Journalist claims NCEA ‘fudging’ as corrupt
A prominent journalist told TV One’s Breakfast last week, her research shows the NCEA system is “corrupt” and “a dishonesty”.
Deborah Coddington’s article in North and South magazine claims thousands of students could have been given inaccurate grades in their secondary school exams, as education officials allegedly “fudged” records to improve the credibility of NCEA testing.
The claim is backed by a senior teacher, who claims to reveal the extent officials were prepared to go to in order to make it look like the new system is working.
While there has always been a disagreement between moderators and teachers about the grades awarded, Coddington said this applies to around 25 per cent of the papers marked. Education Minister Anne Tolley, however, wanted this figure reduced.
The NCEA relies on internal assessment of work made by individual teachers, and a sample of their marking is sent to the NZ Qualifications Authority (NZQA) for moderation.
“Minister Tolley was not happy with this so she asked NZQA to fix this and get it down to at least 10 per cent or five per cent,” Coddington said.
“And human nature being what it is, with say the subject of English, it’s now split up into a myriad of topics, of credits. It’s been impossible for the moderators and the teachers to get this down.”
The MoE held seminars to reach more of a consensus between teachers and moderators and in order to correct the problem.
It was at one of these seminars where the controversy surfaced, Coddington said.
“This teacher went along to a workshop and he was told by a moderator that ‘we can’t get this agreement rate down’ so we are just going to have to ‘fudge the figures’ and he used that term several times. ‘We’ll just fudge the figures for the minister’ so it looks like it comes down to 10 per cent.
“And this is what’s come out in their annual report - that it’s down to 10 per cent but it’s meaningless,” Coddington said.
Another teacher Coddington had spoken to backed up the story. She said there are now “tens of thousands” of students with inaccurate grades for their school work, because officials were artificially altering the grades.
“It’s lifting everyone up, it’s also disadvantaging them because they have an incorrect record of learning.
“It means when they go to an employer or a tertiary institution, they might not be as good as they say they are, or they might be better than they say they are,” Coddington said.
The MoE has denied the allegation.
* This article has been taken from TVNZ's website
