Professional Reading: NCEA Change Package (T2W9)

Article
https://conversation.education.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/NCEA-Change-Package-2019-Web.pdf

Reflection
This one was billed as an ‘interesting’ read and it certainly delivered. There were some things that were a no-brainer (such as the removal of exam fees) but other part of the package might be less well received.

The idea of giving students more control over what they learn, how they access content and when they are assessed has been around for quite some time and there are some obvious benefits. There are also some big challenges and it will be interesting to see how things look in three years time.

One major concern that I have is the incredibly ambitious timetable for implementing the change. It is extremely tight and in the case of ‘Digital’ it is somewhat worrying as we are in the midst of implementing new standards for level 2 and 3 (level 1 came in last year) and that process has been difficult to say the least – mostly because it has been extremely rushed and the exemplars and other support materials that are needed to successfully implement the new standards have not been forthcoming. If we scale this up to all subjects across all levels, I can see huge issues in terms of teacher workload (as staff scramble to create new teaching and assessment resources) and massive issues with marking work to a standard where the standard might not be all that clear.

In addition, as an over-worked ‘Digital’ teacher in a fast moving subject, I’m not looking forward to having to redesign courses and develop new content for the ‘new, new standards’.