Estimates Debate — Vote Education Review Office

I hope the Minister will condescend to answer some questions I have about the Education Review Office and the role it fills in supervising the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA). Members will remember that some months ago there was publicity around Cambridge High School, and the Government moved very quickly to tell the public that it was sending the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Education Review Office into that school to investigate allegations that pupils were essentially being given credits under the NCEA—credits for which other New Zealand students have to work very hard.

I predicted at the time that the New Zealand Qualifications Authority and the Education Review Office would not find anything wrong, because the NCEA system is something to which those offices are ideologically committed—quite irrationally committed, because they will not contemplate any criticism. They were essentially going in, therefore, to examine their own role. They were going in as auditors when they had already been there. The New Zealand Qualifications Authority had certified the standards and the Education Review Office had been in the school, but the Minister was sending them back—the burglars were going back to see whether they had committed a crime. I think that is a shame for the students of Cambridge High School and for the credibility of the NCEA, a qualification that I had hoped would succeed.

I ask these questions because I have been given material in the last few days that compounds my concerns about exactly the issues that have been raised about Cambridge High School. I want to give the Minister the benefit of this description of activity related to Student A at an unnamed high school. He received his work book for a particular unit standard on 31 February 2004. That was the date on it. In case anyone is unclear, there are not 31 days in February; there were only 29 this year. The booklet was completed and three credits were awarded on 2 March. Let us put aside the 31 February date; let us say that the student received the book on Friday 27 February. By 2 March, which I think was Tuesday, the student had been awarded three credits, and an entire unit standard.

💬 Simon Power: Bright boy.

Bright boy. The student thinks that he may have had a 1-hour lesson on 27 February, the day he received the book, and maybe a 1-hour lesson on 1 March. I have to check whether those are days of the week on which the school could have been open, because it looks to me that they could have been on a weekend. So this looks to be a student in one of our schools—and I have the booklet—who received three credits at NCEA level one in 3 days, and who maybe had had some lessons. I will set out to verify that.

That booklet is one of a collection of booklets that include other rather startling items of information, like unit standards that were sat in 2003—at least, unit standards whose work was carried out by the pupil in 2003—and that were all signed off on the same day as the 2004 ones, some 12 months after the student had allegedly sat the standards. Now, those standards are not insignificant. A fifth-former or sixth-former—a year 11 or 12 student—can tell us that for some three-credit standards, weeks of work are involved in order to get them. But it happens that there are some three-credit standards one can get in 3 days with about an hour’s lesson. There is other material in those booklets whereby credits have been awarded and no teacher has signed the book. There are some booklets whereby students appear to have signed off each other’s work, because if we go down the roll, we find that the signature is not actually the name of a teacher but is the name of another student on the roll.

💬 Simon Power: Peer review.

Peer review; student-driven learning. I want the Minister to tell us: firstly, why we should have any faith in the Education Review Office’s examination of Cambridge High School; and secondly, is there anyone credible to whom I can give this information so that we can clean up the nasty tail end of the NCEA.

On the second issue, I simply invite the member to make that information available to the Minister of Education, because he would be very interested in the kinds of facts that the member is exploring. I can tell from Mr English’s speech that he wants to verify some of the things that are in the booklets himself. Obviously, he should do that and then pass on the information to the Minister’s office.

In relation to the Education Review Office review of Cambridge High School, and whether the Education Review Office can be relied upon, I draw the member’s attention to the notes that have come from the Education and Science Committee, where the issue was discussed in relation to Education Review Office reviews and where questions were definitely raised. Issues were also raised about the Education Review Office being connected to other agencies so that it can have better access to data. The committee arrived at the conclusion that the new agreements that are being made around the Education Review Office, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority, and so on, give more faith that the Education Review Office reviews can be relied on in relation to Cambridge High School. So, yes, the issue is a live one, and it has been discussed and dealt with in the notes from the Education and Science Committee.

Once again, on the second issue, the member should verify the data, as he wants to do, and then I think the place that the information should go to is the Minister’s office.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Sport and Recreation agreed to.

Vote State Services agreed to.

Vote Climate Change and Energy Efficiency agreed to.

Vote Crown Research Institutes agreed to.

Vote Energy