^ Wow, that is very different from our marking system! NCEA sounds to me like such an odd way to assess; I had never heard of it before. Some states in Australia are still based on the HSC system but Victoria has switched to the VCE. For every subject you get a score out of 50 based on assessments during the year and exams at the end. Then all these scores are translated to an overall percentage, which is called an ENTER score. For example, if you get an ENTER score of 80% it means that you performed within the top 20% of the state. Entrance into university depends on what your ENTER score is - each university course will have a required ENTER score that you need to be successful in entering the course.
The system we have is good as far as assessment goes but it does have it's downfalls. For example, some subject scores get scaled up and some subjects get scaled down. Mathematics, sciences, and languages get scaled up while arts and humanities subjects get scaled down. There is a formula to how it works but it basically sends the message out to students that maths, sciences and languages are harder subjects so therefore your score will be scaled up while the arts and humanities are easy subjects so your score will get scaled down. Which I think really sucks because it makes students who are arts/humanities inclined to think that they are dumber than students who are more mathematically or scientifically inclined.
Another downfall is that a lot of students think that the score they get at the end of the year will determine the rest of their life. A lot of students will purely choose subjects and perform in a way that they think will get them the highest score. The score at the end of year is not what determines the rest of your life and if you don't get into the university course you desired it's not the end of the world and there are still many ways of pursuing ambitions.
So I guess in that way our system is kind-of the opposite of the New Zealand NCEA system - instead of students not trying and thinking it's okay to just scrape through, students are pushed to perform in a way which gets them the highest ENTER score they possibly can. So in a way both systems are quite stifling in terms of students' creativity.
S I guess assessment in schools is one way in which creativity can be stifled - as students will perform in a way which will get them the 'highest score' and not in a way which will allow them to be creative. But on the other hand, assessment is a really difficult thing. It must be done for many purposes but it can never be truly fair or objective.
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