NCEA vs Cambridge Exams

Instead, let's focus on giving young people the skills society will be crying out for in the years or months to come.  Practical vocations such as water-cannon operator, wasteland scavenger, penguin coffin logger, Thunderdome umpire, dissident strangler, henchperson and pie ingredient.      Charlie Brooker

 

“Auckland Grammar to give NCEA exams flick” read the headline, followed by “One of the country's most prestigious schools, Auckland Grammar, has become the first state school to dump NCEA exams”.  Actually, it’s not quite that dramatic; the school has offered the alternative Cambridge exams for a number of years, and from next year is making it the default choice for year 11 pupils – estimating that it will be taken by 90% of them, up from the 60% currently choosing to sit it.  A number of NCEA only papers will also be offered.

Judging by the nature of the statements made by some commentators - such as the Cambridge exams being a third world examination system, and considering that they’ve already been already used for a number of years in some schools here - it would seem the declaration by Auckland Grammar that it was extending the programme broke an informal modus vivendi on offering these differing methods of assessment.

The statements made by the school Headmaster, John Morris, regarding the change are also at first glance contradictory.  He states that it will better suit the pupils, while also saying that the school will allow weaker pupils to sit NCEA.  I always found doing things that suited me was easier than doing things that don’t – in which case surely weaker pupils should also have Cambridge as a preference?  There is of course a subtext to the comments which gives them sense, and which is consistent with and an extension of Mr Morris’s previous criticisms of NCEA.  But the statements also recognise some of the strengths of NCEA over systems like Cambridge, without explicitly saying it.

Before NCEA 5^th form (year 11) students sat School Certificate, the minimum secondary school qualification available.  School Cert. was available in a range of academic and trade subjects and wasn't internally assessed, meaning students results were dependent on an end of year external assessment.  That end of year assessment was then scaled so only 50% of people passed.  It really isn't logical to send half of your population into the workforce without a minimum qualification, whether it was because of lack of ability, a learning style which didn't suit the assessment system, or interests and abilities in areas other than the subjects offered.  NCEA addresses these issues through the range of subjects offered and the inclusion of internal assessment in the final results.  It is still possible to fail subjects, but there is a good chance that there will be something the student will be good at and will receive acknowledgement for that.  NCEA has proved particularly successful in raising the achievement of some groups who historically haven't done well, and the Employers Federation have acknowledged that NCEA gives employers a good indication of prospective employees’ strengths and knowledge.

In his response to a Herald editorial Mr Morris has said that NCEA is deeply flawed and patently unfair, whereas Cambridge is fair and consistent.  He also states that the Ministry of Education has agreed that schools don't have to offer NCEA.  If you believe it is flawed and unfair, and you don't have to offer it, then why do so?  Cambridge is similar to the old School Certificate, although it isn't scaled.  Some of the criticisms of that system therefore apply to Cambridge i.e. some people aren't going to pass and therefore gain a minimum school qualification at year 11.  This isn't fair or appropriate for those students, and Auckland Grammars streaming of people who will benefit from the NCEA model - but might fail at Cambridge - into NCEA is an acknowledgement of the flaws of the Cambridge model and the strengths of NCEA.  To criticise NCEA but then use it this way could be considered cynical.

In New Zealand use of Cambridge is biased towards academically gifted students in high decile schools, without a study that randomly assigned students and schools to either system it is impossible to judge whether it is “better” than NCEA.  A study by Oxford University in 2008 comparing achievement prior to the introduction of national standards in England with that years group of students showed that while it improved the average the very talented students weren't doing nearly as well, with the study's authors suggesting it was because of a different focus that standards brought to schools.  Whether this is directly applicable to the New Zealand system is debatable.  It does raise an interesting question however – if you argue that NCEA is a fairer system because it allows more students to achieve to a higher standard than the old system, and if it can be demonstrated that some students would benefit even more from another system than NCEA, isn't it hypocritical to deny them that benefit?

Monday-ising Waitangi and Anzac Days

The call to Monday-ise Waitangi and Anzac days “gaining momentum” as reported in the Herald seems to have been a bit of an overstatement based on subsequent coverage.

I’m interested in the validity of the arguments presented by the leader of the Labour Party, Mr Goff, and the President of the EMPU, Mr Little, as reported in the Herald article.  Essentially their argument is that as these two public holidays are on a fixed date, when they fall on a Saturday or a Sunday people don’t get the benefit of a day off and are deprived of their right to 11 public holidays per year.

Waitangi Day and Anzac Day have their own Acts of Parliament, and the particular piece of legislation that Mr Goff and Mr Little refer to – The Holidays Act 2003, while listing them as holidays, makes no mention of when the public holiday should be observed.  Section 4 of the Waitangi Day Act 1976 specifically says it should be observed on the day it falls including a Saturday or Sunday, and Section 3 the older Anzac Day Act 1966 also says it should be observed on the day it falls - and then rather quaintly refers to treating the morning of Anzac Day as if it was a Sunday (for those old enough to remember how New Zealand was on a Sunday).

There are other Acts – such as the Shop Trading Act and Sale of Liquor Act - which also refer to public holidays but have no bearing on this discussion.

The Holidays Act only applies to employees – so if you are self employed, such as a sole trader or in a partnership, or some other sort of working relationship, or a volunteer, or aren’t working, then you aren’t one of the “people” they are referring to.  But we can narrow it down even further.  If you work on a public holiday you are entitled to an alternative day, and if you normally work the day and don’t, then you get paid the day - and that’s whether or not it is on a weekend i.e. you do gain the benefit of these days if they fall on the weekend if it's one of your normal working days.  If this is the case you also aren’t one of the people Mr Little refers to when he says "It's an issue of fairness in that the Holidays Act says you are entitled to 11 statutory days off and the best you can hope for this year is nine."

In fact there are many workers who don’t get 11 public holidays as paid work holidays even in a normal year.  Section 44 of the Act lists the public holidays employees are entitled to and Section 46 says you should get a paid day off, but section 48 says that section 46 has been complied with if the day isn’t a normal working day for the employee – which is why Monday to Friday workers don’t get anything for the two days if they fall on the weekend.  Section 44 also says if two public holidays fall on the same day they should be treated as one (which is happening this year with Easter Monday and Anzac Day).  If you are a worker who doesn’t work Monday to Friday e.g. you work part time, or are full time but a rotating roster, or perhaps do three to four 12 hour shifts per week, chances are you already miss out on being paid for some public holidays per year.  

The wording of section 3 outlines the purpose of these sections of the Act.  Public Holidays are “for the observance of days of national, religious, or cultural significance”;

• if you normally work it but have the day off so you can observe this special day you are paid so don’t get penalised financially
• if you have to work it you are compensated for missing the day
• if it is already your day off then you get to observe the day and you aren’t penalised financially (since you’ve already got paid for your normal weeks work)

Annual leave is “to provide the opportunity for rest and recreation” for a fixed number of days, whereas public holidays relate to the nature of the day and whether they are paid days off is a matter of swings and roundabouts. 

The statement “the Holidays Act says you are entitled to 11 statutory days off and the best you can hope for this year is nine” is misleading – the Act doesn’t deprive you of a day off if it falls on a day which isn’t your working day, just a paid holiday, which is a different thing.  Monday-ising it actually exacerbates this issue for some workers, while benefiting others – and is simply irrelevant for many people.  The rhetoric doesn’t reflect this at all.

The old Holidays Act was a classic example of how not to Monday-ise a holiday, you could end up working the actual Christmas Day and if it was on the weekend, missing out on time off with your family and friends, and receive no additional financial benefit or day off – and that is a key point.  Mr Little suggests that "the point of observing significant days is you take time to reflect. That simply doesn't happen on a weekend."  The point of a significant day is that the DAY is significant – ask an American whether the 4^th of July is less significant on a weekend, or the French the same for Bastille Day, or a New Zealander whether they reflected more on Christmas Day last year on Monday the 27^th than on Saturday the 25^th.

The way this part of the Act operates already is consistent with its purpose.  Whether you feel that everyone should have a fixed number of public holiday ‘paid’ days a year is just a matter of opinion.  Let’s form an opinion based on good debate, not misleading statements.

 

http://www.stus.com

South Canterbury Finance - pointing the finger

The collapse of South Canterbury Finance and related entities has lead to an interesting exercise in blame attribution - and there are reasons we should care about what happened even if we weren’t directly affected.  SFC is only one of a number of finance companies which failed in the last few years, and as Brian Gaynor points out in the NZ Herald, banks – particularly the big four Australian ones - have increased their dominance in the financial sector in New Zealand.  The estimate he provides is that banks will account for over 80% of the total financial assets here after the effects of the failures are fully accounted for.   He also states that as banks are risk averse when it comes to lending, it means bad news for higher risk and innovative projects.

We have often been told these projects are the key to our economic growth.  In Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism Chandler hypothesised that the most important reason Britain lost out in the second industrial revolution is that there was an emphasis on a large and stable income over risky investments – and these are characteristics of the banks dominating this sector of our economy, a sector on which all the others depend.

I’m not an economist or accountant, nor do I have any special knowledge of the circumstances around the SCF failure, only what has piqued my interest enough to read in the mainstream media.  The main purpose of this post is to analyse common reactions based on the psychology of blame.

In general our viewpoint is deterministic.  When we see an effect we assume it has a cause, and we will often look human agency as the reason - if there is a loss, we look for the person or persons responsible to attribute fault to.  Whether we do that, and who we blame, depends both on our individual nature and on the situation.

 

There are a few blessed -or irrational, depending on your point of view - individuals who always see the benefit in any situation - “yes, some good will come of it!”, “others have lost so much more!”,  and the almost ubiquitous business mantra “it's not a problem – it's a challenge!”.

 People also vary in their locus of control – the external; “the examiners were at fault, it was too hard and was unfair”, the internal; “It's me - I'm just not smart enough to understand the subject”, and hopefully a few more balanced; “The exam was harder than expected so I need to adjust my study and exam technique to do better next time”. 

The non-blamers don't interest us here, as journalists and reader comments have given both the affected and non-affected plenty of opportunity to give their point of view we are only going to look at those peoples reactions.

One of the big determinants on whether we look for a cause is the size of the loss - the more severe the outcome the more effort will go into seeking out a culprit.  This is a given for SCF – the loss was large and affected many people, and blame is being attributed.  The blame can be generally be characterised as either incompetence e.g. poor record keeping, inadequate risk management, dysfunctional company structure; or conspiracy e.g. the company wouldn't have failed but “people” were jealous of the success and/or wanted the assets and conspired to cause the failure.

The three factors I believe driving these attributions are;

·         perceived authority and knowledge

·         personal relationship

·         proximity to the failure

Much of the blame has fallen on Alan Hubbard, the founder of the company, and in attributing responsibility to him much debate has centred on how much control – or authority – he had at the time of the failure.  His record in amassing individual wealth and in building his businesses indicate good investment knowledge, so some people are attributing responsibility based on the company performance in light of this expertise.

There is a geographical bias in people choosing not to blame him.  In the US where personal injury claims are common there is a bias towards suing strangers e.g. in a vehicle accident a passenger is more likely to sue the driver of the other car rather than the driver of the car they were in.  Mr Hubbard is well known in South Canterbury, and if not known personally most people would know someone who does or has been helped by him.  We also tend to accumulate knowledge of high status individuals (something we share with other hominids), leading to an assumption of greater familiarity than with other strangers - and Mr Hubbard had a high status within the region.  How well we know a person affects how much we will blame them.

If we don't want to attribute responsibility for one of the above reasons, but are looking for a human agency as the cause of the failure, then that really only leaves the Government officials that have stepped in.  That causes a problem.  For someone to be responsible they had to have some proximity to the failure, and time wise the officials didn't.  The answer is that while the company had some problems, it actually wouldn't have failed until the intervention – proximity problem solved!  Why did they step in?  Maybe incompetency, but more popularly it was a conspiracy.

 South Canterbury residents protest over SFO investigation - photo: TV3 News

South Canterbury Finance is atypical of the finance company failures such as Hanover, in that there hasn't been any pointing to greed on the part of the company owners and managers – a popular blame attribution - playing a part in the collapse.

So, the divergent views on the cause of the failure we have heard so far, actually tell us more about the people expressing them than about the failure itself.   The problem with this is that, in the words of Dale Carnegie “no one ever wins an argument”.  Entering the argument by publicly expressing a point of view forces the participant to defend, justify and therefore invest in it more; so the early very public and vocal expressions of support and blame in the SCF failure will mean that when the investigation into it is complete, many people will never accept the outcome if it differs from their already expressed opinion.

Courier Driver Fatal Accident

photo: www.stuff.co.nz

The death of a courier driver in Taranaki at first glance seems to draw together a number of threads that have otherwise been in the news recently – contractors vs employees (Hobbit actors dispute), employment health and safety (Pike River Mine), and road safety (everywhere).

Courier drivers are contractors, even though there are many conditions of their work which would classify them employees under the standard tests used by the courts.  This was a decision reached by the Court of Appeal in Cunningham v TNT Express Worldwide (New Zealand) Ltd [1993].  A consequence of the decision is that laws such as the Employment Relations Act don't apply to them, and the company they contract to can avoid many direct costs of employment such as ACC levy's, holiday and sick pay, and Kiwisaver.  It's a very competitive business and there doesn't seem to be any evidence that companies are making excessive profits from this model, it just drives the cost we pay for this service down (although there is anecdotal evidence that some courier companies have retained profit margins but reduced charges by squeezing the earnings of drivers).

One of the conditions which doesn't apply is the minimum wage.  It is alleged that drivers are driving for 13 hour days to “earn” $80 ($6.15 per hour – less than half the minimum wage).  As contractors, courier drivers are responsible for their own expenses – such as vehicle running costs – so the $80 figure would seem to be a simplification of the actual pay situation; perhaps it's the average net profit per day.  Nevertheless, let’s accept that it is a ballpark figure for earnings.

The cause and effect relationship which has been implied is that driver fatigue was a major part of the accident, that it was caused by working long hours - necessary to earn a minimal living.  While driver fatigue is one of the major causes of road accidents (594 accidents in the 2009 statistics), the argument doesn't necessarily stack up in this instance. 

The original accident pyramid as developed by W.H.Heinrich in 1931 showing ratios found in first workplace study

You can look at accidents as a pyramid.  At the very bottom are a large number of  “close miss” incidents, for every n of these is one injury or damage causing accident, for every n of these is one major accident, and for every n of major accidents is a fatality.  A lot of road safety campaigns – speed, drink driving, fatigue – is based on reducing the size of the base of the pyramid to eliminate the likelihood of serious injuries and fatalities at the top.  It was implied that a 12 hour day without breaks is “normal” for the industry and for this driver i.e. at the time of the accident he wasn't performing outside his normal working parameters.  If these long working hours were a factor in the accident, and they are the normal conditions, we would therefore expect to see courier drivers disproportionately represented across all levels of the pyramid as an incident/km driven statistic.  This doesn't seem to be the case in published statistics.  The 2009 statistics only lists 1 of the 594 fatigue factor accidents as being caused by exceeding driving hours.

One piece of legislation which can't be avoided by using contractors is the Health and Safety in Employment Act, which covers all people on a worksite, not just employees (and “worksite” is defined pretty broadly).  Fatigue is a hazard, so there should be controls in place to “eliminate, isolate or minimize” it.  The first of these is the legislative control on the amount of time spent driving without a break (30 minutes after five hours).  For large vehicles (over 6 tonne) log books are required to be kept to ensure this happens.  This isn't the case for smaller vehicles, however the legislation still needs to be complied with.  As the driver's day is largely controlled by their despatcher it will be hard to argue that their contracting company wasn't aware that drivers weren't complying i.e. as the Principal they have a responsibility.  The Act also requires people not to put themselves or others in danger by their actions, so there is an onus also on the driver to comply to minimize this hazard; therefore the economic argument that drivers ignore the law because they wouldn't earn enough otherwise is not a defense.

Until the coroner reaches a finding we won't know the full reasons for this tragedy.  It does seem disrespectful for someone to stand up at this point and try to give a dogmatic narrative for the cause of it, ignoring the driver’s responsibility to comply with the law and the lack of statistical evidence for an industry wide problem.  If we do accept their reasoning though, it leads somewhere more uncomfortable.  Courier service fees are partly driven by cost, but also driven by value – the amount people are prepared to pay for the service before they use it.  If the accident was caused by driver fatigue; caused by working long hours to earn a living; and the rate they earn (less than the minimum wage) is possible because of the contractor rather than employee model utilised in the industry; and no one is making unreasonable profits; then the end result of the value the consumers place on this service - if we accept this argument – is a life.