Mike's Minute: My thoughts on the NCEA changes

Several interesting bits out of the NCEA changes for me. 

Firstly, the "New Zealand Certificate of Education” actually sounds like something, doesn’t it? The same way an “A” tells you something. 

The New Zealand Certificate or Advanced Certificate of Education is a “thing” you can get your head around, as in do you have one, or do you not? 

NCEA is an acronym. 

Under the changes you need to pass things. How wonderfully old-fashioned. 

If you don’t pass you don’t advance, therefore when you do pass it actually counts. It means something and you have achieved something. 

Having watched NCEA in action with five kids, it has been shocking. Virtually anyone could get it and that was, and is, never a good thing. 

Under the new regime you take five subjects, and you need to pass four. There's nothing too complicated about that. 

The compulsion around maths and language I am, in a way, sad about. 

Choice is good and freedom is good, if you know what you are doing. If you're aiming somewhere specific a tailored approach is vastly more appealing. 

But in a mass system you are vulnerable to chancers and the weakest links, and they were always going to take the joke subjects, the easy gets. And as such, wreck any reputation you might have hoped for around your qualification. 

The vocational aspect is years overdue. Gateway and versions like it sort of touched on the trades and specific careers or jobs. But this fascination, if not obsession, we seemed to have had with university has been ruinous for too many. 

Being a tradie is actually to be admired. It is not second place. The snobbishness around a university degree has got so absurd, you’ve ended up with any number of bewildered teenagers chasing arts degrees and Bachelors of Communication for no discernible reason other than that’s what they thought they should do. 

I'm dreadfully sad though for the thousands of kids who have been messed around with NCEA. What's its value? What weight does a generation of kids place on a thing that’s been binned? 

For some they got locked down in Covid and given a crap qualification, thanks for coming. 

But onwards and upwards. It's a little bit back to the future. 

But along with the mad open classrooms, isn't it fascinating how forward the old days appear now to be? 

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