NCEA; what a cluster.

Changes to both the curriculum and the assessment process that is testing to you and me - are being slowed down.

The Minister says this will help lift performance, and tackle those awful numbers showing about half our kids are leaving school barely capable of basic reading and writing.

What I read into that is that the Minister knows if we moved into the new regime now, the results would be as bad, or even worse, than last time.

Jan Tinetti desperately needs to be able to say ‘Hey, look what a great job we've done...students are getting better test results.’

But I don't think I'm the only one developing a suspicion that the way they'll do that is fiddle the system - make the tests a whole lot easier - you know, let's try something a monkey could pass, and see how that pans out.

That, of course serves the Minister and Ministry, but it's not much use to anyone else.

Worse, it's a downright disservice to the people who matter most in all of this - the students.

As a parent, do you have confidence the education system is delivering?

Do employers understand what all the different levels of NCEA mean and what the results tell us about a job candidate?

Would it be better to maybe toss a real-work document in front of someone during the interview, and see if they understand it.

If it really matters to the role that the person can read and write and do simple numerical reasoning, you might be better off paying for a private test.

They're not expensive and certainly a lot less costly than hiring someone who you later realise hasn't got what's needed for the job.

Are we at the point where NCEA has lost its credibility? Not that it's ever had much of that.

Is it time to just give up on NCEA, and go back to using recognised qualifications like GCSE - the advantage of those being they're portable - and that matters in a global employment market.

Bottom line, as the Herald recently found, New Zealand students have been going backward against their overseas peers for the past 20 years.

NCEA was introduced in 2002.

Point made?