One of the country's best-known schools, Auckland Grammar, is so unhappy with plans to change the NCEA it is dumping the first level of the qualification and offering its own exams.
Auckland Grammar Photo: Wikicommons
Auckland Grammar principal Tim O'Connor said the exams would be introduced in 2020 and would replace both NCEA level one and the English International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) currently offered at the school in fifth form or Year 11.
"We'll set up our own examination at form five and it will be more rigourous than the current NCEA level one, and it will be more rigourous than IGCSE," he said.
"We can better prepare boys in form three and form four and then put in place a rigourous examination system in form five that will prepare them to do well in NCEA level two and level three," Mr O'Connor said.
He said the school had been developing the exams because it was clear that the review of the NCEA would abolish or water down level one of the qualification.
The first steps in that process, proposals from a ministerial advisory group, suggested keeping level one, but abolishing external exams.
Mr O'Connor, said Year 11 students needed exams, so they were ready for exams later in their school studies.
He said the exams would be a preparatory programme, not a rival qualification, which it was calling Pre-Q, and other schools were interested in the plan.
"If the NCEA proposal comes through it will be 2021 for level one. We should have had a year of our programme in place by that point in time and if schools expressed interest to us in what we're doing, then absolutely we'd share."
Mr O'Connor said his school was not trying to undermine the NCEA, which was an appropriate qualification for some students.
About 40 percent of boys at Auckland Grammar studied for NCEA qualifications, with the remainder doing the English AS and A levels offered through the Cambridge exams.
A ministerial advisory group has suggested keeping level one NCEA, but abolishing external exams. Photo: Supplied
St Peter's College principal James Bentley said his school had been discussing the Year 11 exam with Auckland Grammar.
"The idea of a separate exam certainly has merit. With these recent changes to level one, which have been forecast but have gone a lot further than what we anticipated, we need to introduce some form of testing or an exam that we can offer to our students and certainly we'll be working with Auckland Grammar to explore this option."
Mr Bentley said half the boys at his schools sat AS and A levels but the recently proposed changes to NCEA were likely to push even more students, and schools, toward the qualification.
"From looking at the proposals at the moment and from talking to parents at my school and in our community I can see absolutely there's going to be a major change in boys moving across to Cambridge."
Secondary Principals' Association president Mike Williams said it was premature to talk about changes to the NCEA because the advisory group's suggestions were not formal proposals and were up for debate.
Mr Williams said Auckland Grammar's plan for in-school exams for Year 11 was little different from the exams schools already ran as practice exams or as a means of assessment.
"It's no real change. I'm sure they were already writing their own internal exams several times through the year," he said.
Mr Williams said a strong emphasis on exams was not the best preparation for further study.
"It's probably not going to prepare the students particularly well for moving on - there was that research out of Auckland University a few years back that the best indicator of success at university was the NCEA," he said.
"The overseas exam systems that are mainly used in third world countries haven't proven to be particularly good indicators of success and most of the world has moved on from those."
