Unfortunately the problem is political. But it is also fostered by a lot of puppeteering by principals and other figureheads in education.
What is also unfortunate is that achievement is always measured relative to the so called 'average achievement' in New Zealand. This means that no matter how good our education system becomes, we will always be charged with the same (almost illogical) responsibility, that of raising the achievement of underachievers.
Our so-called standards based assessment in NCEA (it's all standards based now) in secondary education was supposed to get rid of all this underachieving rhetoric. Standard based assessment was introduced by National. So was NCEA. Obviously in Science, at least, there has been a modicum of success achieved by educators in New Zealand.
But we are never satisfied, unfortunately, for the moderators come along and criticise classes and schools that produce too many overachievers. So they execute moderation and we're all leveled back to the same standard - that of the average.
We had the average as a standard with School Certificate. That's why we got rid of Sch Cert. We've simply replaced it with something else that is no better at assessing achievement than the previous system.
So we have to wait until some international assessment is done only to find that we're number 2 in the world scale.
I wonder that the cry isn't, "Why weren't we number 1?"
1 comment:
Kia ora Shaun!
Unfortunately the problem is political. But it is also fostered by a lot of puppeteering by principals and other figureheads in education.
What is also unfortunate is that achievement is always measured relative to the so called 'average achievement' in New Zealand. This means that no matter how good our education system becomes, we will always be charged with the same (almost illogical) responsibility, that of raising the achievement of underachievers.
Our so-called standards based assessment in NCEA (it's all standards based now) in secondary education was supposed to get rid of all this underachieving rhetoric. Standard based assessment was introduced by National. So was NCEA. Obviously in Science, at least, there has been a modicum of success achieved by educators in New Zealand.
But we are never satisfied, unfortunately, for the moderators come along and criticise classes and schools that produce too many overachievers. So they execute moderation and we're all leveled back to the same standard - that of the average.
We had the average as a standard with School Certificate. That's why we got rid of Sch Cert. We've simply replaced it with something else that is no better at assessing achievement than the previous system.
So we have to wait until some international assessment is done only to find that we're number 2 in the world scale.
I wonder that the cry isn't, "Why weren't we number 1?"
Catchya later
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