NZQA fails to make grade

Exams should be set, treated as a draft and checked thoroughly before pupils are allowed anywhere near them.

saying sorry, the authority waffled about the ‘‘comprehensive quality assurance processes’’ it follows. Something doesn’t add up. Surely even a half-decent checking system would include a peer review of each exam.

They should be set, treated as a draft and then checked thoroughly by highly experienced teachers before pupils are allowed anywhere near them.

This would include a panel actually sitting the exam to reduce the likelihood of ambiguity and eliminate any chance of ‘‘impossible’’ questions reaching the exam room.

The annual NZQA exams are, at least in part, the finale of up to 13 years of education.

They can be of critical importance to pupils’ futures, as the results illustrate to potential employers an individual’s capacity to learn, to reason, to persevere, handle pressure, and act responsibly.

They also can be incredibly stressful – even more so this year for pupils in central New Zealand, with November 14’s devastating Kaikoura earthquake happening as exam season began.

Imagine, then, the anxiety that pupils might feel on being set a question that could not be answered with the data available.

Being hit by an intellectual curve ball could throw even the most able pupil out of whack for the rest of the exam.

It is true that the response to such challenges might be a very useful gauge of an exam-sitter’s grasp of the subject. However, that’s not the way the NZQA exams are set or marked.

This year’s maths exams failed the pupils required to sit them, and the authority will be under close scrutiny next year.

For a body charged with setting standards for the country’s pupils and then testing them, it did not achieve an even reasonable standard this year.