NZQA - making life even worse for Christchurch students since 2011

Even though I am a teacher, I do not believe in following rules simply because they exist. Conversely, even though I am not a ‘rules-person’, I do understand why we (that is, schools and society in general) have rules. However, I think it’s important to question the fairness of the rules and laws that exist, because not all rules and laws are fair, depending on whom they protect and whom they benefit. I am as eager as the next person for things to be fair. But when it comes to fairness, equality is not the same as equity. And I think this is something that is often not taken into consideration when rules are made. This concept is something that I think NZQA has no understanding of. This blog post will discuss the unfairness of NZQA’s recent decision to not make allowances for students sitting NCEA Levels 1-3 in Christchurch in 2011 by declining teacher requests to allow re-assessments for individual students in internal assessments. Sarcastic voice: Because, you know, a few massive earthquakes really isn’t that big a deal, doesn’t disadvantage Christchurch students in any way and therefore doesn’t warrant any exceptions…

NZQA is the body that sets and assesses all external assessments (exams) in New Zealand. They also manage the moderation of all internal assessments and set the rules around how internal assessments should be carried out in schools. Internal assessments are hardly run perfectly in schools (see my blog, two posts ago) and when a massive, destructive, deadly earthquake hits four weeks into term one of the school year, nothing is going to run perfectly. After losing three weeks of classes in February/April this year, secondary school teachers had to re-design courses and cut down the number of credits we offered our senior students, as teaching and learning time was lost and we simply could not cover the topics and assessments that we included in the original courses in the remaining time we had left.

Do I need to mention that early on in term two there was another couple of large earthquakes, and that we lost another week of teaching and learning time? In total, that’s a whole month of class time lost. And then there’s the destroyed schools and the site-sharing (I’ve also blogged about this previously). Site-sharing also means lost learning time, as periods have been shortened to accommodate two high schools using the premises that usually only one uses.

But the impact on students is much worse than that even. Many students lost more than just their school premises and resources and class time; they lost their home, their routines, their stability, their confidence, and in some cases, they lost people they knew and loved too. A significant number of the students that are attending site-sharing schools have been living in sub-standard conditions since February (no sewerage, minimal running water, constant power outages, roads like war-zones, spending over an hour travel time to get to school, leaving school in the dark etc). Some families moved away from Christchurch either temporarily or permanently - to Nelson, or Wellington, or Hamilton, or Auckland, or Dunedin. And you can’t blame them. It’s not pleasant living in a city that constantly shakes, a city with no CBD, and a city with schools sharing sites. Most families haven’t moved away though and their children continue to receive an education at the schools in Christchurch.

So, when secondary school teachers asked NZQA if they can relax the rules around internal re-assessments, I actually expected NZQA to say yes. The rule is that if a school (and usually, more specifically, a department) wishes to re-assess students in a Standard then all students must be offered the opportunity to sit the re-assessment. For example, the English department at School A teaches creative writing to Year 12 students in term one and then assesses them using Achievement Standard 2.1. For some reason many students under-perform, and so the school decides to offer a re-assessment opportunity for the entire cohort again in term three. This is because there were obvious gaps in the students’ writing skills and therefore they were unable to reach the Standard, and so the teachers go back and revise their teaching and fill in those gaps so the students are able to Achieve the Standard and consequently obtain University Entrance (which you get from NCEA Level 2 English). The idea, I guess, is that it’s not fair to offer some students a re-assessment opportunity but not others. I’m definitely not convinced by this reasoning, because it goes against the nature of standards-based assessment where you assess students when they are ready to be assessed (I’ve also examined this in a blog post…yikes, I discuss assessment a lot). Nonetheless, that’s just the way it is; but stupid rules are stupid rules and people are therefore going to question them.

To state the obvious, we are in a very different situation now to what we were in a year ago. Some students in Christchurch have been, relatively speaking, only minorly (why does this word not exist? ‘Majorly’ does, grrr) affected by the quakes – their houses are OK, they are OK, their families are OK, and apart from sharing school resources with another 1,500 students and putting up with the constant shakes, their lives have been fairly normal. Many of these students have continued to work hard on their studies and have Achieved credits from numerous internal assessments, despite the constant disruption. On the other hand, others have experienced some really distressing stuff that has undoubtedly had a huge impact on their ability to learn and to perform under pressure. (Teachers are in the same boat in that respect.) So, why, in a shortened year, in which student learning and achievement has been so severely affected in Christchurch, would we impose a re-assessment on an entire group of students? Why would we do that to them? And why would we do that to ourselves, as teachers? It would be cruel and stressful. Oh, and it’s just not actually possible in a site-sharing school that’s already had to cut learning and assessment time.

So, the question posed to NZQA (and it’s a damn good question) is: Why can’t we simply re-assess those students who need to be re-assessed?

NZQA denied requests by schools to allow re-assessment opportunities for individual students. And it makes my blood boil.

If you think about who will need to be re-assessed, it is most likely to be students who are on the cusp of passing NCEA Level 1, 2 or 3. It’s also quite likely to be students who suffered after the February and June quakes. It could well be a student who Not Achieved that 2.1 assessment, when it fact they should have easily Achieved, had things not gone awry via tectonic plate movement. Those students still need University Entrance. An even more specific example of a student like this might be: Student A – their family moved out of their house soon after 22 February because living in a house with no water and no sewerage was just not doable. They spent five weeks in Auckland before their family could find new accommodation in Christchurch. Another example might be: Student B lost a family member in the February quake and has had counselling three times a week for the last 6 months to help them through the trauma, thus further affecting their learning time and their assessment results.

And the same goes for students who wish to leave school. I know Anne Tolley expects all students to stay until the end of Year 12 and gain Level 2 NCEA but the system just doesn’t work for everyone and some students really struggle through Level 1 NCEA in Year 11. They then leave school and complete a practical course – like carpentry, or hairdressing - in a tertiary institution. Why should Student C, who is not particularly academically inclined and really just wants and needs to be out doing something meaningful to them, be denied the right to gain NCEA Level 1 when they have worked hard all year, despite the constant disruptions, and they are sitting on 77 credits – that’s only 3 credits away from attaining Level 1? How would letting Student C re-sit an assessment actually disadvantage Student D, who gained Level 1 with a total of 95 credits?

What is so unfair about supporting students to obtain the qualifications that they need, in a year that has proven to be most challenging?

Some people will argue that school is not everything – that, in fact, it doesn’t matter how well you did at school, that it’s not that important and it doesn’t define your life. I would say that that is true, to a certain extent. I was a pretty average student at high school, and my rather average grades have not held me back from what I’ve wanted to do. But a student who misses out on gaining NCEA Level 2 because of a natural disaster should not be held back and made to repeat a Level 2 course when they should be working through Level 3 in preparation for the numbers-restricted Creative Writing course they want to do the following year at University. Likewise, why would we want to keep students like Student C even longer in school than we have to, when they could re-sit an assessment they Not Achieved earlier in the year, Achieve the Standard, gain NCEA Level 1 and then go out into the big wide world? Do we want students to gain qualifications or not?!? You’d think not, from NZQA’s actions.

So, that’s a big BOOOOOOOOO to NZQA from me (and from many other teachers in Christchurch, I suspect). ‘Equality’ in the eyes of NZQA is not going to result in fair or equitable outcomes for the secondary students of this city. Our students have been, and will continue to be, disadvantaged by the situation here. And NZQA needs to get off it’s rule-making bottom, acquire some empathy and support the students and teachers of Christchurch.

Navel-gazing? Maybe. Productive? You bet :D

I wrote this post about 2 weeks ago and never posted it because I wasn’t sure if it was good enough….Anyway, there’s no way I’m going to be able to write anything as coherent now so I’m just gonna post it….

OK, so I attended some PD (Professional Development) last week (NB – ‘twas at least 2 weeks ago now), and a discussion arose about the Registered Teacher Criteria - this is the new criteria that semi-spurred me into creating this blog. To clarify, one of the criterion is that teachers are expected to demonstrate that they are actively reflecting on their own teaching practice. So I thought a blog would be a fun way to both reflect and prove that I’m doing so. Also, I’d wanted to start a blog for ages but couldn’t think what the hell to blog about - experts reckon you should blog about what you are passionate about - so the logical choice for me was to blog about teaching. Seemed pretty straight-forward to me. Anyway, one of the facilitators taking the PD commented that reflection needs to be productive and not simply “navel-gazing.”

Of course, I was insulted by this comment. And then I thought about it a bit more and realised that the facilitator was right. Kind of. I do need to act on (or react to) my reflections. It’s the whole inquiry cycle thing (see the NZ Curriculum). But when I teach a poor lesson, I reflect straight away. I don’t actually need to sit down and follow a template and/or write about it. I can see if the work I set my students was too hard immediately by the students’ behaviour; if the work is not achievable they will simply switch off…and begin talking…and texting…and being generally off-task … so I make sure that I am actually pitching the lesson at the right level(s) in my next class, as I don’t want a repeat of that rather unproductive, vaguely stressful lesson. Similarly, when students are bored, I can tell straight away - they don’t bother contributing, they have that glazed expression on their face, they slump over (and I have to tell them to “sit up”), or they might say (rather loudly, in my experience), “this is boring. I’m bored.” So it’s really not brain surgery, reflecting on the day to day teaching of your classes. No teacher wants a repeat of the lesson-from-hell, so we all do our best to avoid just that.

I must admit, I don’t really use this blog to reflect on the units I’ve taught – I know what’s worked well, based on student engagement and results. But I realise that reflection on taught units is something I need to document more carefully, and I will try to do this for the remainder of the year.

Interestingly, a significant proportion of my blog posts so far have been reflections on two aspects of my job; the systems (in particular, assessment) and the workload. So I have to wonder - why? Why do I blog about these issues so often? Well, because these are the two most challenging and stressful aspects of my job; managing the horrendously never-ending workload whilst trying to stay sane, and actually dealing with all the systems and procedures that come with teaching in a school and assessing senior students. And if it’s simply “navel-gazing” to critique the issues and faults in these areas of the job, then I’m all for navel-gazing…

I think it’s really important to reflect openly in public about these issues. True, I might not be able to act on them as quickly or efficiently as I would like to. (That’s not to say I don’t try though…I do almost pity some of my workmates who listen to me go on about the changes we need to make to things in preparation for next year…). Personally, I would like to see more democratic assessment procedures in my school for NCEA assessments in my subject. I would also like to see accurate terminology linked to the curriculum used when reporting to parents (verbally, as well as in written reports). I would like teachers to be able to leave their prejudices behind when they enter the classroom, in particular, when it comes to teaching the not-so-high-achieving students. I would like to see teacher’s salaries come into line with the importance of education in society. I would like to see pastoral care contact-time, such as form time, acknowledged in our pay. But I can’t actually change the system on my own, in one week. Or one month. Or one year. I can do my best to make those changes happen through the systems that we have in place and by building positive relationships with colleagues. I can work together with teachers to implement changes over time that make things fairer and better for both students and teachers. And I can reflect and discuss and work through the injustices I see in schools in writing on my blog, and then with my colleagues. In my opinion, reflection on schools’ systems are just as important as individual teacher reflections on their practice.

…that is all. EB is back and I have to write reports (somehow) so I possibly won’t post for a while. Unless something pops up that really irks me, heh.

What really pisses me off about NCEA

It’s only 2 weeks into the term and I am exhausted. Parent-teacher interviews in the middle of the week didn’t help and I’ve got more to go next week, plus an open night mid-term and then reports towards the end of term. But it’s not the workload or the tiredness that plunged me into (minor) depression today. No...it was assessment that did that.

NCEA is a pig. Don’t get me wrong - School C, 6^th Form Certificate and Bursary were pigs too. School C and Bursary were classist pigs that benefited the academic students from higher socio-economic backgrounds and 6^th form Certificate was a pig that benefited no-one, as far as I can tell…well, it possibly benefited students at schools who got ridiculously high School C marks the year before (again, most likely to be the students from more well-off families and/or schools), but I wouldn’t know as I didn’t go to such a school, and I’ve never assessed students using that ridiculous system, thankfully. NB: I usually defend NCEA as it’s definitely more democratic that the old system and I think it has the potential to actually be useful. But that potential is yet to be fulfilled, and I’m becoming more and more cynical in my views; I’m worried that we are never going to use NCEA like we should. Yes, there are many reasons to dislike NCEA – the workload for both students and teachers, and the rather vague marking schedules in my subject area, English, are just two very obvious examples. But instead, I’d like to evaluate our use of NCEA in relation to its purpose.

The purpose of standards-based assessment like NCEA is that the students are assessed when they are ready to be assessed in whatever areas of whatever subjects they are taking. Once they meet the Standard, this means that they have proven that they have certain skills at a certain level in that subject, and then they continue to build on these skills and work towards the next Standard. However long it takes them to do this is fine, because we all learn in different ways and at different speeds. So, standards-based assessment means that we can (could) actually have more freedom in creating teaching and assessment programmes to suit students’ needs, learning styles, abilities and interests.

But instead, we (and by ‘we’ I mean teachers, management and schools) lump a whole bunch of kids who are all roughly the same age into generic courses and make them all sit the same assessment at the same time. A fifteen and a half year old student who is reading and writing at curriculum level 6 sits the exact same NCEA Level 1 assessments as the fifteen and a half year old student who is reading and writing at curriculum level 4-5. Another example is: a seventeen and a half year old student who moved to New Zealand from a non-English speaking country four years ago and has good, but not excellent, English language skills sits the same NCEA Level 3 assessment as a seventeen and a half year old student who has lived their whole life in New Zealand and has an excellent command of the English language (I am well aware that many New Zealand students do not have an excellence command of the English language, but this is an example for the sake of my argument, and it’s a real one).

Now, imagine teaching a class of 25 students with a wide cross-section of students in terms of English language proficiency, ability and motivation. Imagine marking their NCEA assessment work. And now imagine handing it back to them. You can’t? Well, this is what it’s like for me: I must admit, I do really enjoy reading my students’ assessment work – they have cool ideas and often amusing and/or heartening opinions and it’s great to see what they’ve learned. But I hate marking their work. I hate having to grade it. NOT ACHIEVED, ACHIEVED, MERIT or EXCELLENCE. It seems so clinical, so harsh and, ultimately, so unhelpful. However, the bit I dread the most is the handing-it-back-to-the-students bit. I don’t want my students to feel bad. I don’t want to shatter their confidence. I don’t want to send them the message that, “it’s not good enough”, because I know that they tried their very best and what they did was indeed good enough for them. But I feel like this is what I do, no matter how carefully and respectfully I try to return their assessments to them. NCEA makes me a cruel, confidence-shattering, deliverer-of-bad-news. And that is super depressing.

I guess some might argue that at least all the students are on an “even-playing field” or something (disregarding social and economic inequality, of course). But wait… there’s more; did you know that there are huge variations between schools in the ways they run NCEA assessments? For example, once school in Auckland may give students four periods in which to draft, craft and edit a piece of creative writing in English. Then the students are allowed to take the work home and type it up on their computer and bring it back with their draft (to ensure authenticity). Sounds OK? Yup (it sounds horrid, I know, but it could be worse…wait for it…). In comparison, a school in Wellington might give students five periods in which to draft, craft, edit and publish a piece of work, but without the use of a computer. These students then get a ‘resub’ period in which they can fix up any errors that they can find in their work. Finally, a school in Christchurch gives students three periods in which to draft, craft, edit and publish a piece of work without a computer with no ‘resub’ period. Yes, some schools are undoubtedly eviler (heh) when it comes to assessment conditions for students, just like some teachers are much meaner to their students than others. Personally, I’d rather be a student in that Auckland school, or even the Wellington school, than the Christchurch one. So, assessment procedures and conditions are ultimately set by the school, which allows some flexibility (although it obviously means no consistency across the country).

I believe that New Zealand schools are essentially setting some kids up for failure via NCEA. And each school gets to do that in whichever way they like – through the courses they offer, through the assessment conditions they allow, or through a nasty combination of the two.

Some of my suggested solutions are:

• Schools need to create more courses within subjects to cater for the wide variety of abilities and interests amongst students. Differentiation is the key, not just in terms of teaching but also with regard to assessing.
• Students should be allowed to take more than one year to gain any Level of NCEA if that is what they need.
• We need to stop using NCEA like it is School C or Bursary. Those days are gone, and we should be thankful for that. (I still don’t know why the hell I only got 10/20 on my Close Reading answers in Bursary English, grrr.)

I’m sure I’ll think of more ways to fix this problem (for example, we could ditch all summative assessment completely and simply do formative assessment - after all, assessment should be about helping students to improve and grow, not collect grades and credits...I'd love that but I know 99% of teachers and parents wouldn't agree). But for now, in summary, I’ll just say: let’s use NCEA like it should be used!

It might actually be easier to create a website than a poster, these days...

Term two, back to school...and despite the impending doom I always feel those few days before, I must say that I LOVE MY CLASSES!! They are such a delight to teach. I don't know if this is just beginner's luck in my first year at this school in not getting any super-ropey students (I do have two bottom-stream/band classes though..), or if students at my new school are just particularly fantastic...but whatever it is, it just makes me LOVE TEACHING SO MUCH!!! :D

Okay, enough capitalisation for effect. My reflection this week is on the new Achievement Standard 1.7 - Create a visual text. 

There is so much potential for awesomeness with new new Standard (despite it being an assessment and assessment generally being not-so-awesome). Traditionally, students have created posters, i.e. 'Static Images', for this Standard. But the Standard has changed and now we have the potential to create lots of crazy and cool new things - websites, graphic novels (well, a chapter of one), dramatic presentations...having said that, this year the students at my school will create a Static Image. And this is where things get more difficult. The Standard has become harder to Achieve, now that it has become aligned with the Curriculum. (Why on earth didn't you align them in the first place, NZQA?! Why?!? Why?!?) In order to Achieve this year, students need to show 'developed ideas', as opposed to just 'straightfoward ideas' as in previous years in their Static Image. In order to Achieve, they have to do what Year 11 students had to do last year for Merit. And this means that there's a heck of a lot of teaching and learning and 'pushing up' of students that needs to be done for those kids who would usually simply Achieve the Standard (many of whom, incidentally, are not working at curriculum level 6...).

So, the way I'm planning this is that...First: I need to define what developed ideas are for the themes we looked at in our studied texts in my year 11 class, in relation to the Explanatory Notes in the Achievement Standard. This is the easiest place for me to start. (Why am I writing in future and/or present tense? I've done this already...)

Next: I will discuss with my co-Assitant HOD about how we go about scaffolding this task for the students. My suggestion will be...well, I'm thinking some sort of awesome template for the planning process that is easy to use for students. This template will start with the students identifying a straighforward idea in their chosen text. The template will then support the students in developing this idea. And then, finally, the template will help students translate this developed idea into a coherent visual image that utilises verbal and visual language features. This template is what I'm working on now (well, when I have time).

Yeah, so, that's all I have to say right now. Progress to be updated, I guess. It's really good to be able to write about actual teaching (albeit assessment) other than some stupid land tremor that almost destroyed me... :-)

Mush

Finally, the end of term has come! Wahooooooooo!!! I was sooo exhausted this week - taught a couple of really crap lessons as a result of not thinking hard enough when planning and also not really planning enough. I had at least one of those moments when I was all, "This'll do,"...and then twenty minutes into the lesson I noticed that my students eyes were rather glazed over and then I had to tell one of them to lift their head up, and some were having a convo about the weekend, and others were scrawling stuff in their diaries that was completely unrelated to English... Never mind - it won't kill their education (I hope). And it's reminded me, yet again, that IT'S ALL IN THE PLANNING.

What a term, eh. I began the year in a rather different environment, having started at a new school...all was going swimmingly then BANG massive earthquake hits and chaotic life ensues. And then school begins again, but with a significantly different structure. And the next thing I know it's week 11 (stupid, stupid, stupid Rugby World Cup) and I'm barely able to drag myself out of bed in the morning because I'm so bloody tired. In some ways, it felt like two terms and was two terms. Non-identical twi-terms. I shall name them Before and After. Before was a honeymoon; After was hard slog, although definitely satisfying in some ways.

Anyway, the holidays are here :-D which should give me just enough time to relax and then begin planning again for the next 11 week term...

I think I've now neglected posting on my blog for the longest period of time since I first started it. Funnily enough, this neglect has coincided with the last few weeks of an 11 week term and a rather huge pile of things to do before it finally ends.

I'd just like to take this opportunity to express my disgust that the school year for 2011 was re-jigged for reasons surrounding the Rugby World Cup. I have ranted about it many times, and heard many many teachers rant about it , but now I'm teaching week 11 and I'm all, whoa this is really stupid. I can't even be bothered explaining why it's so stupid as it all seems so obvious, plus I'm bloody exhausted.

And a final thought - the government sucks. Like, sooooooooooooooooooooo much. They are poor-people hating, state-school-hating, teacher-hating, self-serving businessmen.

Age does not necessarily mean resilience

I've spent the last six weeks - I'm excluding the three 'earthquake weeks' - teaching my year 12 class the novel The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini. 

Normally, I like to teach To Kill a Mockingbird (TKAM)  to Year 12s, but my new school has TKAM set as a Year 11 text, and since I have the top-stream Year 12 class many of them studied TKAM last year. So, whilst I was wondering what to teach, one of my colleagues said she'd like to teach The Kite Runner and I thought, yeah, that'd be cool (I'd read in the NCEA Assessment Reports for A.S.2.3 that it's a text that is written about very well in the exam). So my school ordered a class set of The Kite Runner. This in itself blew me away, because I've never requested a text before and then actually had it show up a week later, all shiny and new and ready for my class to use. How luxurious. How awesome.

Anyway, we have just finished studying it. And despite it's brutality in parts, and also the fact that the pace slows considerably in the middle, my students loved it. I felt kinda weird about it after we got back from the 'earthquake-break' - it's a very traumatic novel. So I told my students my concerns - that I wished I had chosen something a little less depressing. They insisted that it was a good choice. The themes of prejudice, discrimination and betrayal did not put them off. O, to be 16 years old again...

Anyway, they just handed in their essays...and they have completely blown me away. This is a very very smart class indeed - I've known that since the first week I taught them. But most of the essays are excellent, and some are absolutely fantastic. Like, truly amazing. And better than anything I could write, or even think of writing (I am crap at spotting biblical allusions, for a start...). So, I have come to the conclusion that I made the right choice about teaching The Kite Runner, which is nice.

The downside to teaching this novel is that some of the girls in my class recommended I read A Thousand Splendid Suns by the same author. I love it when students recommend me books. So I read about two-thirds of it....and then I got to a horrifically violent scene, had a panic attack and keeled over on the bathroom floor, munting my leg in the process. Incidentally, none of the students in my class use colloquial and over-used words such as 'munting'. They are so much more eloquent than me. Anyway, I have learned from this experience that it's best not to read traumatic novels at a time when life is also a bit traumatic, even if it's OK to study them with a class of teenagers...