Getting 90+% in NZ is amazing, and 80+% is a good result. The average would be around 60%, with more people passing than failing.

And the AS results were when I should have been sitting IGCSE papers with the rest of my year level, I did a year ahead though. So they weren't too bad, considering all that.

5 classes? My bad, I did 6, and got an achieved in NCEA history, which is utter crap [NCEA, not history]. I topped the school in history during the internals, and got excellence for all the internal parts of the course....

/me whacks the idiots who came up with NCEA

Long live IGCSE/AS/A levels!

What's NCEA? And history ownz yeah, too bad you gotta take everything with a truckload of consideration.

NCEA is a different system to the old "School Certificate" system, in which you simply sat a 3 hour exam at the end of the year, with possibly a few internal parts.

It's basically designed to make almost everyone get achieved [ie, pass], but is impossible to get excellence, effectively screwing over the brighter students.

It has much more internal stuff than before, meaning teachers have about 3 times as much marking, and each subject is divided into various "standards",. Each standard is assessed separately, either internally or externally, and you are given a number of credits for each standard passed [achieved], or merit, or excellence. However you get either all or nothing, ie, 4 credits, no matter whether the result [achieved, merit, excellence].

The other totally crap thing is that your overall mark is based on your lowest grade.

So you could get this:

Unit Standard Grade
1 E
2 E
3 E
4 E
5 E
6 E
7 NA

That's not a bad result, and would be about an 80+% result in school certificate, but in NCEA, it would recieve a Not Achieved grade due to the one NA, even if it is worth 1 credit out of 30. I've actually seen this happen to some of my classmates - excellence in every section of a history assignment but one, which was NA, which sucks.

Also, you have to answer the question in the EXACT way they want it answered. So if you answer it with a right answer but different method, or approach the question in a different way, it's marked wrong.

Another issue. The way maths and sciences are marked is messed up. Basically, every question is allocated a certain grade, ie, credit, merit, excellence. There will be certain ratio of credits to merits, to excellences. To get a credit [ie, get achieved, or pass] on the test/exam, you must get a certain number of credit questions right. Only once you have got the required number of credits right will they mark the merit questions, and so on with the excellence questions.

I've seen people fail a test because they got almost all the questions right, but the places they lost marks on was the credit section, so they get NA.

Also, there are no percentages given, eliminating any competition whatsoever [wow. a merit. joy.], and allows no comparison between academic achievement for universities and potential employers.


[/anti-NCEA rant]


Stupid PC Leftie government.....

[/anti-Labour-party rant]

Heh...i'll read this tomorrow, damn Inqui with his page-long posts. One thing is certain..you're the first intelligent 16-yr old conservative i ever met. (intelligent cos i've known a lot of dumb-ass far-right wankers too ) Mebbe it's just you living in an Anglo-Saxon part of the world tho. They all are more right than European mainland, except for France mebbe. Blah

Woo!

I'm intelligent. Cos 'ox said so.


*Nods wisely*

Nah.... IGCSE [no "I" for you though] is pretty easy - I'd be surprised if you managed to get anything lower than a B. But then again - maybe the GCSE exams are harder than IGCSE ones.