Two Tauranga schools are looking at ignoring national exam results for level one maths, saying they will instead use internal assessments for placing students next year.

The call comes from both Tauranga Boys' College and Otumoetai College, who say they are taking steps to look after their students after last Tuesday's MCAT level one exam.

MCAT level one exam is coming under fire.

Otumoetai principal Dave Randal says a special assembly has been held for staff to explain the challenges facing their Year 11 students.

'Staff are extremely disappointed, they were sidewacked over it, to be polite,” says Dave,

Otumoetai College acting head of maths Neil McDermid says previous maths exams usually started with an entry level question to settle nerves.

'This exam seemed to require higher orders of literacy and mathematical understanding in order even to access the basic questions.

'We were given no warning. Nothing came from NZQA to indicate this was the direction that they were heading in.

'We were given no example papers. We have absolutely nothing to work from, other than previous years. And this was a distinctly different paper to previous years,” says Neil.

'This exam basically scared the wits out of students. It's someone being clever on the exam panel, is my view of what's happened here. The questions are investigative questions so there's a lot of focus on an open ended question in the paper. That can't be done in a closed period of time.”

The exam also contained questions requiring an answer than can only be given by student who understand a higher level of algebra, says Neil. Level two rather than the level one.

Tauranga Boys' College deputy principal Robert Gilbert says the exam's wording was a barrier to understanding, leaving maths staff with the sense that merit or excellence skill levels were required for what ought to be an achieved standard.

'For many of our boys, it was their first experience of an NCEA examination, and they came out feeling pretty demoralized,” says Robert.

'We are forming the opinion now that this particular exam has got to the stage where it ought to be internally assessed rather than external, and in terms of informing us about student progress and placement for next year, and so it it's of no value at all - and we are setting our own separate test to do that.

'The goal not to have thousands of kids coming out of the exam demoralized because they simply didn't understand the question.

'Are we assessing their knowledge of mathematics or their level of literacy? These are big questions and I think the consensus is that the powers that be got it wrong this time.

'What I'm interested in is the learning of the boys in my school, and when you have an assessment that is a barrier to achievement, just in the way it's delivered, then you have got to ask if that's the right thing. If given the choice, would you continue to use this particular assessment as a measure of learning?”

Neil believes the exam panel that sets the exam is dysfunctional because the exam paper as delivered would not have gotten past several sets of eyes.

At level one students do not have the mathematical skills to relate what they have been taught to real world contexts as was asked in the exam.

'At level one they are trying to get their heads around basic skills like factorizing an equation, or re-arranging an equation – and there was no direction with the questions,” says Neil.

'The kids who are at the achievement/merit end success level, were basically sitting there scratching their heads.”