Administration

Schools have a series of compliance steps to ensure they fulfill the NZQA requirements and it was felt by the teachers that the administration required has increased the workload markedly. A number of these steps relate directly to the

planning, moderating, assessing and recording of Achievement Standards. As a result schools manage the process in very similar ways although there are peculiarities within some schools designed to give them a process that works within their school culture, for example Cape High School ensures that all necessary information is on the school web site as this is an effective means of communication to their student body, Te Mata has moderation meetings each term specifically focusing on moderation of student work in comparison with Heretaunga whose HOD moderates the majority of the student work .

Schools establish policies to fulfill the NZQA and MOE requirements and these along with the curriculum and Achievement Standard guidelines create the blue print for HODs and Teachers in Charge (TIC) to design their courses. The principal’s nominees check the courses against the school policies. Principal’s nominees set up the electronic mark books providing class lists, Achievement Standard numbers and record assessed grades. Many teachers use the electronic record along with other forms but their responses indicated that the process was straight forward and efficient now they had become used to the system.

Principal’s nominees spoke of the submission of information to the NZQA and the number of entries and checks that were required. It seemed that the beginning and end of the year was the time where the majority of entries were made although principal’s nominees managed this differently partly in response to the school size and student needs. In Cape, a large school, the Principal’s Nominee when talking of the number of entries per student in comparison with the previous norm referenced process identified the increase in administration of the NCEA:

[There are] 700 kids entered here [at the school], 701, that’s 2300 entries. So that’s 2300 results. Although it’s electronic in some respects there is a lot of toing and froing that there was never before. [For individual students] Standards in, standards out, take them out of that one, there weren’t here [for the assessment], put them in that one [a new standard], they did that one last year [so they have to change standards]. Yeah, a lot more.

In a comparison with the previous norm referenced system for administration the Kahuraniki Principal’s Nominee felt:

There is a lot more for NZQA, there’s a lot more. So with 6th form Certificate you only just got busy around accrediting time, around the meeting, where we had to do analysis of the marks. You had to do some analysis to get a link between the subjects and … you’d give out the grades and you had a certain amount of leeway to play around with. But this is a lot more. A lot more bulkiness.

Both Cape and Kahuraniki Principal’s Nominees talked specifically of sending their student assessment entries away monthly throughout the year so students had regular updated records of their results.

The first set of entries go away May 1st. From May 1st it’s about every month from then on. At this time of year, I’d send them more than once. This is a crucial time. We had a huge week last week [end of September] where all our externals had to be absolutely right, not so much worry about the internals, and also the students are up lifting their grades now. A few of our students, not a lot of our students. Some of our students are going on to their site, to see … if their internals are not there, they’re grizzling so I try to send a file away every couple of weeks now.

Kahuraniki Principal’s Nominee

All schools had similar checks on the recording of grades for internals with lists being printed, normally at the end of the year. Students were encouraged to keep an accurate record of the grades so they could check the grades and sign to verify them before returning to the principal’s nominee. All internally assessed work is retained throughout the year in case of an appeal on the grade recorded.

Moderation was identified as a significant contributor to the workload within schools. However the moderation while impacting on teachers’ workload also had developed strong collaborative processes although it can be questioned whether these were contrived as a means to manage the policy requirements or collegial

with associated values of shared power, trust and innovation. Cape teachers tended to mark their own work then moderate within their department with teachers at the same level if there was more than one class. The Cape Teacher said “I’d have to say I think it [moderating with colleagues] is our weakness but then again, finding time to get together, we are so busy, the time that might suit me might not suit”. Heretaunga had developed a system of meeting to discuss the assessment prior to student completion, marking most of their class work then meeting part way through the process to talk through concerns and panel mark the excellence questions if needed. The HOD felt this gave consistency for all students but also the opportunity for teachers to talk through issues and agree on the challenging problems. Moderation was done within the department but the HOD checked all Excellence graded work. Kahuraniki moderated in a similar way to Cape however, two of the teachers interviewed were sole teachers at specific year levels. One used another department to moderate the work and the other used a colleague in another school teaching the same year level to moderate. In both cases teachers felt that they made choices based on trust and professional respect which helped them as individuals but also provided for the students. Te Mata had developed a system of having internal moderation department meetings twice each term. This was set up by the Principal’s Nominee to improve the quality management process and it was recognised that it was still going through the development phase. The HOD felt that there was reluctance from teachers to attend the moderation meetings but from the management point of view it had served an important purpose of increasing teacher talk, understanding and work expectation. The assistant teacher talked of the same meeting as being difficult due to the accountability and the need for trust and development of confidence. This situation could be seen as contrived but one that is in the process of introduction and change.

It is clear that schools have created systems that fulfill the NZQA requirements and while using similar processes have developed differences. The impact on collegial relationships with such contact is significant.