John MacDonald: Should NCEA cater more to students that aren't going to university?

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

It must be tricky being at school and feeling like you’re not doing anything to prepare you for what you actually want to do when you leave.

The Government is starting to think about that after this new report from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority which says NCEA is too focused on kids wanting to go to university.

The report was prepared for Education Minister Erica Stanford who is promising some big changes.

The report says NCEA doesn’t do enough to get school students ready to work in the trades and hospitality. It says many students end up doing subjects that aren’t relevant to what they want to do when it comes to a career.

So could that be fixed, do you think, if students had the option of studying for an NCEA “trades entrance” qualification, similar to the university entrance qualification?

Dr Michael Johnston from the NZ Initiative think tank thinks so. And I think so too.

The irony is that, when NCEA was first developed, it was all about not being so focused on the academic kids and providing something which gave all students a useful qualification to take with them when they leave school.

But, as the qualifications authority is saying to the education minister, that hasn’t turned out to be the case for anyone wanting to be builders, or plumbers, or sparkies etc.

Which the tertiary education union agrees with and which is backed up by the numbers Dr Michael Johnston from the NZ Initiative has been throwing around.

He says 44 percent of school leavers aren’t enrolled in tertiary education. And only six percent of them end up in work-based training doing things like trades.

From what we’re hearing from the NZ Qualifications Authority and the tertiary education union, a big reason for that is that NCEA doesn’t do enough for students who either know they want to do a trade or the kids who might end up doing a trade if they learned more about it while at school.

And the brilliance of NCEA being expanded to include a trades entrance qualification - as well as the university entrance qualification - would be that, even if someone did leave school with a “trades entrance” certificate, they would still have the option of going to university if they wanted to down the track.

Because, once someone turns 20, they can go to uni whether they’ve got UE or not.

Michael Johnston says school students need to be given a much clearer idea of their options.

He says: "We just esteem university education much more highly than apprenticeship training for no really good reason. Trades people can earn great money and there's no reason why an arts degree, for example, should be seen as better than an electrical qualification or a plumbing qualification.”

Amen to that. Which is why I think his idea of giving high school kids the option of doing NCEA trades or NCEA university entrance is a brilliant idea

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