Toward Sustainable Assessment

In the 1960s few could have imagined where we are today and the changes that have occurred. The intervening fifty years has seen the development of a third most populated ‘nation’ – Facebook users. Significant changes in technology that took a decade to infiltrate the wider world can now take effect within a year. Foreseeing what the next decade might bring is now equally staggering and this conundrum has profound effects on national education systems empowered to prepare its citizens for survival and societal participation. Researching the future is a particularly high-risk enterprise, especially for the education sector (Bolstad, 2012). The New Zealand Curriculum 2007 took on such an approach although its intended direction has yet to be fully realised. The New Zealand school sector’s key qualification strategy, the National Certificate in Educational Achievement, (NCEA) still largely remains a measure of lower-level recognition of prior learning and ability to access information. It seems to be more of a ‘sorting’ tool (Bolstad & Gilbert, 2008) and preparation for tertiary education than an acknowledgement of students’ aptitude, dispositions and capability to meet the demands of an ever-changing environment. This paper will look at the nature of twenty-first century learning and the needs for a change in assessment policy particularly in the senior secondary school