NCEA excellence endorsement rates increased to record levels in Auckland, Waikato and Northland last year.
school exams Photo: supplied
Students in the three regions were allowed to skip exams and get unexpected event grades calculated by their schools because they had lost so much classroom time to lockdowns.
Qualification Authority figures published today show Auckland had the best results of the three regions with nearly a quarter of Year 12 and Year 13 students and 28 percent of Year 11 students receiving excellence endorsements.
But in most other regions excellence endorsement rates were lower last year than in 2020 and in many cases among the lowest ever.
In Wellington and Canterbury, for example, about 14.5 per cent of Year 13 students received an excellence endorsement at level 3, the lowest rates since 2014.
Vaughan Couillault. Photo: RNZ
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said the good results in Auckland, Waikato and Northland were likely due to schools continuing to teach and assess students even after exams began.
"Teachers were able to continue to engage with students for a longer period of time through term four to gather that evidence of learning and evidence of progress and so probably it's more of a function of additional significant effort from both students and teachers to make sure we've gathered that quality evidence that can prove they knew what they were doing," he said.
Couillault said the students deserved the grades they received.
"No-one's been given a free ride. It's just the way in which they were assessed in those particular pieces of work and the additional period of time that they had to do it because of that lockdown may have meant that they earned a grade higher than they would in other conditions," he said.
Qualifications Authority deputy chief executive Andrea Gray said unexpected event grades were an appropriate response to the level of disruption schools in Auckland, Northland and parts of Waikato experienced.
"The UEGs [unexpected event grades] recorded by schools were, on average, higher than their historic pattern of excellence achievement in external examinations, but lower than their average excellence achievement in internal assessments. This resulted in elevated excellence achievement in UEG regions," she said.
"Schools in the three UEG regions were asked to provide NZQA with detailed information about how they derived and quality assured their UEGs. Where there were changes in UEG performance profile, schools say this was largely due to a wider range of ways evidence was gathered, instead of relying on one-off practice exams."
Overall, NCEA pass rates dropped slightly last year but were higher than pre-pandemic levels with 80 percent of Year 12 students achieving level two and almost 71 percent of Year 13s achieving level three.
The figures published today also showed a recovery in Scholarship exam pass rates to 28 percent after dipping to 25 percent in 2020.