3rd August 2017

Speech

I’m sure that most of you have been in the situation where a relative or close family friend asks you, “so what are you going to do when you leave school?” And the 90% of you who have no clue what you’re going to be doing answer with some bullshit answer that’s fabricated just to give them an answer that’ll please them. This is an issue that annoys me as i think the current system used in schools in NZ don’t provide students with adequate knowledge on which subjects will lead to their future careers as well as many other flaws within the system. The current system used in New Zealand to categorize the intellectual ability of students in years 11-13 is the national certificate of educational achievement, also known as NCEA . I believe that this system has some large flaws. As i have already discussed some of these include NCEA having no direction in terms of students futures, and being able to be manipulated too easily for students to take shortcuts and for teachers to award grades based on personal opinions rather than content. As i have been studying under this system for the last two years i have had my fair share of good and bad experiences and i now have some strong opinions on the pro’s and cons of NCEA.

 

The first point i would like to discuss, which is also the point that annoys me the most about NCEA, is the practicality in terms of preparing leaving students for the real world. For example, students who are looking to go to university aren’t provided with any information on what subjects to take for prospective future courses. This leads to students being at risk of not having the previous knowledge for university or polytechnic courses and could decrease the possibility of young people moving into productive and well paid careers. This is frustrating for me as a young person i am commonly put under pressure to prove my knowledge in certain areas and now i’m discovering that this hard work could have little to no practical purpose after i leave school.

 

Another large issue that i believe is present in this system is that it is too easy for teachers to be able to form good or bad opinions on specific students and award grades to these students based on personal opinions. An example of this is teachers who have grudges against certain students and mark papers with this in the back of their minds. The moderation process helps decrease the chances of this happening however i believe it is still too easy for unfair grades to be awarded. I also think that teachers come into the marking process with an expected amount of certain grades to be awarded and if the class has done better than expected or worse than students are also at risk of being awarded the wrong grade.

 

Another point that needs to be discussed is the fact that students are able to manipulate the system to increase their chances of getting good grades. Especially now that most internals are completed through electronic devices, students are able to easily cheat in test environments through hiding information in different applications, and get other people to do their work or gather information from other sources for internals that are completed outside of the classroom. Students who take these risks and plagerise obviously do get caught out from time to time, however if you are smart about it and

 

Join the conversation! 1 Comment

  1. Lachie, you have a good basis here for a speech.
    You now need to look at the marking schedule for direction. It asks that you:
    build on ideas by adding comments, explanations, details, or examples
    You need to do more of this. You also need to consider what the point of your speech is. What do you want to achieve by the end of it. The task asks you to construct a persuasive argument. I suggest you check out the post below and read through some of the tactics that you can use to convince people of your points.

    http://md2.teacher.edutronic.net/some-useful-links-to-aide-you-with-your-speech-writing/

    Your speech lacks supporting evidence- investigate your points further!

    Have you got a solution or a better idea for students to replace NCEA?

    Reply

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