In the modern world it is not only academics who need qualifications. Work is increasingly skilled. The boundaries between academic jobs and trade jobs, between office jobs and business jobs are very blurred. Is a boy going to become a motor mechanic required to write at the same level and with the same skill and insight as girl becoming an engineer?  Does a maths course for a student who is heading towards a career as a scientist have to be the same as one who is heading towards office work?

 

Is school only about weeding kids out so that by Year 13 we are left with just the brightest 15%? 

Don’t kids in the other 85% of the population have a right to courses and programmes that are interesting, challenging and suitable for them?

 

In the modern world education and training is required for most employment. Schools therefore need to provide the basic education for this wide variety. 

 

NCEA has made a decision in principle to provide a qualification for all students from the brightest to the slowest. This does not mean that all students who have an NCEA Level 1 have a qualification of the same value. The subjects that a student studies and the results they get make each NCEA Level 1 different. A look at the results sheet or at the Record of Learning makes it very clear what the quality of the result is. Yes, there is some unfamiliarity with this still, but it does not take long before it is quite easy to tell the quality of an NCEA Certificate.  

 

Achievement Standards are the more academic. They come from traditional school subjects. They give students credits when they pass and they give grades to reflect the quality of the pass.

 

Unit standards are the vocational standards. They come from industry training requirements. They are only pass or fail. Students who pass Unit Standards have credits but no grades.

 

A student who has an Achievement Standard in Level 1 calculation has achieved at a higher academic level that a student who has passed a Level 1 Unit Standard in calculation.   Both count credits towards NCEA though. It is immediately apparent on a student’s Record of Learning whether the credits come from Achievements Standards or Unit Standards.

 

There is an additional advantage. Schools can tailor courses to meet the needs of students. Thus in English students who have academic skills do a course made up only of Achievement Standards. A student who has practical skills but not good academic skills can do an English course made entirely of Unit Standards. We also provide an intermediate English course for students of average ability that has some Achievement Standards and some Unit Standards.