Education

Brogan Powlesland looks at why NCEA numbers are on the rise if New Zealand's PISA results tell a different story

COMMENT: The Government tells us that education is getting better in New Zealand. In Prime Minister Bill English’s election date announcement, he declared that National would be campaigning on their strong record in Government, including the fact that “more kids are staying at school longer and getting better qualifications”.

Figure 1: NCEA pass rates (2004-2015)

The NCEA numbers seem to back him up. Qualification attainment rates are higher than ever.



Yet the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a three-yearly worldwide study by the OECD of 15-year-old school students' educational performance on mathematics, science, and reading, paints a different story. (see Figure 2)

New Zealand’s PISA scores have been declining since tests started in 2000. Despite NCEA grades improving, actual standards in maths, science and reading have declined.

This strongly suggests that the NCEA qualification is suffering from ‘grade inflation’, where the actual standard signified by a given grade is declining. As with monetary inflation, the qualification is losing value.

Figure 2: NCEA Level 2 pass rates vs PISA scores

The phenomenon is also visible in the measure of functional literacy. Part of NCEA Level 1 requires students to show they are functionally literate. The proportion of students demonstrating this has been increasing since NCEA’s introduction. However, PISA’s measurement of functional literacy shows a slight declining trend.



Figure 3: PISA vs NCEA: functional literacy

Matters are even worse for functional numeracy, where NCEA and PISA measures diversify widely.



Figure 4: PISA vs NCEA functional numeracy

Finally, achieving NCEA Endorsed with Excellence seems to have become easier. When NCEA endorsements were introduced in 2007, it was much more likely for a student to achieve PISA at level 5 or above than to achieve NCEA with Excellence. However, over time, fewer students have been achieving PISA at level 5 and above, particularly in mathematics, and a greater proportion of students have been achieving NCEA with Excellence.



Figure 5: Proportion of students achieving NCEA Endorsed with Excellence vs proportion of students achieving Level 5 and above PISA results

This helps explain why New Zealand universities have been increasing guaranteed entry score requirements for NCEA Level 3 students. For example, the guaranteed entry score required for entry into a Bachelor of Arts programme at the University of Auckland increased from 120 in 2010 to 150 in 2017. This in itself is indicative of grade inflation as it shows students need higher NCEA grades to cope with University-level work.



International comparison: Great Britain

Grade inflation is a serious issue facing many western countries, especially when their governments have attempted to set grade achievement targets. In Britain, grade targeting in schools has been occurring since 1997, across the political spectrum. However, grade inflation became such a problem that in April 2012 the chief executive of Ofqual, the UK public examinations regulator, commented “If you look at the history, we have seen persistent grade inflation for these key qualifications for at least a decade. [It] is virtually impossible to justify and it has done more than anything to undermine confidence in the value of those qualifications”. Similar to New Zealand, Britain faced stagnant PISA scores along with increasing GCSE Grades.

Figure 6: GCSE Grades Awarded (1988-2016)

GCSE pass rates (A* to C grades) increased from 41.9 percent in 1988 to 69.8 percent in 2011, the peak of Britain’s grade inflation. Looking at the twelve years up to this peak, the number of students achieving GCSE increased from 59.2 percent to 69.8 percent, an overall increase of 18 percent. NCEA Level 1 pass rates have inflated twice as fast as British GCSE pass rates.

