NCEA lift pleases College principal

Matamata College students stepped up their game last year and gained a higher pass rate for their NCEA ( National Certificate of Educational Achievement) results than in 2010.

Exam results were posted online for students to view in mid-january and mailed out soon after. The final analysis report of the results will be released in mid-february and from that each school can compare itself with other schools of the same decile to see how it ranks against national standards.

Matamata College principal Glenn Rowsell said he was looking forward to seeing the report but in the meantime had analysed the results himself to get a fair idea of how students did.

He found that Level One students had a pass rate of about 74 per cent, which is up from the 63 per cent pass rate in 2010. Level Two is up 2 per cent, now sitting at about 93 per cent pass rate but Level Three is down from 83 per cent to about 69 per cent.

‘‘Overall I am pleased with how the students went and especially with Level One because that was what we had been focusing on all year,’’ he said.

In 2011, 5 per cent of the Level One students passed with excellence which is up from 1.7 per cent in 2010, and the number receiving merits was up 6 per cent.

Mr Rowsell believes the higher pass rate came down to the extra resources and time the school put into working with the students.

‘‘ Last year we ensured we had focused teaching, checkpoints throughout the year, a mentoring system among the Maori students (whose pass rate was up 20 per cent for Level One) and we ran catch-ups and tutorials towards the end of the year for any students who wanted extra help,’’ he said.

This year the school had decided to focus on the year 10 students as that was where the process started and if good work habits were formed, they would go into year 11 feeling confident and could easily cope with the workload, Mr Rowsell said.

‘‘We are finding that if you can get the kids through Level One, they do really well at Level Two,’’ he said.