Most students failing at second attempt at crucial new NCEA tests

Most students who failed crucial new NCEA tests on their first attempt last year failed again on their second attempt.

Figures provided to RNZ by the ●ualfications Authority also show most students from schools with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage failed the online tests in reading, writing and maths last year.

Principals have said they expect schools will be more discerning about ensuring students sit the tests only when they are ready to pass them. But some warn the tests are unfair for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and the pass rates indicate multiple opportunities to resit won’t help.

From this year, students must pass the tests, or for the next two years specific achievement and unit standards, before they can receive an NCEA qualification.

High failure rates in early pilots alarmed some teachers and last year the tests were offered in June and again in October and November.

Students who passed last year achieved the new literacy and numeracy requirements. Most of those who attempted the tests were in Year 10.

The cumulative pass rate across the two sets of tests was 69 per cent in reading, 64 per cent in writing and 61 per cent in numeracy.

But for the third of schools with the highest socioeconomic barriers to achievement, the average pass rates were 44 per cent in reading, 40 per cent in writing and 35 per cent in maths.

The figures also showed that the 15,500 students who failed a test in the June session had pass rates on their second attempt in October/november of 43 per cent in reading, 46 per cent for writing and 38 per cent for maths.

Students from the third of schools with the most barriers to achievement had secondattempt pass rates of just 26 per cent in reading, 24 per cent in numeracy and 41 per cent in writing.

Porirua College principal Ragne Maxwell said some of her school’s students sat the tests last year and many failed even though their teachers judged they were ready.

Maxwell said the high failure rate for second attempts was not surprising.

“We’re told these corequisites will not be a barrier to achievement because people can keep sitting them and we have been saying again and again if you have a method of assessment that does not work for people, where the method of assessment becomes a barrier in and of itself, repeating that experience is not going to change the nature of the barrier.”

Maxwell said the Government needed to retain the alternative pathway for achieving the literacy and numeracy requirements.

Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate principal Kiri Turketo said her school had not yet offered the online tests and was likely to use both the tests and the alternative achievement and unit standards that could be used to meet the literacy and numeracy requirement this year and next.

“We’re not sure what’s going to work for our students and I suspect, given how the majority of students feel about sitting physical exams, I’m not sure how our students will go.”

Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said the previous years’ pass rates were due in part to schools experimenting with the tests.

He said some schools allowed students to sit the tests only if teachers thought they were ready, while others allowed most or all of their Year 10 cohort to have a go.

Couillault said the low pass rates for second attempts could be due to a lack of follow-up learning.

“If you’re going to have a second crack at something, more teaching and learning needs to have occurred.”

He said students were accustomed to having several attempts at NCEA achievement standards and that could have contributed to low pass rates in the online tests.