Radical Assessment and Qualification Reform in New Zealand: The Rocky Road to National Certificate of Educational Achievement.

This paper critically analyses the changes made to secondary school assessment in general and public school examinations in particular in mid-1980s New Zealand in response to mounting concerns expressed by teacher unions, employers, and politicians that the nation's assessment and examination systems were both outdated and largely irrelevant to the needs of secondary school students in a rapidly changing labour market. This paper also explores the debate over educational standards and the Labour Government's decision finally to abandon long-standing norm-referenced senior secondary school examinations in favour of a modular-standards-based assessment system (the SCOTVEC administered National Certificate) then being implemented in Scotland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]