(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

MY BROTHER GOT INTO UNIVERSITY!!!!!!!!!!!

OMG so proud. <3 <3 <3 <3

This wouldn't be such a big deal but he's going from sixth form, a year early, and we were intensely worried that he wouldn't get into first year because he's missing some literacy credits (because his literacy papers were Maori, and it can be difficult to get literacy in your second language, esp. if you aren't speaking it elsewhere.) BUT HE GOT IN.

*twirls a little*

In other news, had a fantastic day yesterday chilling with chattycheese! Extremely good times.

Comments

[wenchpixie]

Oh that's awesome :D - congratulations to your Brother!

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Hee, thank you!

[kheha.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, congrats to him! That's great news!

(And can I ask, what does it mean to "get literacy"?)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

:) Thanks!

Oh, right. Well, the current NZ secondary schools' system is unit standard based, so work done by students is grouped into several units and assessed in those units. Each of these units is worth a certain number of credits. These units are then grouped into subjects.

This system has its detractors, but simply, it means that when you assess mathematics, say you had a student who was absolutely brilliant at every subject except geometry - they adored calculus, trigonometry, algebra, and statistics. When they sit an ordinary exam, they get all the questions about the latter four right and all the questions about geometry wrong, so they get 80%. Under NCEA, they would get 100% in each of the latter four unit standards, and would fail the geometry unit standard.

To pass the National Certificate of Educational Achievement at levels 1, 2, or 3 (the last three years of high school) you need to pass a certain number of credits grouped into a certain number of subjects. Getting University Entrance is actually a helluvalot easier. You need a certain number of credits - much fewer than you need to pass NCEA (although they're supposed to be at Level 3, but obviously taking people from sixth form they won' have done Level 3) but there are two other requirements: literacy credits and numeracy credits.

Numeracy credits require you to have a certain number of unit standards at Level 1. Literacy credits require that you pass a certain number of unit standards in what are known as "writing" classes, i.e. classes where essay-writing and style is important: English, History, Classics, Art History, and Maori. Now, Maori is included here (even though French, German, etc are not) because even though the vast majority of students taking it are second language speakers (and only Maori language papers are ever taught in Maori at university) there are still a few people in NZ for whom Maori is their first language. Hedley, my brother, dropped English (Frankly, I blame the school for letting him do that: however, if he'd taken Level 3, he probably would have made up enough credits to get UE). He was taking Maori as his literacy paper, which is his first language. So students in these classes - because a bunch of them are first-language speakers or speakers who have spent time in immersion classes in primary school or speakers who are spending time speaking it outside of class - are expected to have a high standard of literacy and consequently Maori papers are fiendishly difficult if you're not doing that sort of thing. So he failed one of the papers. (He failed one unit standard, out of all of the ones he sat, and of course it was the CRUCIAL one.)

[kheha.livejournal.com]

Oh dear -- I'm glad it worked out despite that! And thank you very much for the explanation, as well -- our systems seem to be fiendishly different. ;-)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Haha, yes. Well, NCEA is new (my year was the first year to sit it, doing levels 1, 2, and 3 in '02, '03 and '04 respectively). And... yes. Different.

[eavanmoore.livejournal.com]

If I've understood right, Maori is his first language. How come? (Or, if not, why did he take Maori as literacy?)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, I just re-read the comment and I left out a crucial not. Maori isn't his first language, and he's taking it as a SL; but he chose to take Maori as his literacy paper because English bores him (and society tells boys that they're bad at English, and so on, and so forth.) I don't think it was a particularly smart decision and it did, in fact, nearly cause a lot of trouble. But it's so hard to keep boys taking English - my other brother dropped it for classics, of all things.

[rewihendrix.livejournal.com]

half of our family are students now.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

I know, crazy eh?