The Learning Curves project has documented changes in the subject and assessment choices offered to senior students in six medium-sized New Zealand secondary schools between 2002 and 2004 as the National Qualifications Framework and National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) reforms were progressively implemented. It has also investigated how students perceive and make their subject choices within the context of each school’s curriculum policies and practices.
This report documents findings from the third and final year of Learning Curves and is subtitled Shaping Our Futures: Meeting Secondary Students’ Learning Needs in a Time of Evolving Qualifications.
Key Results
Some key findings and discussions in this third report include:
- students studying across all three levels of the NCEA regard the assessment as a valuable qualification, and believe their teachers and parents do as well
- students are demonstrating increased sophistication in managing their assessments
- students produce different types of NCEA qualifications, allowing them to keep future ‘learning pathways’ open
- over-assessment is a de-motivating factor, but also an issue that can be addressed immediately by schools
- some students see themselves as “successful learners”, others as “successful collectors of NCEA credits”
- there are identifiable clusters of frequently combined subjects