1960s. He also compared English achievement levels with those of other
countries including Northern Ireland which retained selective education. His conclusions
were:
• Unadjusted examination results for a selective system of
schools are superior to those of a comprehensive system.
• No study has directly compared the results for selective and
comprehensive schools and demonstrated that those for comprehensive schools are superior.
• Several studies have shown that, after adjustments for
differences between pupils, selective schools perform better than comprehensive schools -
a conclusion which is supported by trends in national examination results and
international comparisons.
• Technical schools, alongside other kinds of selective school,
may enhance the performance of a selective system (Marks, 1991).
As Marks notes, no systematic research was commissioned in order to
assess whether the massive change to comprehensive education from the mid-1960s achieved
its expected results, one of which was an improvement in overall educational standards.
The above findings are, therefore, necessarily cautious and need to be qualified by the
other important findings which he notes. These were that examination results varied
dramatically from school to school, even between schools of the same type in similar
areas. Some comprehensive schools had considerably better O-level results than other
comprehensives in the same totally comprehensive LEA. Even results for different subjects
within the same school showed striking differences, presumably reflecting variations in
the quality of teaching.
In view of the closeness of English and New Zealand achievement levels
in mathematics, it is particularly interesting to note the broad conclusion of Prais and
Wagner (1985, p 68), based on earlier international comparisons of attainments at school,
supplemented by some more recent - though limited - comparisons of their own, that:
... the German schooling system provides a broader curriculum,
combined with significantly higher levels of mathematical attainment, for a greater
proportion of pupils than does the English system; differences are particularly marked at
the lower half of the ability-range. Attainments in mathematics by those in the lower half
of the ability-range in England appear to lag by the equivalent of about two years'
schooling behind the corresponding section of pupils in Germany.
Marks (1991) also noted the conclusion of Prais (1987) that the average
Japanese 15-year-old is better educated in mathematics and other testable subjects than
the top quarter of British 16-year-olds who pass at GCE O-level, and in particular that:
The broad cross-section of school-leavers in Japan is ... educated to
a significantly higher level than in England; it is as if good Grammar School standards
were attained by the school leaver of average ability (Prais 1987, p 52).
These studies suggest that New Zealand cannot be complacent about its
attainment levels compared with other countries, especially perhaps in mathematics. The
reasons for international differences are difficult to identify with any certainty. It has
also been noted that country results hide considerable variations in results between
schools of the same type [2.8]. However, it does seem to be possible to conclude that in
England comprehensiveness did not achieve the attainment gains that were hoped for. One
group of British experts went considerably further and concluded that the decline of the
British technical schools was "one of the tragedies of British education" and
linked this decline with Britain's poor post war economic performance (Channel Four
Commission on Education, 1991, p 11).
There would seem good reason to review New Zealand's own move to
comprehensive schooling and the elimination of its technical schools [5.1].
Comprehensiveness is, in theory, attractive from the point of view of social cohesiveness.
However, it could have a cost in term of educational attainment especially of lower
achieving groups who in many cases are from disadvantaged backgrounds. There would be
little point in retaining a comprehensive system for social reasons if, in practice, it
leads those it was most expected to benefit to educational failure and disadvantage in the
labour market. A more productive approach might involve a move towards an education system
which is better geared to their educational needs and a change in societal attitudes about
the relative importance of technical and vocational education. The latter objective might
be facilitated by the development of suitable and well defined pathways that lead to
certificates of real value in the labour market, combined with policies conducive to job
creation and high employment levels.
The offering of different pathways does, not of course, have to be
undertaken in different schools. It could greatly facilitate movement between pathways if
offered within the same school; comprehensiveness as such may not, in fact, be as much a
problem for more disadvantaged children as the dominance of the traditional academic
route. On the other hand there might be advantages of specialisation in confining a
limited number of curricular options to some schools.
5.5 Curriculum and Qualifications from F3 to F5
The junior secondary school should continue the function of the primary
school of building the foundations for future learning with a concentration on basic
skills and knowledge. As students progress within the secondary school, greater challenges
and opportunities are presented to suit their abilities and interests.
Traditionally the curriculum has been focused on the School Certificate
subject prescriptions. However, the introduction of National Certificate unit standards at
F5 will introduce a wide range of possible pathways for secondary students. The following
sections consider the School Certificate and the National Certificate.
5.6 Qualifications at F5 - the School Certificate
When the School Certificate was established in the 1940s, the purpose
was to provide a summative statement for the great majority of students who finished their
secondary schooling at that point. Since the 1940s, the percentage of those leaving school
with three or more years of secondary education has increased very considerably. The
percentage of those entering secondary school who enter F6 and F7 has increased over the
last 20 years as shown below:
1972 1982 1992
Percentage entering F6 44% 54% 83%
Percentage entering F7 13% 16% 44%
Various changes to the School Certificate have been made because of the
wider range of abilities and interests of those sitting it and proceeding to the senior
school. The curriculum was widened with the introduction of more subjects. Scaling was
introduced to provide some comparability of difficulty between subjects. Scaling also
provided a degree of comparability between years. Single subject passes with grades were
introduced to avoid the problems inherent in the pass/fail system that existed in earlier
times. Partial internal assessment was introduced into most subjects and full internal
assessment into a few. Various moderation procedures have been developed.
The value of the School Certificate as an 'exit' certificate has
considerably decreased in recent years and this trend is likely to continue. It is likely
that most of those leaving school from F5 do not take with them a School Certificate
result that is helpful in seeking employment. On the other hand, most of those who do
obtain good results progress into the senior school. Thus the emphasis is from 'exit'
certification to an examination that provides an incentive to high performance in the
middle of the secondary years. The results can assist in the important formative task of
deciding the educational pathway to be followed in F6 and beyond.
The School Certificate is to remain outside the qualifications framework
and, from 1997, will be an optional external examination. Several changes have already
been made including the abolition of all forms of scaling and putting an increased
emphasis on marking to defined standards using clear criteria established prior to
marking. In addition the previous seven point grading system (A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2, D)
has been replaced by a straight five point A to E system which will apply up to 1997. The
grading system in 1997 and beyond has not yet been decided.
The various scaling procedures were abandoned in the 1992 School
Certificate and raw scores were assigned. The scripts were marked as if the new emphasis
on clear marking criteria had been introduced but no standards were in fact published.
According to some experts, the results were confusing and almost worthless (Education
Policy Group, Massey University, 1993).
The other main changes proposed for the School Certificate appear to be
:
• It will have prescriptions derived from groups of unit standards
set at level 1 of the qualifications framework and based on the achievement objectives of
the new curriculum statements.
• It will be subject based.
• The focus of the prescriptions will be on objectives that can be
assessed by written examination. Only those elements or learning outcomes within the unit
standards that are assessable by examination will be included. Aspects of programmes which
are not considered assessable by external examination will presumably be assessed by
providers and will be covered in the learning outcomes within the unit standards for the
National Certificate.
5.6.1 Standards and Methods of Assessment
The aim is that for each subject there will be published standards
comprising the achievement aims and objectives and the criteria for defining performance.
The questions in the external examinations will be related to the published standards, and
scripts will be marked against the standards.
Difficulties of standards-based assessment (as opposed to
standards-based teaching) were discussed with reference to assessment procedures
linked to the national curriculum [3.3]. At the F5 level, there are a great many standards
to be set against which performance must be assessed if this form of assessment is to be
introduced. The authors of the Nelson-Marlborough School Certificate maths scheme found it
necessary to assess students in over 53 different concepts, and a typical School
Certificate English paper consists of about 30 criteria of performance (Elley, 1991c).
To assess student achievement against all the specifications that are
needed to describe each subject, a very large battery of tests and, in some subject areas,
a substantial investment in moderation would be required to ensure fair and reliable
marks. The investment of teacher and student time and the other costs incurred would be
very large indeed. If undertaken as a separate exercise, it could involve a considerable
disruption of classroom activities. Without such an investment, the test results would be
inconclusive, and employers, teachers, parents and tertiary institutions would not have
confidence in them. These difficulties would be reduced, but not eliminated, if a
significant degree of internal assessment could be employed with appropriate external
moderation.
The widely differing results between the internal assessed and
externally examined components of the 1993 School Certificate economics show how difficult
it is to achieve consistent assessment on the basis of standards even though the
knowledge, understanding and skills prescribed for both components were "very
close" (Smith, 1994).
In order to report external examinations with achievement levels, it
will be necessary to set performance criteria for each level. This would seem difficult to
do other than on the basis of some normative assumptions about the distribution of marks
between levels.
5.6.2 Scaling between Markers within Subjects
Statistical scaling which adjusts the distribution of marks between
markers is no longer applied. Instead, an increased emphasis on marking schedules is
intended to help resolve differences between markers.
Presumably the assumption is that achievement aims and performance
criteria can be stated in advance in sufficiently detailed and unambiguous ways such that
marking will be largely a mechanical task and inter-marker moderation becomes unnecessary.
To put it another way, scaling of marks as between markers would be unnecessary if it
could be assumed that the median score and the distribution of marks allocated to a random
set of examination papers by all markers would be the same.
The problem is that the necessary degree of precision is not possible in
many subjects at the School Certificate level. Since marking nearly always involves some
element of subjectivity and possible marking error, markers inevitably have differing
median scores and distributions. Scaling is, therefore, an appropriate statistical
adjustment to allow for such variations. A typical example of the unreliability of marking
is found in Elley et al. (1979). Well-trained and experienced School Certificate English
examiners compared their assessments of the same essays, and found that their marks had a
wide variation. The variation might have been reduced if the essays were more highly
structured, but this would have meant that the tests determined the curricula. It is hard
to see how an increased emphasis on marking schedules would resolve this problem without
greatly limiting the type of question that can be included in tests.
The abolition of scaling between markers seems likely to result in a
lessening of control over the variation in scores resulting from differences between
markers. This would lead to considerable dissatisfaction among all concerned, especially
in subjects like English where research indicates a wide variation in marks even between
well trained assessors.
The loss of scaling between markers puts enormous pressure on those who
administer the examinations to be as specific as possible about the achievement standards
against which scripts are to be assessed. The problem is that, beyond a certain point, the
more specific the standards become, the more trivial will be the components to be
assessed, since many of the more important educational objectives simply cannot be reduced
to simple, unambiguous statements [2.6.2].
5.6.3 Scaling between Years
The assumption underlying the predetermined allocation of marks among
grades is that the distribution of students between achievement levels does not change
significantly from one year to another. This is an entirely reasonable assumption for most
School Certificate subjects. Only in subjects where the numbers sitting the examination
are very small or where there has been a systematic change in the students taking the
subject (as in Bursary subjects - see 5.10.1) would one expect significant variations in
mean achievement and in the distribution of marks between years. It is essential to
maintain a comparable distribution of marks from year to year to enable teachers, students
and their parents to make good decisions about further education. To the extent that
School Certificate is still an 'exit' certificate, comparability between years is
important to tertiary institutions and employers. Its reliability is also essential to its
usefulness as a guide to decisions on senior school education. Without this consistency
over time, the worth of the qualification would be seriously eroded.
Here again the underlying assumption in the decision to dispense with
scaling between years is, presumably, that standards are precise, unambiguous and stable
over time. With standards-based assessment, scaling between years is irrelevant; marking
is against predetermined and stable standards. Unfortunately, it is not possible to set
questions at a predetermined level of difficulty in most subjects at the School
Certificate level. Even experienced examiners can not readily predict how difficult a
particular question will be for students. The degree of difficulty experienced will depend
on the wording of the question, the time allowed, the sequence of questions, the examples
selected and numerous other factors. On the basis of raw (unscaled) results, students in
one year might be unjustifiably viewed as less able than those sitting the exam in another
year. Thus, as Elley (1991c) has pointed out, under the new system, changes in standards
from year to year are likely to reflect changes in the difficulty of questions and marking
standards rather than student ability levels.
5.6.4 Scaling between Subjects
Subject difficulty became an issue following the change in the School
Certificate to a single subject pass system in 1968. Hughes and Lauder (1990) advise that
the examination board "believed that it would be unfair if one pupil passed a couple
of 'easy' options while an equally able student failed 'difficult' options". They
note that initially an informal hierarchy of subjects was developed and that formal
scaling was introduced in 1975 to formalise and extend the hierarchy of subjects.
Scaling between subjects aims to ensure that testing in all subjects
applies achievement criteria of comparable difficulty and that students are not
disadvantaged by attempting more 'difficult' subjects. It might be argued that if such a
procedure is not in place, students may well take the relatively 'easy' subjects and those
who assess the worth of the credential will apply their own 'scaling'. The perceived
advantage of scaling by examination authorities is, presumably, that they can be expected
to make more accurate judgments about the relative difficulty of various subjects than
users of the qualification.
There are, however, significant arguments against inter-subject scaling.
It is based on the view that a student should, with equal effort, do equally well in any
subject. This assumption is of dubious validity. Some students have a particular facility
for, say, maths which is quite unrelated to their ability in, say, English. In subjects
such as Maori and music, some students may put in a considerable amount of time and effort
which is not directly related to school requirements. It is not clear why their
achievement in such subjects should be scaled down if that is what the scaling formula
requires. Also, as Putt (1985) has argued in relation to the Bursary examination, scaling
may mislead students about their ability in scaled-up subjects [5.10.1].
Thus, while inter-subject scaling appears to be rational and desirable,
there are considerable theoretical and practical problems with it, and the decision to
abandon the practice can be supported.
5.6.5 Conclusions on the School Certificate
School Certificate should be an externally set and marked grading of
performance recognising that examination judgments always have to be, to some extent,
based on normative assumptions. Formative judgments using School Certificate results can
be offered independently by teachers and career advisers to help in deciding the best
educational pathway to follow in the senior secondary school.
The main problems with current developments concern the dependence on
explicit standards and the loss of scaling between years and markers. Any attempt to
define School Certificate subjects entirely in terms of standards could prove very
difficult because of the number and complexity of the dimensions of achievement and the
criteria for their measurement. Also, any attempt to define standards in terms of a few
broad statements is unlikely to enable examiners to set questions of equivalent levels of
difficulty from year to year.
To ensure that School Certificate provides reliable information as a
basis for decisions on further education and training, it is important that:
• Results should continue to be reported as grades, the
distribution of which should be held constant except to the extent that changes in the
candidate population require a different distribution. A consistent distribution of marks
is essential to enable comparisons between years and to maintain the qualification's
credibility and utility as an important guide to decisions on further education.
• Scaling to even out differences between markers is essential in
the interests of equity and of maintaining the credibility of the qualification.
It should also be noted that School Certificate results presently
provide the basis for the allocation of grades in the Sixth Form Certificate. This is not
in itself a sufficient reason for retaining School Certificate, and the procedure presents
its own difficulties.
5.7 Other Forms of External Examination at F5
If problems with the School Certificate are not resolved satisfactorily,
schools could well consider other certification options at F5. There would be no reason in
principle why the New Zealand universities or private organisations should not provide
examination services at this level - the New Zealand Education and Scholarship Trust
already provides a 7th form scholarship exam [5.10.2]. Also schools could offer the long
established British 'O' level which Singapore has chosen as its national exam. The British
School Certificate is also still available to overseas customers (Mauritius is one)
although it was abandoned in Britain in 1951 (The Economist, 1993a).
It is far from clear that one set of examinations can cater for students
throughout the ability range. The response that able students can take the examination at
an earlier stage than F5 is not entirely satisfactory. There may be some advantage in a
range of credentials to meet the ability range of students, and also to subject
examination agencies to the discipline of school and parental choice.
However, the introduction of different examination options would present
logistical problems. On balance, the best option would be to improve the credibility and
reliability of New Zealand's School Certificate. But if difficulties with that certificate
are not resolved then schools could well consider other, including overseas, options.
5.8 Curriculum and Qualifications at F6 and F7
In contrast with the purpose at F5, assessment at F6 and F7 retains an
important summative role. This is to provide 'exit' certificates for students that provide
reliable information to the students themselves and also to potential employers and
tertiary providers about their knowledge, skills, abilities and personal qualities.
The increasing proportion of students who now stay on at school beyond
F5 (see table in 5.6) has widened the range of abilities and post-school intentions of the
senior secondary cohorts. As previously noted, schools have responded well to the
curriculum demands by increasing the number of course options in the senior school. However, while there is a well established academic track
leading to Bursary, the non-academic tracks are still relatively uncoordinated and not
well articulated with certification beyond schooling.
The broader role of the senior school and the wider range of student
interest and ability pose difficulties for the design of a single qualifications
framework. Any such framework would have to seek to include such diverse qualifications
as:
• norm-referenced qualifications providing evidence of high
academic ability at levels suitable for entry into the most restricted of university
faculties; and
• standards-based qualifications providing evidence of competence
for entry into initial vocational training and employment.
At the same time, it is important that the relative status of
non-academic pathways is improved, that non-reversible decisions about education and
training are delayed as long as possible, and that there are clear linkages to post-school
education and training.
The new National Certificate unit standards are clearly intended to play
the major role in providing 'exit' qualifications for all school leavers, even for those
who take the voluntary Bursary/Scholarship examinations. It will eventually replace the
Higher School Certificate, which is little more than a certificate of attendance, and the
Sixth Form Certificate.
5.9 The National Certificate
The National Certificate is the first qualification in the
qualifications framework which was discussed in Chapter 4 (see Figure 1 in 4.3). Unit
standards in it are to be introduced at F5 with levels one to three seen as approximately
equivalent to years 11 to 13 (F5 to F7) of secondary schooling. They will be the only
'exit' qualifications for those not taking Bursary/Scholarship.
The precise dimensions of the National Certificate are not yet known.
However, it seems that it will follow the Scotvec systems in most important respects -
standards, performance criteria, range statements, standards-based assessment, internal
assessment and multiple re-sits.
5.9.1 The Scotvec National Certificate
The NZQA's National Certificate is in large measure based on the
National Certificate introduced by the Scottish Vocational Educational Council (Scotvec)
in the mid-1980s in terms of the Scottish Education Department's Action Plan (SED,
1983)[4.1]. The relevant aims of the Action Plan (HMI 1991) were:
• to develop a more relevant and responsive curriculum which met
the needs of employers and of individual students;
• to improve the articulation and flexibility of the education and
training system so as to encourage improved access, credit transfer, progression and
choice;
• to encourage more active, practical and student-centred
approaches to learning and teaching; and
• to introduce a system which assessed student performance, on the
basis of outcomes and performance criteria, against national standards.
Before the implementation of the Action Plan, and particularly the
National Certificate, qualifications for non-advanced further education in the technical
and vocational sector had been provided by the Scottish Business Education Council, the
Scottish Technical Education Council and other UK agencies such as the City and Guilds of
London Institute, Pitmans and the Royal Society of Arts. It was believed this
proliferation of qualifications resulted in confusion among students and employers as well
as posing administrative difficulties in colleges (Black et al., 1989). The Action Plan
advocated their replacement by a unified system of modules each with a notional forty hour
length. The modules could be free-standing or combined in various ways in individualised
programmes to provide equivalents of the previous qualifications. Assessment was to be no
longer end-of-course examinations but college-based, continuous and criterion referenced (Black et al., 1991).
The background to the introduction of the NZQA's National Certificate
and the design of that Certificate follow very much the background and design of Scotvec's
National Certificate. There are, however, two important differences. First, as to
background, the Scotvec's certificate was only introduced after extensive research and
trialing. The evolution of vocational education and training in Scotland involved three
periods of activity:
• 1974-79 - debate, experimentation and multiple initiatives;
• 1979-84 - formulation of centralised strategies; and
• 1984-91 - implementation, extension, and evaluation of the strategies, and, in 1991 renewed debate and revised strategies.
(Clarke, 1992)
In other words, there was some 10 years (1974-84) of debate and policy
development before implementation. By contrast, decisions on the NZQA's National
Certificate (indeed the whole framework) were made without any appreciable prior debate
about key policy directions and are being implemented in a very short timespan.
The second major difference concerns the scope of the two certificates.
Scotvec's certificate is limited to technical and vocational education, mostly at
non-advanced levels. The NZQA's certificate is much more ambitious as regards both the
horizontal coverage which includes academic as well as technical and vocational subjects
and the vertical coverage of advanced qualifications. Its much more ambitious nature puts
into even higher relief the speed of the NZQA's introduction of the framework.
Although Scotvec's National Certificate was introduced with limited
subject coverage and after lengthy debate, a number of areas have been identified that
require attention (Black et al., 1989 and 1991). In some cases whether they are problems
or not depends on the viewpoint of the observer [4.2].
• The specification of outcomes presented difficulties.
• Employers tended to see their ideal form of training as being,
above all else, practical and applied. To the extent that this has been achieved, the
National Certificate was judged to have been a success. However, from the perspective of
the longer-term interests of the student and the community generally, the contrary may be
true. A similar point has been made in the context of the NVQs [4.8.4 and 5.3.2].
• Students tended to like the assessment process in that it allowed
multiple re-sits, had no end-of-course examination and hence created little pressure.
However, employers see this as a negative aspect in that it:
- reduces the element of challenge which forces trainees to develop
determination and staying power; and
- doesn't discriminate between students who achieve the outcomes on the
first attempt and those who re-sit.
• Some teachers felt that the assessment method encouraged a
passive, reproductive style of learning and did not provide any incentive to search for a
deeper understanding of what had to be learnt.
¥ Although teachers were generally in favour of criterion referencing
(i.e. standards-based assessment), they tended to be very critical about assessment:
- the lack of grading demotivated able students;
- the standards set by the performance criteria tended to be seen as the
minimum necessary and didn't provide any incentive to go further;
- continuous assessment was insufficient in itself;
- an examination would be a check on how much students had retained,
would help in differentiating between them, and help provide the motivation that was
lacking for more able students;
- the ability to re-sit led to abuse - students attempted assessments
before they were ready simply to see what was involved; and
- the assessment process made for heavy administrative demands.
• Teachers also had considerable worries about the effectiveness of
the moderation system. They were not convinced that national standards were sufficiently
clear, that there was sufficient comparability between colleges, and that sufficient
national and regional guidance existed.
• The division of the curriculum into short modules may confine
teachers to short-term aims. Similarly, it can promote a short-term approach to learning
by students - one that concentrates on learning enough for the next learning outcome but
not beyond. This encourages a short-term 'storage' approach to learning and lessens the
element of intellectual challenge. It can make it more difficult to acquire an integrated
view of learning which sees the connections between domains and concepts.
It should, however, be noted that the study from which the above
findings are drawn (Black et al., 1991) reported a favourable view of the National
Certificate in relation to the system it was designed to replace. Some aspects that are
negative for some students can be positive for others. For example, the short module
approach to curriculum delivery may well attract some students who would otherwise be lost
to further education. Other aspects, such as lack of confidence in moderation, point to
the need for further work in this area and not necessarily to any change in overall
design.
5.9.2 Implications for the NZQA's National Certificate
While the National Certificate is still in the process of
implementation, it is clear that many of the features of the Scotvec model are being
incorporated in it and will lead to similar results. The main concerns in Scotland,
certainly among teachers, were about assessment - two-thirds of teachers surveyed
considered that the assessment system had deteriorated since the introduction of the
National Certificate. This must be a cause of considerable concern as the credibility and
utility of any qualification depends directly on the credibility of assessment processes.
When the qualifications in question are the final 'exit' ones from school or a tertiary
college, their credibility is vital.
It is worth noting also that European systems rely heavily on centrally
set examinations for their 'exit' qualifications. Such examinations are seen as essential
for the maintenance of standards and credibility. A survey of employers and colleges in
France and Germany found that the nationwide acceptability of the standards of their
vocational qualifications was rarely questioned, except for minor variations in coverage
of specialist topics which did not, however, affect standards (Mason et al., 1990).
There is growing concern in New Zealand that confidence in the ability
of providers to mark consistently against standards on the basis of internal assessment
alone may be misplaced. Differences between internally and externally assessed School
Certificate marks suggest that "there is a tendency for schools to award marks
somewhat higher than students achieve through external assessment" (Smith, 1994). To
address the issue of consistency and the danger of grade inflation, it has apparently been
suggested that "examinations" (presumably School Certificate and Bursary) should
be "used to assist in the monitoring of school-based assessment for the National
Certificate" (Smith, 1994). Why the National Certificate should not incorporate its
own external examination requirements - rather than be linked to another
examinations-based qualifications system - is not clear.
There is also a concern that the Bursary and the National Certificate
should "interact where appropriate", presumably in the interests of formally
linking school-based examinations into the NZQA's qualifications framework. It has led to
the suggestion that eligibility to sit the Bursary examination should depend on the
achievement of a "base number of credits at levels three or four of the
Qualifications Framework" (Smith, 1994). Credit would be awarded through the National
Certificate with merit being recognised by the examination. The problem here is that any
such arrangement would put an undue pressure on teachers undertaking the internal
assessment for the National Certificate, and is likely to increase the potential for grade
inflation which is inherent in any system that relies on internal assessment alone.
These proposals for relating school-based examinations to the National
Certificate appear to be skirting around two essential questions:
• how to provide consistent, rigorous assessment and moderation for
the National Certificate; and
• whether to formally link the external examinations and the unit
standards so that they fit within the same qualifications framework.
At the heart of the first question is whether standards can be so clear
and specific that internal assessment alone can be relied upon even when assessment is
undertaken by many different providers setting different assessment tasks, in different
contexts and under different rules. Clearly the answer is that it is not possible to set
such precise standards in many subject areas. The National Certificate should, therefore,
incorporate its own external examination requirements and not rely on artificial linkages
with the School Certificate and Bursary examinations. It is widely accepted elsewhere that assessment for award purposes should be
independent of teaching, and there is no good reason to ignore this well established
principle in the case of the National Certificate.
The second question is, essentially, whether one tightly specified
system, based on a common building block and set of levels, can incorporate all
qualifications. As discussed in Chapter 4, this is simply not possible without subjecting
the educational system to considerable distortion. The range of curricular materials,
their different levels and the purposes the many educational and training courses and
programmes are designed to serve are far too diverse. The qualifications framework,
including the National Certificate should be established with its own integrity to serve
its own purposes. Linkages between qualifications systems are desirable, but they should
not undermine the integrity of individual systems. This indicates a much looser framework
and more informal linkages [4.12].
Rigorously moderated external examinations enable the giving of grades
and provide the motivation for students to work hard. The combination of performance
criteria which set the minimum performance required for a pass and the ability for
multiple re-sits may motivate some to progress faster and to aim higher. But the overall
effect could, in fact, be the opposite. Again the piecemeal approach of short modules
(units), while motivating the less able or less ambitious, encourages a short time horizon
and reduces intellectual challenge. The choice may thus be between a system which suits
and motives some of the less able and the unambitious or a system which stretches and
challenges all, but leaves some by the wayside.
There is a real risk of lowering barriers to progression - or
'dumbing-down' as the Americans call it - in order to motivate and encourage. It may
indeed encourage some into further education and training who would not otherwise engage
in it. However, it may result in a general lowering of standards and undermine confidence
in the qualification. This appears to be happening in England. For example, the new
English GCSE technology paper, taken by 15-year-olds, was regarded by German education
experts as suitable for their 12- and 13-year-olds (Channel Four Commission on Education,
1991). Education jurisdictions which are concerned to maintain standards and generally to
uphold the integrity of their qualification systems will vigorously avoid such lowering of
standards.
Comparison of the English NCVQ system with European systems [5.3.1]
raised other concerns which also appear likely to apply to the NZQA National Certificate
as currently being developed. In brief, these are:
• the multiplicity of possible pathways with the danger of a
smorgasbord approach without coherence and not centred around core skills - contrasting
with European insistence on choice between complete programmes of study, including
compulsory components, at various levels;
• leaving general educational skills to be inferred - in contrast
to European inclusion of subjects like mathematics as separate subjects; and
• leaving industry and occupational bodies to determine content and
standards in their own short-term interests, in contrast with ensuring the inclusion of
general education in vocational programmes to protect the job mobility of young people.
5.10 Qualifications at F6 and F7 - The Academic Pathway
5.10.1 Bursary and Scholarship
It is proposed that from 1997 the Bursary and Scholarship examinations,
like the School Certificate, will continue on an optional basis. It was originally
proposed that the Bursary would not be part of the qualifications framework. However, some
formal linkage is now being considered [5.9.2]. Other linkages are envisaged through the
employment of common learning outcomes, and relating them to qualification framework
levels. It is also proposed that, over time, at both years four and five of secondary
schooling the majority of unit standards be common to the National Certificate and Bursary
subjects.
Bursary prescriptions are to be based on unit standards derived from
level eight of the national curriculum statements and set at level three of the
qualifications framework. These will need to be a more limited set of outcomes suitable
for assessment by a single examination, where internal assessment is not allowed for.
Scholarship outcomes are to be set at level four of the Qualifications Framework.
The NZQA does not intend that the objectives approach of its unit
standards should result in the breakdown and delivery of the curriculum in small 'units'.
However, the danger is that it might result in this form of delivery which would certainly
be unsuitable for Bursary level education in which understanding is sought and not just
competence in a number of small and discrete skill areas. Austin (1993) expresses this
concern: "The great art of teaching is to help the student develop a consistent
understanding of ideas and processes ... the NZQA's reduction of the subject to small
'modules' does not seem likely to help".
The problems that arose from the use of achievement-based assessment,
introduced in 1992 for some Sixth Form Certificate subjects in some schools, indicate the
difficulty of trying to specify clear objectives for bursary examinations. The NZQA also
introduced ABA for Bursary Physical Education and suggested that it might help schools
with internal assessment. Hanson (1993a) noted a number of difficulties with level
descriptors at the Bursary level:
• trying to separate criteria that should be regarded as
continuous;
• reducing assessment to a simple 'yes/no' decision in areas in
which such precision is inappropriate;
• being incomprehensible or at least open to a wide range of
interpretation; and
• being inappropriate for Bursary type examination.
The moderation process introduced into Bursary Physical Education
involves the ex ante moderation of school assessment programmes rather than the ex
post external moderation of marked scripts. Each school offering a bursary subject
submits an assessment programme to the NZQA for approval. Each programme must contain an
outline of all assessments for each module and their mark weightings and a detailed
description of the common assessment tasks for each module. The NZQA requires each school
to develop its own assessment programme "tailored to suit its own teaching
programme" (NZQA, 1992f).
The moderation process employed for Bursary Physical Education does not
appear to address the problem of vague performance criteria and the diverse
interpretations likely to be put on them by individual schools. These problems of
moderation in the 1992 Bursary Physical Education led one commentator to conclude that
"[d]ifferent schools had different standards of marking. ... If you went to a school
which marked harder than another then the chances were you got a lower mark. Students who
would probably have got Bursaries if they had sat a properly moderated subject did not get
them" (Barrett, 1993). However, it is understood that the NZQA does not intend to
extend ABA further into the Bursary examination.
A feature of Bursary is that inter-subject scaling has been retained.
This is deemed necessary because marks are aggregated for the award of 'A' and 'B'
Bursaries. However, it is curious that it is being retained for Bursary whereas it has
been abandoned for the School Certificate [5.6.4]. It may, of course, be the case that
inter-subject scaling will also be dropped in Bursary if and when the NZQA is sufficiently
confident that precise performance criteria can be set for each level to ensure
inter-subject comparability in terms of difficulty and that teachers will apply them
consistently in 'high stakes' assessment. It is extremely improbable, however, that such
confidence could ever be justified.
Putt et al. (1985) claim that the magnitude of inter-subject scaling in
Bursary subjects such as mathematics and physics has lead to serious and undesirable
distortions. The effect has been, they argue, that "a significant group of
matriculating pupils is being seriously misled about their readiness to undertake a
tertiary programme based on these subjects".
The increase in the proportion of the school population sitting Bursary
has led to the general lowering of average achievement levels across all or most subjects.
However, this has not been reflected in Bursary results because the same distribution of
grades has been maintained. Bursary grade distribution has not reflected what Sharp (1993)
refers to as the "increasing tail of students (who) cannot read or write nearly well
enough to undertake university studies; an increasing number lack the skills necessary to
undertake scientific work at university level". To halt or reverse this process of
grade inflation would require a more specific statement of what standards are expected or
an adjustment in the grade distribution or, preferably, both. One consequence of this
erosion in Bursary standards has been the recent raising of the university entry
requirement in terms of Bursary results [5.10.3].
Some of the problems discussed above may prove to be temporary depending
on the arrangements to be introduced in 1997. In general, the more the NZQA tries to
relate Bursary prescriptions with unit standard objectives the more serious these
difficulties will become.
5.10.2 The New Zealand Education and Scholarship Trust Scholarship Examination
In 1989 the University Entrance Scholarship examination was abolished.
This created the opportunity for private initiative in promoting a high level examination
to take its place. Independent scholarship examinations began in 1990. The task was taken
over in 1991 by the New Zealand Education and Scholarship Trust [NZEST].
The NZEST Scholarship examination has attracted an increasing number of
entries over its short life. In 1993 it attracted 4846 subject entries (3705 in 1992 and
2758 in 1991) from 1752 candidates (1329 in 1992 and 1121 in 1991) from 177 schools (142
in 1992 and 116 in 1992).
The NZEST exams are set by university personnel, with each paper being
moderated by two practising secondary school teachers. The papers are based on Bursary
prescriptions, and invariably all candidates take both sets of examinations.
As noted earlier [5.2], the government supports the concept of an
examination that is more challenging than Bursary for able students and is open to it
being administered by a private organisation. However, amendment of the Education Act 1989
would, apparently, be required before the NZEST Scholarship could be recognised as a
national examination.
School scholarship examinations would remain outside the qualifications
framework though it appears that the NZQA is to prescribe outcome requirements for
scholarship level examinations and set them at level 4 of its framework. Adopting the NZQA
philosophy of setting specific objectives could require a substantial reorientation of the
NZEST prescriptions and assessment processes and might prove unacceptable to the NZEST.
If the NZQA is to introduce its own scholarship examination at level 4,
there may be little room for the NZEST examination. Indeed, if the NZQA is to require all
private examination agencies to adhere to its philosophy for national recognition then
there may be in practice be few or no alternatives to its own examinations. This would
suppress innovation to meet varying requirements. The outcome will depend on the
importance of national recognition and, for higher level qualifications, on whether they
meet the NZQA's requirements for university entrance.
5.10.3 University Entrance
The entrance requirement for universities for students under 20 is
determined by the NZQA under s.257 of the Education Act. In practice the NZQA consults
with the universities before arriving at a determination. The NZQA has raised the standard
from a minimum of 4 Ds in prescribed university Bursary/Entrance Scholarship subjects to
3Cs effective from 1994. One reason was the need to offset the erosion of Bursary
standards consequent on failure to adjust the distribution of Bursary marks as the
candidate population changed [5.10.1].
Given the high level of taxpayer subsidy of university education, it is
reasonable for the government to set a minimum entrance requirement at a level of
secondary education that indicates likely success at degree level work. It should be
noted, however, that meeting the NZQA's minimum entry requirement does not guarantee a
place at university. It is also the case that universities set their own higher
requirements for the allocation of places in high demand courses such as medicine.
When the National Certificate is introduced, the NZQA will presumably
set entrance requirements in terms of its unit standards as well as Bursary/Scholarship
subjects. This would pose considerable difficulties for tertiary providers. As Elley
(1993b) notes, they "are unlikely to accept an untried system of assessment against
unit standards as a guide for selection into competitive and limited entry courses. The
proposed assessment scales (either pass/fail or five grades, 1 to 5) will be much too
coarse to allow for the fine distinctions needed, and there will be no adequate
reassurance that a pass in one school or wananga matches a pass in another".
The university entrance requirement should clearly be set not only in
terms of Bursary, but also in terms of other examinations that are of equivalent or higher
standard. This would certainly include the NZEST scholarship and the International
Baccalaureate. At present students taking these non-NZQA examinations also take Bursary
which would seem to be an unnecessary additional requirement for some students. If
university entrance were to be defined to include these other examinations, able students
could, for example, more readily take Bursary in F6 and a scholarship examination in F7.
The most able might bypass the Bursary altogether.
5.11 Conclusions
On present proposals all students in the senior secondary school will
eventually seek to complete unit standards towards the National Certificate. The School
Certificate and Bursary/Scholarship will be optional examinations: their relationship to
the framework is at present unclear. All senior school programmes will be based on unit
standards. Examination prescriptions will be based on unit standards derived from the
National Curriculum statements.
As already discussed, there are a number of problems with present and
future proposals. In summary these are:
• The intended place of the optional examinations and their
relationship, if any, to the qualifications framework is unclear.
• Students who do not take the optional examinations will leave
school with a collection of unit standards rather than with a completed qualification.
While this may encourage some students to undertake post-school education and training, it
may not provide the same incentive and sense of achievement. Students like to have
something 'solid' to aim for and complete while still at school.
• There are problems with the removal of inter-marker and
inter-year scaling in the School Certificate which are likely to reduce its credibility as
a summative statement and its usefulness for formative purposes.
• Grade inflation has occurred in the Bursary examination because
grade distribution has not been adjusted in line with changes in the candidate population.
Inter-subject scaling may have hidden declining standards in some subjects. This is
undesirable for several reasons - inter-year comparisons become very difficult, students
receive incorrect signals and universities receive students who are not ready for
undergraduate level courses. These problems have not been addressed.
• There is a need for a higher level challenge for able students
which would exist even had Bursary standards not declined but is certainly all the greater
because of that decline. It is not clear whether an NZQA scholarship examination will be
introduced and/or whether it is intended to formally recognise the NZEST scholarship as a
national examination (which may require legislative amendment).
• The National Certificate is intended to provide a variety of
pathways in the senior school to cater for the increased range of student ability and
interest. But there are not, in fact, any clear pathways as yet, though the NZQA may
intend to develop them. Without clear programmes within clearly defined pathways, students
may leave school with a motley collection of unit standards which employers and
post-school institutions may have great difficulty in evaluating. In addition, there are,
as discussed in Chapter 4, considerable doubts as to the likely reliability and
credibility of credits on the qualifications framework.
• As discussed in Chapter 6, there is potential for tension between
the curriculum and the qualifications frameworks in the senior secondary school which are
exacerbated by the division of responsibility between two government agencies.
A major weakness in the National Certificate (and with the
qualifications framework more generally) is the reliance on standards-based, internal
assessment for high stakes 'exit' certification. Dispensing with externally set and
verified examinations along with the recognition that examination judgments always have to
be, to some extent, normative is an astonishing act of faith in an untried system. For
some areas of education and training, assessment against standards works well. But for
many other areas, including most general academic education, it does not. Where there are
relatively few dimensions and criteria are simple, outcomes can be clearly specified in
advance and a standards-based assessment approach may be suitable. Where there are
multiple and complex criteria, outcomes cannot be readily described in simple competency
terms and this approach is not suitable. In such areas students have to be tested on how
well they have mastered complex knowledge and skills and have understood concepts and
ideas. Such judgments should be based on the professional experience of markers and
moderated for consistency.
Other difficulties, which have been raised by Holborow (1993) and Hall
(1994) with unit standards in relation to degree courses [4.7.3], seem likely also to
apply to academic work in the senior secondary school. These arise from the registration
of objectives, and hence their separation from curriculum content, and the attachment of
performance criteria to objectives rather than to assessment tasks.
Certainly greater explicitness of aims and performance criteria are
highly desirable and there may well be scope for this in academic subjects. But the desire
for explicitness must not be allowed to lead education into preconceived and unsuitable
moulds. Assessment must serve education - not vice versa.
The establishment of the National Certificate is a commendable effort at
meeting the pathway requirements for the majority of students for whom the academic track
is not suitable. This has been a major shortcoming of secondary school education and a
source of inequity. However, coherent programmes need to be specified in terms of
combinations of units centred around core subjects such as English, mathematics and
science. Further, it is most doubtful whether the specification of unit standards in
general subjects such as English and mathematics in outcome terms will encourage high
quality teaching and learning in these core areas.
The quality aspects of the National Certificate need reconsideration.
Standards-based assessment is more likely to be suitable for vocational and technical
education but even here it has its limitations. Particularly at higher levels there are
considerable problems of specifying clear outcomes and related criteria, assigning levels,
and assessing against standards. Pressing such areas as well as general academic subjects
into a standards-based assessment approach in the interests of achieving a comprehensive
framework - and in the mistaken belief that academic/vocational distinctions are illusory
- is likely to result in a reductionist and atomistic approach to learning and
considerable educational loss.
What is clearly required in the senior secondary school is a number of
coherent programmes within a few broad pathways to cater for the increasingly diverse
student population. It is suggested that pathway development should be guided by the
following principles:
• In the interests of simplicity there should only be a limited
number of pathway types. Three broad categories - academic, technical and vocational -
should suffice. There would be a number of options within each pathway each of which
should constitute a comprehensive programme.
• To maximise flexibility and to reduce the costs of poor
decisions:
- choice of programme and pathway should be left as long as possible
consistent with retaining student interest;
- pathways should, as far as possible, have a common core which would
facilitate movement between them; and
- the common core should centre on general subjects including
mathematics and English.
• Some socially constructed notion of a hierarchy of pathways is
probably inevitable. To reduce unhelpful distinctions it will be important that all
pathways lead to qualifications of real value in the labour market and in post-school
institutions. This has consequences for quality aspects of qualifications design,
including assessment procedures and the initial level of technical and vocational
certification. A common core of general education will also help to reduce unhelpful
distinctions.
• Assessment for 'exit' certification must be of high quality and
rigorous [2.9].
A crucial issue is the point at which students should have to choose
between pathways. At present F5 is the stage at which students will be expected to make a
choice between National Certificate unit standards and whether or not to sit the optional
School Certificate. This seems to be reasonable point at which to start making pathway
decisions, though it is later than in some countries such as Holland or even England where
it seems increasingly likely that serious curricular differentiation will begin at age 14.
However, choices should, as recommended in chapter 3 [3.10], only be open to those who are
educationally ready to make them.
At F5, which will be at age 15 for most students, students should be
offered a range of options each of which would be a self contained course set around a
core. The choice of pathway would be made by students and their parents in consultation
with their teachers. The task is to ensure that there are options that challenge all
students and especially those whose interests and abilities have not been well met by the
previous academic route to Bursary.
The principles suggested above might be best met by the following
arrangements in F5:
• All students would be presented with a core of English,
mathematics, science, Maori or a classical or modern language, the social sciences plus
careers guidance and other elements of a general education. The core would take at least
50 per cent of student time.
• The academic pathway would be based on School Certificate
prescriptions with options recognising the broad orientation of students such as science
or arts. It would be a good introduction to Bursary/Scholarship.
• A technical pathway would also be based on School Certificate
prescriptions with options that seek to develop talents for construction and design. It
would include practical courses such as technical drawing. It would be a good introduction
to Bursary/Scholarship.
• The United Kingdom's 'O' level and School Certificate syllabuses
could be considered for the technical and academic pathways if School Certificate does not
prove to be satisfactory. Their use would, however, involve logistical problems, and a
sound New Zealand School Certificate at F5 is clearly to be preferred.
• A vocational pathway which would be similar to the technical one
but would involve greater specialisation in the type of work the students might move into.
The technical and vocational pathways are ones that need particular
attention taking account of the many good and innovative senior secondary programmes
developed in recent years. Sound development of the vocational pathway will be
particularly important if the needs of those at the lower end of the attainment range are
to be met. Unfortunately, development of these pathways (especially the vocational one)
seems likely to be hindered by current proposals for the technology curriculum which
appear to follow the trend to intellectualisation which has been the subject of serious
criticism in Britain [2.4.6].
Assessment in F5 for the technical and academic streams would be the
School Certificate examinations which should incorporate inter-marker and year-to-year
scaling. It may be necessary to develop new papers especially in technical subjects. It is
clearly also necessary to adjust grade distributions as the candidate population changes.
All assessments should be independent and external.
Assessment for the vocational stream would involve written as well as
practical examinations. Vocational stream students would work towards units of the
National Certificate that met rigorous quality standards as recommended in Chapter 4
[4.13], including the use of externally set and verified written and practical assessment
tasks.
In F6 and F7 students would continue within one of the three pathways.
The transition between F5 and F6 would be a good point to reconsider the choice of
pathway, though it should be possible to do this at other times as well. The technical and
academic pathways would lead to Bursary examinations. New papers in technical subjects may
be also needed at the Bursary and Scholarship levels. Grade deflation has clearly been a
problem in Bursary and, as with the School Certificate, greater attention needs to be
given to specifying content and the standards expected, and to grade distribution.
Inter-subject scaling appears to have exacerbated grade deflation in some Bursary
subjects, and needs to be considered with a view to its abolition.
The university entrance requirement should be set in terms of the
Bursary examination and other awards of similar or higher standard.
It is particularly important that the vocational pathway leads to
qualifications of real worth. Consultation with employers will be important in ensuring
that school-based programmes and qualifications are understood and are valued in the
labour market. Raising the attractiveness of school based qualifications in terms of
labour market options is a better way of keeping young people in school than compelling
them by raising the school leaving age. Consideration should be given to offering some
form of recognised certificate, rather than simply a collection of credits, which young
people can complete while still at school. Any such certificate should be dependent on
satisfactory completion of a comprehensive programme including both general education and
specialist subjects.
It will be important that vocational qualifications at all levels should
require passes in written examinations. As the Channel Four Commission on Education (1991)
point out, "(t)his is important in itself, as part of the competence to be expected
of a qualified craftsman or technician, and is also important in ensuring that young
people do not close off access to higher education". Again this points to the need to
redesign assessment arrangements for credits on the qualifications framework [4.13].
Quality technical and vocational education is likely to cost more than
academic education. If access to quality schooling in these pathways is to be improved
then a reallocation of resources and some adjustment to funding formulae may be required.
It should also be possible for schools to develop specialities in the senior school,
though this may only be practical in larger centres. Schools that cater mostly for the
needs of technically or vocationally inclined students would need to be funded on a
different basis to those catering mostly for students on the academic pathway.
Schools seeking to develop technical and vocational courses may well
encounter difficulties in finding suitably qualified teachers. In the short term
consideration may need to be given to introducing measures to attract people from industry
and commerce with the requisite skills.
5.12 Recommendations
19 Pupils in F5 should embark on one of three inter-connecting pathways
within each of which there would be several options constructed as complete programmes of
study:
- The academic pathway would be based on a core of English, maths,
science and Maori or a foreign or classical language, social sciences plus other options.
It would be rigorous and a good introduction to School Certificate and
Bursary/Scholarship.
- The technical pathway would aim to develop talent for design and
construction. It would include the same core as for the academic pathway but would include
a number of technical options including practical work. It would be a good introduction to
School Certificate and Bursary/Scholarship.
- The vocational pathway would include the same core subjects as for the
academic and technical pathways but with a vocational orientation. It would be geared
towards work situations the students might eventually enter. It could be combined with
on-the-job training under various kinds of school/business link programmes. Employers who
agreed to undertake prescribed levels of training should be paid for the work involved.
Students would work towards credits on the NZQA qualifications framework revised as
recommended in Chapter 4.
20 Choice of pathway would be made by the student in consultation with
teachers and parents. There should be opportunities to switch pathway, though switching
might mean that it would take longer to achieve a given certificate. Progress within a
pathway would depend on meeting minimum standards, and failure to do so would require a
successful re-sit or repeating a period of study.
21 Inter-marker and inter-year scaling should be reintroduced into the
School Certificate. Assessment should be by independent external examination. It would not
be part of the NZQA qualifications framework.
22 Schools should consider alternatives to the NZQA's School Certificate
if present problems are not resolved satisfactorily. Alternatives could include the School
Certificate and the 'O' level examinations provided by examination boards in the United
Kingdom for overseas students.
23 In F6 and F7 students would continue within one of the three
pathways. Options within the pathways should cater for the full range of interest and
ability. They would build on some of the best courses already developed for the Sixth Form
Certificate. They would cater for both the all-rounder who would take a range of subjects
and those with particular aptitudes who would want to pursue a few subjects in depth.
- Students in the academic and technical streams would normally take
Bursary. New technical subjects may need to be developed and existing ones upgraded.
Alternatives that meet or exceed Bursary requirements should also be nationally
recognised. The ablest students would take quality Scholarship examinations such as those
administered by the New Zealand Education and Scholarship Trust. Scholarship examinations
should also recognise excellence in technical subjects. Bursary and Scholarship assessment
would be by external examination. These examinations would not be part of the NZQA
qualifications framework.
- Vocational stream students would follow a similar path to the
technical stream students but at a less advanced level and with greater orientation to the
kinds of work to which the students might proceed. There could be a wide range of possible
programmes. However, all should constitute a complete programme centred around a core of
essential subjects including English and mathematics which would be separately prescribed
and assessed. There would be rigorous external testing of standards attained, including
tests of practical work. Testing would include written as well as practical examinations,
and lead to credits on the NZQA qualifications framework revised as recommended in Chapter
4. Students who satisfactorily complete a comprehensive programme would be awarded a
school leaving certificate.
24 National minimum entry requirements for universities should be set in
terms of Bursary and other examinations of similar or higher standards.
25 Funding formulae for schools should recognise that technical and
vocational education tends to be more expensive than academic education.
26 Secondary schools should be allowed to concentrate on specialist
courses including those for the education of technically or vocationally inclined students
to high levels of excellence. This would be facilitated by adjustment to funding formulae
as recommended above.
27 Consideration should be given to introducing special arrangements to
facilitate the recruitment of suitably experienced and skilled people, if necessary from
industry and commerce, to provide technical and vocational courses.
6.0 INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS
6.1 Introduction
The introduction of the qualifications framework and changes to school
examinations have been accompanied by changes to the central educational institutions.
These include the establishment of a new Crown Entity, the NZQA, and the transfer of some
responsibilities to it from the Ministry of Education as the main successor to the
Department of Education.
6.2 Present Arrangements
The institutional arrangements, including legislative provisions, are
that:
• the Ministry of Education is responsible for developing the
school curriculum, and for school assessment procedures up to and including F4;
• the NZQA is a Crown Entity which has statutory responsibilities
under the Education Act 1989 for, inter alia:
- overseeing the setting of standards for school and post-school
qualifications;
- developing a framework for national qualifications in secondary
schools and post-school education and training which is flexible and in which all
qualifications have a purpose and relationship;
- establishing policies and criteria for the approval of courses and the
accreditation of providers;
- establishing and maintaining a common educational standard for
university entrance for those under 20; and
- setting and conducting such examinations and assessments as it
considers necessary for the performance of its functions subject, in the case of secondary
schools, to the written approval of the minister.
The Act gives the NZQA both policy and implementation functions. Among
its policy functions are:
• overseeing the setting of standards for qualifications in
secondary schools and post-school education and training, which involves policy decisions
about what the standards should be;
• monitoring, reviewing, and advising the minister on standards for
qualifications in secondary schools and in post-school education and training;
• developing a qualifications framework which involves some very
important policy issues about its design;
• establishing policies and criteria for the approval of courses
and for the accreditation of institutions to provide those courses;
• determining the mechanisms that will guarantee that assessment
procedures are fair, equitable, consistent, and in keeping with the required standards.
These are very considerable policy functions which directly influence
the design of qualifications, their relationships and standards, the design of courses
that lead to national qualifications and the providers that can offer the courses. In
addition the NZQA has considerable implementation functions, including:
• course approvals;
• setting and conducting examinations;
• provider registration and accreditation; and
• granting or withholding consent to the use of certain terms such
as 'university' and 'degree'.
6.3 Institutional Design Issues
There are four main policy issues concerning the structure and functions
of the NZQA. First, its policy functions are inconsistent with its constitutional form as
a Crown Entity. Crown Entities are headed by a board and are suitable agencies for
carrying out responsibilities within clearly established government policy guidelines.
Policy development and advice are normally matters for departments of
state headed by a chief executive accountable to his or her minister. By contrast, the
NZQA has considerable policy decision making functions for which it is not accountable to
the minister. As the Ministry of Education (1993) has pointed out, "in practice, the
Minister has no formal policy making responsibility for many elements of the new
qualifications system". The NZQA also has policy advisory functions, but it is
cumbersome to hold a board accountable for policy advice, and this problem can be
exacerbated where the board is representative of groups with differing interests.
The second problem is that the NZQA has both policy functions and
operational functions. The trend in recent years has been to separate policy and
operational functions where practical, so that policy concerns are not unduly affected by
operational considerations.
In short, the NZQA is a mixture of a department and a Crown Entity in
terms of functions whereas it is a Crown Entity in terms of constitutional form. There
appears to be no good reason why normal conventions have been bypassed in its case.
Thirdly, the NZQA is both an examination and assessment agency in its
own right and is responsible for the setting of standards for school and post-school
qualifications. This poses the potential for conflict between its own interests as an
examination agency and those of other examination agencies.
Fourthly, there is potential for conflict and confusion to arise from
the division of responsibility for the school curriculum (the Ministry) and for
assessment. Assessment up to F4 is the responsibility of the Ministry yet assessment for
summative purposes (School Certificate, Bursary/Scholarship and the National Certificate
unit standards) is the responsibility of the NZQA. This has led to two different sets of
overlapping levels - those of the curriculum and qualifications frameworks.
Problems may also arise from a conflict of philosophies. It would seem
possible, for example, that the curriculum and qualifications frameworks may diverge in
several respects:
• an approach which leaves general education to be largely inferred
from outcomes (qualifications framework) in contrast to a separate subject approach
(curriculum framework);
• an approach that allows the immediate needs of the labour market
to be influential (qualifications framework) and one that allows a longer view of the
learner's interests and of the importance of national culture (curriculum framework); and
• an approach to essential skills in the national curriculum as
"themes that can be seen to run through the curriculum content" (Wagner and
Sass, 1992, p 25-6) and an approach that regards them as requisite standards for
competency in the qualification framework unit standards.
Problems could arise from such differences where the two frameworks
coincide as in the senior secondary school or where features appropriate to one are
inappropriately applied to the other. For example,
[U]sing the essential skills (of the curriculum framework) will
impose an academic burden on the (qualifications) framework that it was never designed to
carry. It is inimical to the development of a competency based system to try to relate
levels in its framework to levels of academic achievement. The introduction of varying
levels of 'achievement' from the essential skills curriculum is not consistent with the
competency based approach that the learning units espouse (Wagner and Sass, 1992, pp
25-26).
Problems arising from different philosophies and approaches often arise
between departments of state. If they cannot be resolved at an inter-departmental level,
or if they raise new issues of significance, they are referred to ministers for decision.
Differences between the Ministry and the NZQA on curriculum and qualification matters can
also be referred to the minister for decision. However, unlike the Ministry, the NZQA has
a legislative mandate for policy decisions in some areas. It has no legislative
requirement to consult the Ministry on matters falling within that mandate, though in
practice it may well decide to do so where interests are seen to overlap.
These problems raise another structural issue. There is no one
department of state charged with maintaining an overview of policy on education and
training. This would normally be the Ministry which was established with a specific policy
focus. However, decision making powers over some significant education policy issues have
been given to another agency, and thus the ability of the Ministry to maintain an
overview, to coordinate the work of the various educational agencies and to advise the
minister accordingly has been significantly reduced. Thus the Ministry cannot be held
accountable for the coordination of policy advice across the whole education and training
sector.
6.4 Conclusions
The above discussion suggests the need to:
• align the legislative functions of the NZQA with its status as a
Crown Entity by removing its policy functions;
• transfer the NZQA's school examination setting and conducting
functions to the Ministry which, to reduce its direct operational functions, might
contract this work to another body;
• require the Ministry to maintain an overall policy advisory role
covering all aspects of school curriculum and assessment and certification at all levels.
In earlier chapters it has been argued that the scope of the
qualifications framework should be much more modest in view of the design faults and the
considerable risks inherent in the current proposals. Specifically it was recommended
[4.13] that the qualifications framework should be limited initially to technical and
vocational qualifications at non-advanced levels. This is an area in which equity and
educational concerns are greatest. It is also an area in which improvements have to be
effected if New Zealand is to secure the supply of suitably trained personnel which it
needs in order to compete successfully in the global and increasingly technological
economy.
It was also urged [4.12] that forcing all qualifications into one
comprehensive system was undesirable for educational reasons, and that the need for
several qualifications systems (e.g. school, vocational, university) should be accepted.
However, the various qualifications systems need to communicate at their interface in
respect of cross-crediting. The NZQA could be well placed to facilitate this process,
though it would be directly responsible for operating only one of several systems.
The NZQA should seek also to provide information to students, employers
and tertiary institutions about the qualities assessed and the level of achievement
reached in vocational certificates other than those which conform to its own requirements.
It would thus become more of an information and validation authority as well as operating
its own qualifications system.
In discussing the qualifications framework (Chapter 4), it was noted
that the NZQA has been influenced by United Kingdom models and that there was much to be
learnt from continental European models which have a higher reputation for quality
vocational training. It may be that models in other countries, including the Asia Pacific
region which is rapidly developing its educational infrastructure, also have lessons to
offer.
6.5 Recommendations
28 The NZQA's responsibilities should centre around:
- the development of a qualifications framework for technical and
vocational education and training at non-advanced levels within ministerially approved
policy guidelines;
- facilitating communication between different qualifications systems so
as to encourage cross-crediting arrangements; and
- the provision of advice about qualities assessed and achievement
levels reached in vocational qualifications that are not within its own framework.
29 The NZQA, in developing its own framework, should have regard to
those applying in other countries including continental Europe.
30 The responsibilities of the Ministry of Education should include:
- the development of academic, technical and vocational pathways, and
coherent programmes within them, in the senior secondary school; and
- the certification of achievement at school (as well as school
curriculum and assessment) including the setting and assessing of the School Certificate,
Bursary and Scholarship (which might be best administered by an outside agency under
contract to the Ministry).
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