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| Thread ID: 79221 | 2007-05-12 22:17:00 | What is the NZQA thinking... | somebody (208) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 549363 | 2007-05-13 09:32:00 | I wonder how many students these days remember their times tables (which is necessary even in labourers jobs where there are no calculators. The amount of times I have to do basic Mathematics on the job is amazing, glad I still remember how to work it out in my head :D) Yeah I agree that basic mental arithmetic is a very good thing to know. It's useful in the real world. All the other stuff that we do in maths that isn't really useful unless you're going to be a maths researcher or something, and then all the long calculations are done by computer. |
roddy_boy (4115) | ||
| 549364 | 2007-05-13 10:02:00 | I totally despise NZQA. Especially for making NCEA. I am extremely disgusted at how I'm supposedly 'learning' at school. NCEA doesn't motivate me at all to learn, and when I try to learn, I fail; but if I don't try to learn, I pass, even with merits or in some cases excellences. And now it's getting worse by allowing students using hi-tech calculators and such? Someone really needs to kill the minister of education. Or whoever is responsible for the piece of crap they call NCEA. |
qazwsxokmijn (102) | ||
| 549365 | 2007-05-13 10:02:00 | I would have to argue that it's far easier to err somewhere in the manual calculations and throw your answers completely off than to miskey, as you put it.Mmmm. But if you have worked it out with pencil and paper, you will find it easier to go back and check your workings - all your values are sitting there on the paper, in all their erroneous glory... :) | johcar (6283) | ||
| 549366 | 2007-05-13 10:04:00 | This is pathetic. Rich students who can spend $475 on a calculator will have a massive, massive advantage over everybody else, while not learning anything :(. In every decent test, mostly before NCEA though, marks are given for the process, and marks for the answer. Using a calculator isn't a maths process that deserves marks. What year are you qazwsxokmijn? I'm in Year 13 and I totally agree with you. But after years on NCEA I've grown used to it, and that's bad! I did Cambridge A-level maths last year (because I did Year 12 maths a year early) and it made me realise how much better I would have learned if they never introduced NCEA. |
george12 (7) | ||
| 549367 | 2007-05-13 10:23:00 | A thorough understanding of the basics and the ability to apply the theory to previously un-encountered problems is necessary to succeed in any Mathematics based technical subject. Punching data in sequence into a programable calculator does not necessarily mean that the student really understands what they are doing. | KenESmith (6287) | ||
| 549368 | 2007-05-13 10:26:00 | This is pathetic. Rich students who can spend $475 on a calculator will have a massive, massive advantage over everybody else, while not learning anything :(. In every decent test, mostly before NCEA though, marks are given for the process, and marks for the answer. Using a calculator isn't a maths process that deserves marks. What year are you qazwsxokmijn? I'm in Year 13 and I totally agree with you. But after years on NCEA I've grown used to it, and that's bad! I did Cambridge A-level maths last year (because I did Year 12 maths a year early) and it made me realise how much better I would have learned if they never introduced NCEA. I think they should go back to school C and Bursary exams. It is not perfect and I personally don't like exams, but it is similar to how assessment is done at university. I don't understand NCEA, and have no intention of learning it, therefore I would never employ anyone who doesn't have university qualifications or bursary as they are now the only ones I understand. |
rogerp (6864) | ||
| 549369 | 2007-05-13 10:40:00 | The School Certificate and University Entrance and Bursary examinations were fine, it was the ranking system in Sixth Form Certificate that was the real problem. | roddy_boy (4115) | ||
| 549370 | 2007-05-13 10:51:00 | The School Certificate and University Entrance and Bursary examinations were fine, it was the ranking system in Sixth Form Certificate that was the real problem. Yeah, I must admit that 6th form cert did suck, as it was internally assessed and probably isn't too much different from NCEA from what I understand of NCEA. School C results dictated the amount of 1's, 2's,3's etc that each school received that they could give out in sixth form cert. This meant that if you were in a small school, like I was, even if you got top marks in a particular subject in your year, you may not have been awarded a 1, if there weren't enough 1's, or if students performed badly as a whole in school C. It probably worked ok for very large schools, but students in small schools were very disadvantaged. We also had a couple of asian students who came in and took almost all the avaliable 1's between them. |
rogerp (6864) | ||
| 549371 | 2007-05-13 10:58:00 | NZQA has a lot to answer for - the object of studying any subject is to obtain a working knowledge, marked assignments are used both to develop practical skills and assess competence with examinations supposedly being the benchmark to determine whether a student has developed the required levels in theoretical knowledge and competence in a subject to be granted a pass. There has been a serious erosion of standards in many subjects, not just mathematics, with students arriving at University supposedly to study English, having minimal English grammatical skills and not even having read any major works of English literature. Dilution of standards, in any academic subject degrades the education system, students should be required to meet an internationally accepted level of competency in their subjects, if NZ educational qualifications are to be taken seriously. This rationale was behind several high profile secondary schools opting to use the Cambridge examinations. |
KenESmith (6287) | ||
| 549372 | 2007-05-13 11:03:00 | I think they should go back to school C and Bursary exams. It is not perfect and I personally don't like exams, but it is similar to how assessment is done at university. I don't understand NCEA, and have no intention of learning it, therefore I would never employ anyone who doesn't have university qualifications or bursary as they are now the only ones I understand.The same people would still be in charge of writing the exams and deciding things like what sort of calculators are acceptable etc, so I don't know that would achieve anything. NCEA is very simple to understand, and is actually very similar to how university is structured (I can't comment on school C etc because I don't know the details). Each subject is broken down into three levels (level 1,2,3 vs stage 1,2,3), each subject has a small amount of internal assessment (assuming we are talking traditional subjects like English, Calculus, History, Chemistry etc) and an end of year exam (similar to having assignments and essays and an exam at university) and your final grade for each subject is a letter (A,M,E vs A+, A, A-, B+ ... C-). Pretty similar, although with many flaws that need to be addressed such as not listing failed grades, using AME for every single aspect of each assessment instead of just the final grade, and not having the equivalents of +'s and -'s (ie. just three possible grades). If they could fix all that up, then there would be very few flaws left. Most of the other issues would happen regardless of whether it was NCEA or not (ie. NZQA would still be deciding to do stupid things like allow text message language in essays).:2cents: | maccrazy (6741) | ||
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