When 2x=wtf, what is x?

Why is a duck?

Because one of its legs is both the same and it keeps on knocking its head together.

You’d be upset if this was the question, and expected answer, for an important English exam for which you’d been studying with all due diligence and trepidation.

Translate that into a mathematical setting and you might have a sense of the disorientation, dismay and mounting panic felt by thousands of the nation’s 16-year-olds sitting their NCEA level 1 maths exam.

It’s been a case of reproach and recrimination after the young scholars found they’d entered the exam-hall equivalent of a twilight zone in which a good deal of the work they’d done with their teachers seems to have been beside the point as far as the examsetters were concerned.

Go figure. Given that this seems to be the second successive year it’s happened, the question before us seems to be when 2x=wtf, is x the teachers or the testers?

The Qualifications Authority reminds us that the testers are teachers, and experienced ones at that. But last year problems spanning five separate NZQA maths exam papers across the secondary spectrum, were inquired into and fairly emphatically pinned on problems with the exam setters.

And this in spite of the frequently cited comprehensive quality assurance process.

This time around, the same monkish intonations have again been coming from the authority, but the teacher complaints have sufficient force, even scope, to warrant the investigation now ordered by Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

For starters, the authority appears to be guilty of misdirection when it scolds that changes had been signalled at the start of the year and should have been reflected in teaching. The retort is that the kids were prepared for, and weren’t complaining about, those bits. The problems lay in other questions. Like the formula for quadratic equations that isn’t scheduled to be taught until level 2 next year. Maths shouldn’t really require paranormal abilities.

Then there’s the confusing, if not confounding, standard of the wording of some questions, adding a whole new challenge of translation/best guessing before the students could even begin to address any mathematical issues. Maybe a few superior English teachers should join the ranks of those setting the papers, for communication’s sake.

Clearly there’s a section of the wider community out there who have stampeded to a harden-up conclusion. Well knock yourselves out, guys. The exam’s online. And not only in New Zealand. Some questions are being reprinted in major overseas newspapers, alongside such cheery headlines as ‘‘read it and weep’’.