Secondary school rules

Katie Kenny and

Brittney Deguara answer some pressing questions about how education facilities will operate under alert level three.

Schools can able to reopen their doors under the new Covid-19 alert level three guidelines from Wednesday. The Ministry of Education has said classrooms will be open to pupils in years 1 to 10 who need to attend school, but those who can stay home, should stay home.

What measures are in place to keep students at school safe?

The ministry has outlined health and safety guidelines to try to limit any transmission of the virus. These include keeping students in bubbles of 10, with one metre of physical distance between all students and staff inside and 2m outside.

Staggered entry and exit times are recommended.

To support contact tracing efforts, students should sit in the same seats each day and schools should maintain contact racing registers.

How will students meet NCEA requirements?

The ministry has said NCEA is flexible, and schools and teachers will work with students to plan their assessment programmes and help them meet qualification requirements.

The New Zealand Qualifications Authority is helping schools figure out standards that can be assessed via distance learning. Those that can’t will be moved to later in the year.

Will requirements be reduced?

Some students and teachers have asked for NCEA credit requirements to be reduced.

One petition asking NZQA and Education Minister Chris Hipkins to reduce credits by 10 for NCEA levels 1, 2 and 3, has gained nearly 30,000 signatures. NZQA chief executive Dr Grant Klinkum said he was aware of the petition.

‘‘Wellbeing is our top priority – we understand that people are facing different challenges at the moment; and that for many, these are difficult times.’’

However, he said lowering the number of credits could ‘‘risk lowering the credibility of an NCEA qualification, which would reflect unfairly on students as they look to move into further study or work’’.

He also noted many students achieved substantially more credits than were required for NCEA. In 2019, the average year 12 student who attained NCEA Level 2 did so with an average of 25 more credits than necessary.

So, definitely not?

The Post Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) said it was still working through the issues in regular meetings. But there was a precedent for bending the rules. Following the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, which killed 185 people and injured several thousand, particular challenges were faced by secondary schools that were site-sharing. School days were shortened and lessons were compressed.

In response, NZQA established a quake-derived grade process, where teachers provided NZQA with a grade based on evidence produced during the year, reflecting the grade a pupil would have received for their external assessment.

‘‘We know it’s do-able, that the system is flexible,’’ a PPTA spokeswoman said.