Up the down escalator: The introduction of achievement standards in the National Certificate of Educational Achievement

Abstract

Throughout most of New Zealand's educational history, students have been required to sit written and sometimes oral examinations either as a record of achievement at the end of schooling, as a passport to further free schooling, for the information of potential employers, or as means of acquiring a place in higher education. During the last 122 years New Zealand school children have seen a variety of examinations come and go including examinations carried out during an inspector's visit to a primary school; oral and written post-primary school examinations set by the local university professor; written national examinations originally intended for entry into the civil service: national Matriculation and School Certificate examinations and, more recently University Bursary examinations. The history of these examinations and assessment procedures shows that a new qualification gains acceptance only if it has a certain rarity value. Once that qualification is attainable by most students, there are demands for a new qualification of a higher standard. Thus the sequence of school qualifications is displaced as new qualifications are introduced at a higher level than previously. The proposed introduction of Achievement Standards at levels 1, 2 and 3 of the Qualifications' Framework and the subsequent protestations by a number of secondary school principals that they will look elsewhere for a challenge for their students will, it is argued, result in a further dumbing down of existing qualifications.