Year 11 End-of-Year Exams

Kia ora koutou,

As a leadership team, we have made the decision to adjust the end-of-year teaching and learning programme for Year 11 Springs students to include end-of-year examinations in English, Mathematics (Maths hereafter), and Science. English will be a Level 1 external through NZQA, and Maths and Science will be school-based exams.

Waiōrea Year 11 students continue to have end-of-year external exams as per previous years. Waiōrea whānau can disregard the information below.

The Level 1 external English exam will be AS9195 Demonstrate an Understanding of Aspects of Studied Texts and is worth 5 Level 1 credits. The exam is scheduled for Tuesday 17th November at 9.30am and will take place in the school gymnasium. Students will have up to three hours to complete the exam on their computers. They will not be required to attend period 4 on this day after they have finished their exam.

There are three main reasons for this change:

• This exam provides an extra pathway for Level 1 literacy outside of the reading and writing Common Assessment Activities (CAAs).
• This exam provides students a formal opportunity to practice their exam taking skills.
• This exam aligns with the content and skills students are already learning in our Year 11 English course.

The exam involves students writing an essay on a text they have studied in class. In order to prepare for the exam, we will be dedicating the last three weeks of Term 4 in English classes to prepare for it. This will involve revisiting our studied text and essay writing skills, and learning about exam taking strategies. Our preparation will also include an opportunity for students to practice the exam under test conditions in class. This external English exam helps support our goal to ensure there are no barriers to students gaining their required literacy credits.

The Maths and Science exams will be on key studied aspects of the Year 11 Maths and Science courses to enable preparation for Year 12 and for practising examination technique. These will be 2 hour exams with a lunch break in between. These are paper-based exams as per the external exams for both of these subjects in Year 12 and 13. Special Assessment Conditions will apply. These will be on Friday 13th November.

This initiative has been in response to approaches from our parent community, and from our student representatives for more exam practice before they enter the high stakes external exam environment in Year 12.

Students will receive more detailed information about preparing for the external exams and the school-based exams closer to the time, including where and when to arrive and what to bring with them.

Thank you in advance for your support,

Ivan Davis
Principal