On the Edge of Adulthood: Young people's school and out-of-school experiences at 16

6. School practices and student choices

A specific intention of the NCEA was to open up multiple pathways through the senior secondary school, providing more flexibility in the subject combinations available to students with different learning needs and different beyond-school pathways in mind. This has been contentious for a number of reasons (see, for example, Dobric, 2006) and it is important that we gain a clearer picture of students’ actual experiences within the context of the school’s overall organisation and ethos. In this chapter we look at whether greater flexibility of subject combinations is indeed being realised for the students in our Competent Learners sample.

School structures and learning pathways

When the Competent Learners students were interviewed at age 14, their subject choices were constrained by the proportion of the lower secondary curriculum that was compulsory (Wylie & Hipkins, 2006), and no clear patterns of preferences emerged from the analysis of their optional choices. Is this situation different at age 16?

As the next table shows, most students in Year 11 are still required to study English and mathematics. In many schools, science and some combination of PE/health also remain compulsory. The overall number of Year 11 subjects that were compulsory in any one school ranged from two to six, with three the modal (most common) number (in 41 percent of these schools). Accordingly, for the 16-year-olds in Year 11, other subject choices remained somewhat constrained. However, as we describe, there were some distinct clusters evident for Year 11 students as well as those in Year 12.

NCEA and choice flexibility

An early finding from the Learning Curves study was that flexibility to meet different learning needs had indeed been created post-NCEA implementation by the provision of different types of English, mathematics, and science within the overall year level. Such within-subject options have existed to some degree for many years, but NCEA has provided the means of gaining qualification credits for learning which is more supported and often more practical than that offered to most students, because teachers can now select different combinations of unit and achievement standards with which to assess learning progress. Previously, any assessment in such courses was “alternative” to the mainstream secondary school qualification, School Certificate, and hence would be widely seen as of less value. A caveat to this good news of increased flexibility is that for most Learning Curves students the course of study actually differed very little from the previous “traditional discipline” versions of English and mathematics offered in preparation for assessment via School Certificate examinations (Hipkins, Vaughan, Beals, & Ferral, 2004). Other types of course have remained “alternative” and are regarded with suspicion by some critics of NCEA, notwithstanding the policy intention to credential many types of learning experiences and pathways. The Learning Curves researchers reported that this new flexibility, in the absence of wider conversations about purposes for learning, had consolidated rather than broken down perceptions of an academic/vocational value difference in learning (Hipkins et al., 2005).

Nevertheless, some students do now have other types of learning pathways available. Just two of the 44 schools attended by Year 11 Competent Learner students said they did not offer different versions of their compulsory subjects, as did seven of the 61 schools attended by the Year 12 students in the study. As the next table shows, offering different versions is now widespread at both Year 11 and Year 12, especially for core curriculum subjects. In Year 12, different versions of technology subjects are likely to account for the increase in the “other” category, with many schools offering some more academically-oriented versions assessed with achievement standards as well as some more practical versions assessed with unit standards. Thus, differences between versions are evident in the choice of assessment standard, and retain some of the past differentiation patterns.

Note: 

* Science options here are in addition to the traditionally offered options of biology, chemistry, and physics.

When the Competent Learner students were 14 we reported that some schools accommodated an over-full timetable by offering part-year courses. This was more common for Year 9, with “taster”courses, when 29 percent of schools offered half-year courses. Just 10 percent of the schools offered part-year courses at Year 10, and 14 percent when these students reached Year 11 or Year 12.

Another means by which schools can increase flexibility in students’ choices is to create a timetable structure which is less strictly demarcated by year levels. During the three years of NCEA implementation (2002–2004) several Learning Curves schools had already begun to create a multilevel timetable where students could be studying at different levels in different subjects. In 2005, 97 percent of schools attended by Year 12 Competent Learners said these students could share classes with students at other year levels, suggesting that this practice is now very widespread. In 84 percent of schools with Year 11 students, teachers said the students could potentially share classes with Year 12 students, suggesting that multilevelling can take students back a year level. This provides a means of meeting learning needs if students have yet to achieve at the level below their peers in a specific subject. The next table confirms this pattern, but also shows that schools can have other reasons for providing this timetable flexibility, including extending students if they are achieving at a more advanced level than their peers: and as we saw in Chapter 3, a sizeable minority of students are achieving credits at more than one NCEA level over the same calendar year.

Most responses in the “other” category were associated with the accommodation of Year 12 students who needed to repeat Level 1 courses, in particular, mathematics or English, thus ensuring literacy and numeracy credit targets could be reached. One person mentioned Year 12 students who were picking up a subject at Level 1 for the first time and one school said lack of staff had necessitated the multilevel arrangement.

Combining classes where there are lower student numbers draws attention to the challenge of providing a full range of courses in smaller schools. However, a majority of schools (74 percent) in this predominantly urban sample said that the range of subjects available did not constrain their ability to meet students’ learning needs, or did so “very little”. Twenty-two percent of schools saw this as a constraint “to some extent” and just 2 percent said it impacted on them “a lot”.

Determining eligibility for a higher level class

The most commonly reported reason for multilevelling draws attention to the question of criteria for advancement, and school practices that might restrict students from entering a course at a higher level. It is important to explore this issue, because individual students may find pathways closed to them if they fail to make the progress seen as necessary or if they do not make good choices. To what extent are schools using NCEA data as they make these determinations and what else do they consider?

The table shows that Year 11 NCEA results are indeed very influential when determining Year 12 courses. This may be a key factor in schools’ widespread reluctance to ameliorate assessment pressures by not offering Level 1 NCEA to students who will still be at school in Years 12 and 13 (Hipkins, 2007). Previous behaviour or attitude also counted, more so for Year 11 than for Year 12.

Responses in the other category were related to consultation with parents and responses to their requests, consideration of requirements for a career of interest to the student, and the ability to cope with the English language requirements of a subject.

Impact of the timetable structure and school guidance practices on subject combinations

Three-quarters of the schools said information on students’ motivation and attitudes was provided by year level deans as well as by subject teachers. The Learning Curves research reported that deans tend to have conservative views about which types of subjects are accessible and relevant to certain types of learners (Hipkins et al., 2004). This created frustrations for teachers in some subject areas, particularly in the arts and technology learning areas, when students with no interest in a subject course were nevertheless allocated to a class on the grounds that it was the only suitable option for them on that line of the timetable. The converse also occurred—students seen as more able were likely to be discouraged from taking those same subject courses on the grounds that they would be more appropriately seen as extracurricular interests for them. The faculty leaders of these subjects saw this as an out-of-date view of what the subject could offer a learner in the twenty-first century, which simply added to their frustration.

The next table confirms this picture of the importance of school deans in subject choice. It also shows that students were more likely to get advice on their subject choice from the school dean than from their form teacher in form time, or from a careers evening or expo.²⁸

Schools go to considerable lengths to group subjects on timetable lines in such a way that they accommodate as many combinations as are likely to be requested. But obviously unlimited permutations are simply not possible, and in the end, more able students tend to have a range of choices in any one timetable line, while students who need alternatives to these subjects are likely to have fewer choices (see Hipkins & Vaughan, 2002 for a more detailed discussion of this). The next table provides indications that this dilemma is widespread. It reports on aspects of curriculum and achievement that the school managers in the Competent Learners study saw as their strengths. Note the difference in numbers between those who believed they were strong in offering academic choices and those who saw vocational choices as a specific strength of their school.

Together, advice and timetable practices in the Learning Curves schools appeared to lead to a clustering of students’ subject combinations in clearly distinguishable patterns.²⁹ A particularly concerning finding was that Mäori and Pacific students in the six Learning Curves schools were more likely to be taking subject combinations that could close down their pathway options later. Such combinations in Year 11 were likely to include alternative versions of English, mathematics, and science with “practical” versions of technology and IT, vocational subjects, PE, and so on, (Hipkins et al., 2005). For some students, these types of combinations could lead to experiences of learning success where otherwise they might have experienced only failure, but the pattern we found also provoked questions about whether some students were constrained in their later choices and chances by limiting expectations at this critical stage of their learning careers.

Competent Learners’ subject choice combinations

The Competent Learners study gave us an opportunity to investigate the issue of individual subject combinations with the advantage of having a more comprehensive knowledge of each individual participant. It also provided the opportunity to gauge both students’ and parents’ thoughts about subject choices and learning success more generally. The views of both these groups are reported in Chapters 8 and 10.

To begin, we report the results of a cluster analysis similar to that first used in the Learning Curves research.³⁰ This analysis yielded four broad subject clusters at both Years 11 and 12, as shown in the next two tables. As in any cluster analysis, membership of a particular cluster signals the likelihood that students will be taking similar subject combinations, but considerable within- cluster variability is also to be expected.

The two “traditional” clusters include subjects that are likely to be assessed with achievement standards, and offer pathways leading directly to tertiary study. All the within-subject mathematics or English courses described as “traditional” are likely to be assessed with a full or near full subject-suite of achievement standards (see the analysis reported in Hipkins, 2004; Hipkins et al., 2004), and to closely resemble pre-NCEA courses, as are other more “academic” subjects such as history and the separate science disciplines at Year 12.

The other two clusters offer subjects that appear more related to particular occupations or current interests; and the “alternative” versions of mathematics and English they offer are more likely to focus on practical presentations and uses. On the one hand, these clusters include courses that may be relatively easily linked to students’ current lives and interests; and may therefore encourage their interest and hard work in them. If these subjects are indeed seen this way by the teachers, they are perhaps less likely to offer “content for content’s sake” or for sorting purposes, and students may well have their eye on some pathway other than university. On the other hand, students choosing this type of subject combination may be aiming to keep both university pathways and other options open (for a discussion of the prevalence of such thinking, see Vaughan, Roberts, & Gardiner, 2006). It is perfectly possible to keep many pathways open where a subject is being mainly assessed with achievement standards, although in some teachers’ words, such subjects may be seen as “intellectualised” and hence problematic (Hipkins & Vaughan, 2002). However, it is not so easy to do so when a subject is being mainly assessed with unit standards, which were more in use in the “contextual” and “vocational” clusters.

The “vocational” cluster is suggestive of the sorts of subjects which deans encourage “more practical” students to take, and closely matches one cluster we found in the Learning Curves schools. Such combinations may well prepare students for specific work-related pathways beyond school if they know what they want to do. However, we have already noted that some students may experience some of these subjects as a place where they are placed against their will—much to their and the teacher’s dissatisfaction. In such cases, motivation is likely to be just as much an issue as it would be if they were doing more academic subjects.

As the following table shows, very similar clusters can also be found in Year 12 and we have given them the same names. The “contextual” cluster is more distinct from the “vocational” cluster at Year 12, and more likely to offer traditional versions of English and mathematics, allowing the tertiary pathway.

Similar to findings in the Learning Curves study (Hipkins et al., 2005) Mäori and Pacific students were more likely than Päkehä and Asian students to be taking subjects in a “contextual” or “vocational” cluster and were less likely to be taking academic subjects. Males were also more likely than females to be taking contextual or vocational subject combinations while females were more likely to be taking a traditional academic science combination. Other social characteristics are difficult to disentangle from those already reported. Students from low-income homes, particularly low income at age 5, and from low-decile schools were more likely to be taking a contextual or vocational subject combination. Most students whose mothers were university educated were taking either a traditional academic arts or science combination. Details can be found in the technical report accompanying this report (Hodgen, 2008).

That four such similar clusters can be formed at two year levels when the students are drawn from so many different schools (44 schools at Year 11, 61 schools at Year 12) attests to the closeness with which schools have adhered to traditional subject timetabling practices, notwithstanding the new flexibility potentially available to them with the NCEA.³¹ Table 36 above also supports this picture, with only a quarter of schools seeing curriculum innovation as one of their strengths.

Links between subject clusters and competencies

At age 14, the subject clusters we found were not as distinctive as the ones we found at age 16, because of the larger role played by compulsory subjects. However, we did find that students with lower competency levels were more likely to be in clusters that included subjects that were in the age-16 “contextual” or “vocational” clusters, and that students whose options on top of the compulsory subjects were focused on technology, arts, and Mäori showed more disengagement with learning, and experienced more disruption in their classes. What is the situation at age 16?

Students in the “vocational” and “contextual” subject clusters at age 16 had lower average scores on many of our variables, whether it was their own reports of school engagement, teacher reports of their attitudes and approaches, or, to a lesser extent, their reports of their relationships with family, and parent views of their attitudes. However, they were as likely to be absorbed in their learning as others, as positive about their learning environments, and as satisfied with their subject mix as others. These two clusters were more likely to include students whose school motivation at age 14 had been low, and who had not enjoyed reading. The “contextual” cluster was most likely to include students whose age-14 interests fell into the electronic games/no interests cluster; the vocational to include students who had been involved in bullying in at least two of the four previous Competent Learners study phases, and least likely to include students who had always been enthusiastic about school over that time. The “vocational” cluster had the highest level of poor attendance (30 percent), followed by the “contextual” cluster (20 percent).

The pattern of differentially grouping certain “types” of students that was indicated at age 14 is apparent in the subject clusters at age 16. Sorting students into different versions of compulsory subjects in the lower secondary school seemed to represent a type of streaming, albeit less obvious than such practices in the past. When reporting these findings we noted:

It is concerning that disengaged students may be more likely to encounter other such students in their optional classes, and doubtless also in at least some of their compulsory classes, given the streaming practices outlined above. Reinforcing this possibility, the students in Cluster 1 were more likely than students in any other cluster to be in situations where the school’s dean said they were likely to experience substantial disruptions to their learning. (Wylie & Hipkins, 2006, p. 123)

At age 16, it was the students in the “contextual” and “vocational” subject clusters who were thought by their deans to be more likely to experience hindrances to learning from other students. Thus while students may think of choosing subjects, those choices also lead to different learning contexts within the same school.

How students experienced the process of choosing subjects

Subject clusters paint a picture of constrained choices for students, but were the students themselves aware of this? The next table shows responses to the items that made up the factor satisfied with subject mix. Clearly, most students and parents were happy with their choices. Satisfied with subject mix was not significantly correlated with subject clusters so it seems that the subject mixes students could choose were mostly seen as meeting their learning needs.

Satisfaction with subject mix was moderately correlated with levels of engagement in school (0.50), and feeling affirmed at school (0.45), and reasonably correlated with student approach to NCEA (0.31).

A quarter of the students said they wished they had had more guidance with their subject choice. The main reason was that choices they had made had closed pathways for them (13 percent). Some students were now more aware of career prerequisites or pathways (9 percent) or of university prerequisites (3 percent) or simply now had more idea of what they wanted to do (3 percent).

On what basis do students choose subjects?

The next table compares reasons students gave for their current subject choices with reasons they gave for dropping subjects they had taken the previous year (76 percent said they had done this). Where an item is basically the same but was expressed differently as a negative choice (i.e., as a reason to drop a subject) the alternative wording is shown in brackets.

As they did at age 14, the majority of students continued to choose subjects they thought would be interesting for them, or lead to a career. The main reasons for dropping a subject were because they did not enjoy it or had found it difficult. Other reasons for taking a subject that were given by around a quarter of the students were continuing one already taken, taking it because the student was good at it, and because of family advice. So subject choice includes both consideration of current interests and performance level, and an eye to the future (however that is understood and conceived). A fifth of the students dropped a subject to try something new.

Students in the “traditional arts” cluster were more likely to say they chose a subject because “I’m good at it”. Students in the “traditional science” and “vocational” clusters were more likely to say they dropped a subject because the work was difficult or they did not enjoy it.

Family advice remained more important to students than advice provided by the school (or their friends). However, once choices had been made, it seems parental opinion was seldom a reason for a student to drop a subject between years—and neither was advice from teachers or friends.

The Learning Curves study reported that not many students chose a subject on the basis of the teacher they were likely to have and we also see this here. The expectation of poor teaching influenced just 7 percent of students to drop a subject between years and even fewer selected a subject in the expectation of good teaching. Given the strong influence of teachers on the way students experience a subject, this is very interesting. It may be that schools do not attach teacher names to specific classes until after the timetable has been settled, so that this factor does not distort choices and result in under- and oversubscribed classes.

In view of the ways school timetable structures and advice processes may channel certain students into a certain type of course combination it is interesting that just 7 percent of students said they had “no real choice” or had to prioritise when making subject choices and 10 percent said they had had to drop a subject because of timetable clashes. Students taking “traditional arts” combinations were more likely to say they had limits imposed on the number of subjects they could choose. This could be because there are so many choices available to students with interests in this area, but some subjects such as languages typically have smaller classes and so may only be offered on one timetable line. Congruent with this, “traditional arts” students were also more likely to say that timetable clashes had influenced their choices.

Presenting a somewhat different picture, in another question just over half the students (53 percent) said there was something they wanted to do at school but could not. While responses could include extracurricular activities, students did mainly have specific subjects in mind. A wide range of subjects and two types of extracurricular activities were mentioned as choices that were not met. Humanities subjects (9 percent) were most likely to be mentioned, followed by graphics or photography (6 percent); PE/health/outdoor education (6 percent) or a science subject (6 percent).

Some of the subjects students felt they had missed out on are resource intensive and might offer only a limited number of places. However, just 6 percent of students said they did not have the course prerequisite and another 2 percent of students said they had not been able to take up a choice because they were not selected. As might be expected from the above discussion, the main reasons were timetable clashes (15 percent) and having to prioritise amongst too many choices (13 percent). Six percent said the subject they wanted to do was not offered at their school.

In the Learning Curves study very few students said they chose subjects because they expected them to yield “easy NCEA credits” (Hipkins et al., 2004) and we also see this here. In the “other” category, just 2 percent of students mentioned the prospect of NCEA credits as having influenced their choice of subjects and not one student said they had dropped a subject because it did not yield sufficient credits. Similarly, just 5 percent chose a subject as an easy choice, and the same number dropped a subject if the workload or homework was too great. Students did drop subjects if they did not enjoy them or they found the work too difficult, but the overall picture does not square with one of the most common criticisms of NCEA—that it encourages students to select subjects in anticipation of the easiest possible pathway through school in terms of credit accumulation.

Some implications

Of more concern in relation to the policy goals of increasing student participation and achievement are the questions that arise in looking at how schools are trying to cater for a wider range of student interests and anticipation of their future. There are signs in our data that while schools are seeing different needs, the ways in which they meet these needs through the subject courses they offer, the ways they are timetabled, and the ways in which they are assessed, continue the uneasy divide between the “academic” and the “vocational” or “practical”. Students in the latter two cluster groups were more likely to attend less, and show less engagement with school, with the unintended outcome of sometimes making these classes more difficult for fellow students to learn in at the same time. Around a quarter of all students wished they had had more guidance on their courses, and just under a quarter were not happy with their subjects for the year. While just over half the students could think of a course they would like to have taken but could not, the dominant reason for dropping courses is lack of enjoyment or finding the work too difficult. This points to the importance of how teachers can engage students in learning as much as the topic itself. We explore this more in the next chapter, as we look at some differences apparent between the classes students enjoyed most, and those they enjoyed least.