PPTA

Deborah Coddington's spew against NCEA in the latest North and South does not remotely deserve the title of journalism.  Fancy hanging a whole article on the unsubstantiated opinions of one source who hasn't got the guts to be named, another source who has no recent experience and little credibility in his subject area, and John Morris of Auckland Grammar who on NCEA is more like a mechanical toy: wind him up and away he goes with the same old nonsense.  No comment sought from teachers who might have more balanced views, no comment sought from NZQA or the Ministry of Education, and no comment sought from PPTA.  Journalism?  Not a chance! 

If it didn't matter, would we care?  But it does matter.  The qualification that the Coddingtons of this world are so desperate to demolish is something that secondary school students work hard to achieve and their teachers burn the midnight oil to deliver.  When wild and unsubstantiated claims like"cheating, fudging figures, manipulating marks" and "corrupting everyone it touches" are made, it hurts our kids and it hurts our teachers.  This kind of bigotry is the last gasps of the largely Auckland-based neo-conservatives who always fought New Zealand's moves to a standards-based assessment system.  This was because instead of providing a series of drafting gates with built-in failure rates so that the middle- and upper-classes' kids could race through to positions of privilege leaving the working-class kids heading for the abattoir, it values many more types of knowledge and skills and provides opportunities for success for a far wider range of students.

Deborah Coddington should pack up her tent and slink away.  She has long since ceased to deserve the title "journalist".