Measles threat for NCEA exams
Students exposed to virus will not be able to take part while quarantined but can apply for a derived grade
Auckland high schools are bracing for possible disruption to this year’s endof-year exams because of the city’s measles epidemic.
About 140,000 students across the country will start this year’s National Certificate of Educational Achievement exams on November 8 while the measles epidemic is still growing — although slower than at the peak in September.
Auckland Regional Public Health Service reported 12 more cases on Wednesday, taking the Auckland total so far this year to 1581.
Medical Officer of Health Dr Maria Poynter said any students with measles, and students who had not been immunised but had been exposed to a “close contact” with measles, could not sit exams during their quarantine period but could apply for a “derived grade” based on their course work.
“GPs will need to provide medical certificates for patients with suspected or confirmed measles who are sitting exams,” she said.
The service would help nonimmune students who had been exposed to measles so they could apply for derived grades.
She said one Auckland secondary school had a current measles case this week, but the student’s isolation would end before the exam period.
“There are other students at this school, and at two other secondary schools who have been exposed to measles. Their quarantine period will finish before exams start,” she said.
Auckland Secondary Schools Principals’ Association president Richard Dykes said the region’s 100-plus secondary schools were
prepared for more cases occurring during the exam period, which runs until December 3.
“Our advice to members is just be ready, expect to get a phone call on the day of an exam saying Student X has measles,” he said.
“In that case, they have to contact all their students who have not been immunised against measles.
“We are talking more than 100 schools. What are the chances? We’d like to think they’re low, but we have to be prepared for the reality.”
He said derived grades could be granted for all NCEA subjects, but not for NZ Scholarships.
“I’m telling parents ‘If your young person is a scholarship student, get them immunised’,” he said.
New research published yesterday showed just how pernicious the disease can be. Scientists in the United States found measles erases much of the immune system’s memory of how to fight other germs, so children recover only to be left more vulnerable to bugs like flu or strep.
Researchers called the startling findings “immune amnesia”.
With measles on the rise, “it should be a scary phenomenon,” said Dr Michael Mina of Harvard’s school of public health, lead author of research in the journal Science.
“This goes under the radar” because doctors wouldn’t necessarily connect a child’s pneumonia to measles they suffered a year earlier, Mina explained. “But would they have got it if they hadn’t got measles?”
Poynter said the health service was not asking schools to stop unvaccinated students sitting exams, and she was not aware of any school that has barred unvaccinated students from sitting.
“The Auckland Regional Public Health Service would not support this,” she said.