20 years on

As we embed the changes to 91027 and prepare for a changed format in  91028 I wondered how things used to be...

From the 1996 School Certificate chief markers report.

In the first paragraph it was noted  that there was a "continued requirement for candidates to interpret information,  to explain, describe and justify their mathematics clearly and concisely"

I discovered investigation tasks in exams are not new -
In 1996 candidates had to  carry out an investigation to discover what length and width of a box would give the greatest base area.
To find a solution they could chose their method and were offered a table or grid as a guide.

School Certificate 1996

These investigative type questions first appeared in 1995 and these was one in each paper up to the introduction of NCEA.

I have scanned the questions and put them in the shared 91028 folder  

You will see there is a folder called GIVE ONE GET ONE that all teachers can add a question to - this is the quickest way we will build a useful resource. Please be careful to not delete any of the files in this folder


It seems we are singing the same song as our 1996 colleagues when it comes to algebra. The report noted basic algebra techniques were poor - these included

• expanding
• factorising
• changing the subject and 
• solving equations

It was recommended that students should be exposed to problems that are challenging enough to not be solved by guess and check and while rote learning of processes allowed students to pass the exam they did not prepare them for higher levels of mathematical understanding

All was not doom and gloom, the chief marker reported there were many "excellent examination papers and a large number of candidates were well taught and had a rich range of mathematical experiences throughout the year"