I am part of the Guinea pig generation. Everything new happens to be tested on us. First was merging schools in year four, meningoccocal B jabs in year five, and the cervical Cancer jabs in year nine and ten. These were all tried and tested on all of us who started school in the year 2000.
Now we are testing a new version of NCEA (National certificate of educational acheivement). The new NCEA is harder and also includes an interesting new marking schedual . We; the babies of 1995 were picked again to be the guinea pigs, although this time its not all bad.
The new marking schedual makes it easyer to pass when you have no idea what you are on about and although the grades are harder to get, achievement with merit/exelence is still possible. you are given a grade for each part of a question (N0, N1, N2, A3, A4, M5, M6, E7, E8) as apposed to the old schedual where you could get not acheived, achieved, merit or exelence.
We also have less papers for exams so we have less stuff we need to do during our final exams. We also get the bad stuff though. Teachers don't know how much depth to go into with subjects that have changed dramatically such as biology, maths and chemistry. So because they don't know we are either taughted to much or to little. Our teachers are given as little information as 'Show understanding of linked genes'. This could be either teach the entirety of these topics or learn the deffinition and how to tell whetheir genes are on the same chromosome or not. I just feel sorry for my awesome bio teacher, because I know that some people ( Who dont study independantly) will blame her if she didnt cover it well enought. Previously this topic was taught in year 13 along with incomplete dominance, lethtal alleles, co-dominance, and multiple alleles.
Physics, maths and chemistry were however taught in too much depth out of fear of us all failing because we wern't taught enough. For chemistry we were not given a formular sheet, even though in math and physisc we were which probably the only reason some people (again those who don't study independantly) passed. Just. Maybe with an A3?
Im sure that NZQA (New Zealand qualifications authority) only did this to us to try and help form a more intellegent society in the future, but along with the higher uiversity standards, they are only making it harder for us to succeed. I under stand that our education standards need to be tougher, but I just wish for a change that it was not us.... Oh well i guess we'll all just have to suck it up, study hard, and learn how to deal with being throwen in the deep end befor learning how to float.
:)
