Time to Question Calendar Year Qualifications - relieve stress and workload and deepen learning

Last year I published a post entitled How to Manage NCEA in a Covid Affected 2020. At that time (April 2020) there was a lot of uncertainty, but by year's end NZQA had responded with a delayed start to examinations, Recognition of Learning Credits and an amended UE requirement. Also, some universities were open to allowing Principal recommendation for UE. As a result, I know that for our school, achievement levels were strong and that students were not disadvantaged. This is not to say, however, that it wasn't a big struggle for teachers and many students.

A lightbulb moment for many of my Year 12 students was when I gathered them all together on return from the first long lockdown and asked them to raise their hand if they were returning in 2021. As expected, in excess of 90% raised their hands. That's when I told them that since they were returning they had no need to be anxious about NCEA L2 because they only needed to focus on their graduation qualification and that they had a further year to gain that. I pointed out that if, as a result of their year being affected by Covid, that after doing their best they had achieved only 65 of their 80 credits by year's end, they would simply return the next year, undertake a Level 3 programme and that when they earned their first 15 credits they would be awarded their NCEA L2 and be 15 credits on their way to the 60 they needed for Level 3.

The advantages from them having this understanding included reducing their levels of anxiety and allowing us to focus on those students who were graduating at the end of 2020 (our Year 13s and a small number of Year 12s). This relieved a lot of workload and stress for my staff. Of course, it was also important to communicate this to our parents.

We have always said at our school that we have no interest in calendar year qualifications, especially a structure that builds them in over a very stressful final 3 years of secondary school. Of course, there is always some sort of 'cost' for this. This year I have already had to wade in and defend our school from an ignorant Linkedin post from an academic who saw that we had close to 100% non-achievement at NCEA L1 which meant that our 'experiment' with a different pedagogical approach was an absolute failure and that myself and the Board needed to be held to account. A quick analysis of our leavers' qualifications and very high levels of Excellence and Merit Endorsed qualifications at Level 2 and 3 would have saved him his embarrassment.

It is our firm view that 3 years of calendar year qualifications do not lead to deep and engaged learning and do not contribute to positive student wellbeing. That is why we have never offered NCEA L1 as a Year 11 qualification. Rather our Year 11 students start out on their first year of a 2 to 3 year journey to get their quality graduation qualification. During 2020 it was a huge relief to not have to drive a whole cohort (Year 11) towards a meaningless qualification while trying to do our best for our graduating cohort. For our Year 11s we just stuck with our existing target of 20 quality credits towards their quality Level 2 qualification.

I encourage schools once again to revisit how they manage qualifications because our new and once again Covid-affected reality means we should look at things differently.

Up here in Auckland we don't know when we will be returning to on-site school. We do know that NZQA and MOE will create processes once again to allow for the interruptions to on-site learning such as a delayed start to NCEA, Recognition of Learning credits and amendments to UE requirements. That helps put us at ease. 

At some point we will return to our physical schools and our students and staff will return to our sites affected by a number of issues: 

• some will be grieving
• many whānau will be affected by health issues
• many students' whānau will be facing employment uncertainty
• most whānau will be faced with financial hardship
• all students will be spread across the full range on the continuum of what learning progress they made while off-site. Some may have flourished and soared, many may have managed to just keep up, and many more will have struggled

Areas we will need to focus on

• Whakawhanaunga - welcoming our staff and students back into the physical space and re-inducting into how we now work in our kura

• Accommodating the full range of well-being situations all will be in

• Establishing the full range of learning progressions and differentiating so that we can accelerate those who have struggled while maintaining the momentum of all

• Progress towards qualifications 

Our approach in any year, Covid-affected or not, results in the following

• on average, students at the end of Year 11 have 20 Level 1 credits and 10 at Level 2
• during their Year 12 year, after picking up a further 50 credits (usually at Level 2), they are awarded Level 1 and are close to achieving Level 2
• at the end of Year 12 many students may well not have met the requirements for Level 2 (though we ensure those graduating at the end of Year 12 achieve Level 1 or 2 - whatever is appropriate for them). This is not a concern for us because on their return the following year as a Year 13 student they meet the requirements of Level 2 (usually early in the year) and most go on to achieve Level 3.
• very high levels of Excellence and Merit Endorsed qualifications

Positive outcomes are the reduction in teacher workload (setting, marking, moderating, resubmitting), the creation of more time to focus on learning, a reduction (though not complete elimination) of student stress and anxiety in relation to assessment and qualifications, the uncoupling of the assessment 'tail' waving the learning 'dog', and an increase in the quality of qualifications achieved.

More and more schools are moving towards not offering NCEA Level 1 as a full year Year 11 qualification and I know for many school leaders that they see this as a step too far for them as they worry about their staff and parent reaction. I'm happy to talk with any leader/teacher about these issues.

What I do encourage school leaders to consider is the focus on calendar year qualifications. Simply by moving your focus to graduate qualifications you free up the yoke of assessment overload for students, assessment overload for staff and the pressure of league tables as they are not relevant for schools who do not aim for calendar year qualifications.

Such a strategy slows the assessment journey down which allows for learning to go more deeply.

I'm always happy to be contacted to discuss how these ideas work in reality.