Auckland schools boast top NCEA scores – have we been too generous?

Test scores at some Auckland schools have risen, raising questions about whether the bonus credits awarded due to the Covid-19 shutdowns were too generous.

Mt Albert High School Principal Patrick Drumm said the passing rates on all three levels of the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) were “the best we’ve ever had.”

Auckland Secondary School Principals Association President Steve Hargreaves said that roughly one-tenth of students who achieved NCEA levels 2 and 3 at his school, Macleans College, would not have passed the “recognition credits of learning “that were granted to compensate the lost time the confinements.

“I looked at some students’ learning recognition credits. They got 12 when they only needed three [to pass], that sort of thing, so in the end we possibly went wrong on the side of being a little generous, “he said.

But lower decile schools, which had more students struggling to learn during closures without internet and with family financial problems, said they were grateful for the extra credits that kept results “about the same as last year.”

National Vice President of the Secondary Principals Association Vaughan Couillault said his results at Papatoetoe High School were “in a similar place to last year at level 1 and in slightly better position for levels 2 and 3.”

“That means we have done well in terms of adjusting for the lockdown,” he said.

The country’s 140,000 NCEA students were able to access their results just before 8 am today.

Hanah Tayeb, a Year 13 student at Western Springs College last year who feared she would not get NCEA level 3 because she did not have internet access in the running of the bulls, ended up passing all of her exams and achieving level 3 with Merit.

“I fully thought I was going to fail, but I got the endorsement of Merit. It is not far from my initial goal of endorsement from Excellence,” he said.

“I am really satisfied with the way it turned out because last year was very, very difficult for me. Not only did I not have wi-fi, but I also lost two members of my family.”

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) has not yet collected national statistics or official pass rates for each school, so the principals’ comments so far are based only on their own preliminary analysis of their student results.

Results include up to 16 credits of learning recognition at Level 1 and up to 12 at Levels 2 and 3 in Auckland, and up to 10 at Level 1 and up to eight at Levels 2 and 3 elsewhere.

One bonus credit was awarded for every four actually achieved in Auckland and one for every five achieved elsewhere.

University entry requirements (EU) were reduced from 14 to 12 credits in three EU approved subjects.

Drumm said that Mt Albert’s approval rates increased marginally from 83% to 86% at level 1 and from 90% to 92% at level 2.

But they jumped from 75% to 90% at level 3, including a jump from 61% to 71% for students who achieved UE.

“We had a good Year 13 cohort, but that really exceeded expectations,” he said.

“We are absolutely delighted. These are easily the best results we have had.”

Hargreaves said the landscape at Macleans was complicated because about half of its students sit for Cambridge exams rather than the NCEA, but Cambridge’s results were also “no different” from previous years despite closures. .

He said that 16 of the 240 college students who earned NCEA Level 2, and 20 of the 200 who earned Level 3, passed only because of the bonus credits.

“Knowing some of them, I know that some of them will have been affected by [the lockdowns]They would have been at a disadvantage, so the credits that have been added are probably well justified, “he said.

Davida Suasua, director of decile-1 Tangaroa College in Ōtara, said that an average of 76 percent of her students passed all three levels of the NCEA, even without including the extra credits.

“If you include the learning recognition credits, it would be much higher,” he said.

“It’s a little lower than the year before, but much better than we expected.”

She said the university extended the school day, adding additional workshops for NCEA students until 4.15pm. M. Every day since classes resumed after the first closure in May.

Ōtāhuhu College principal Neil Watson said his results were “an improvement over previous years, but probably on the same track as where we would have been anyway.” [without Covid].

He said the one-for-five bonus credits, which applied to schools in Auckland and elsewhere until Auckland’s closing in August, put his students “on where we would be” without Covid in internally assessed units.

“Definitely the first batch of learning recognition credits I would have said were correct,” he said.

“I couldn’t give you a detailed answer for the second batch because a lot of other things were happening by then.”

Patrick Walsh, principal of John Paul College in Rotorua, who only earned the one-in-five credits, said his pass rates were 95 percent at levels 1 and 2 and 96 percent at level 3, “so good or in some cases better than our 2019 results. “

“This is a 1 to 2 percent difference,” he said.

Its achievement in the EU jumped from 52% to 68%.

He said principals in Christchurch reported similar passing rates in 2011 despite the disruption caused by that year’s great earthquake, because schools did everything they could to help students catch up.

“When I think about my staff, they didn’t have vacations. They were distance learning, they were preparing for distance learning, just making sure the kids got out of line,” he said.

Craig Reed, principal of Paraparumu College near Wellington, said his results were “a little low at level 1, but levels 2 and 3 look pretty good.”

“The learning recognition credits would have played an important role in student success, but of course there are also many students who have not needed them,” he said. “They will have helped a percentage of students.”