The entire high school exam team was replaced last year

Just a week before the exams start, the Qualifications Authority has admitted that almost the entire team supporting the high school exams has left and been replaced over the past year.

The authority declined to comment on individual staff when RNZ inquired about the situation earlier this month.

But it told RNZ last week that the entire eight-strong team supporting exam centers last year – the locations where NCEA exams were held – had resigned or taken voluntary redundancy.

It said the latest dismissal would take effect after the exams were completed.

The authority said all those who left had been replaced by experienced staff and the team currently consisted of seven members plus four temporary staff.

Questions about the reasons for staff departure are not answered.

The Secondary Principals Association said it was not aware of any disruption to the organization of exams.

RNZ understands the team oversaw the work of exam center managers – the people deployed each year to administer exams at each exam center, usually a secondary school.

The managers were responsible for developing day-by-day plans that outlined how the exams would run at their center and for finding staff to supervise the exams.

NZQA said on Wednesday this week that 357 exam center plans had been fully approved, while a further 84 plans had been reviewed by NZQA and sent to exam center managers for changes.

It said 22 plans – mainly from very small schools – had yet to be checked by the NZQA and progress was going well.

The authority said 5,774 exam center staff were ready to deploy and contracts for a further 1,324 staff were in the works, a figure similar to previous years.

NZQA said a total of 180 staff worked full-time on the NCEA assessment and the overall attrition rate of around 14 per cent was the average for the public service.

It was said that the focus on one team was not fully representative of the role that multiple teams played in supporting external examinations.

“It is always the case that school examination plans and hiring of temporary staff will continue until the exams begin, noting that the exams last four weeks and that temporary staff will be scheduled for different periods,” the report said.