NCEA Report by Professor Paul Black 2000
Professor Paul Black of King's College, London, was invited to write a report on the proposals for the National Certificate of Educational Achievement in 2000. This page provides a summary and analysis of Professor Black's report, and the report itself is available for download below.
4 Continuity of Standards
The paper here addresses the issues of technical comparability across time of the standards for performance.
In a country of New Zealand's size there is a limited number of experts in assessment in each curriculum area. It is expected that current expertise will continue to be used in the implementation.
As suggested in the paper, the policy recognises that strong reliance on the professional judgement of experienced examiners is necessary. To this end, the proposal is costed on the basis of using three examiners for each subject area during the introductory period, so that their combined judgement can be accessed.
While we acknowledge the need for care in the early release of samples of assessed work, the New Zealand Qualifications Authority has for some time now released all student examination papers. Teachers therefore have an historical base of assessment examples from the current system, and would expect this situation to continue.