All of the eight-member team that supported exam centres last year have resigned or taken voluntary redundancy. Photo: AFP
Just a week before exams start, the Qualifications Authority has admitted that nearly the entire team that supports its secondary school exams has left and been replaced over the past year.
The authority refused to comment on individual staff, when RNZ inquired about the situation earlier this month.
But it told RNZ last week that all of the eight-member team that last year supported exam centres - the locations where NCEA exams were held - had resigned or taken voluntary redundancy.
It said the last of the resignations would take effect after the exams finished.
The authority said all those who left had been replaced by experienced staff and the team currently had seven members plus four temporary staff.
It would not answer questions about the reasons for staff departures.
The Secondary Principals Association said it was not aware of any disruption to the organisation of exams.
RNZ understands the team oversaw the work of exam centre managers - the people employed each year to run exams at each exam centre, usually a secondary school.
The managers were responsible for developing day-by-day plans outlining how exams would run at their centre and for finding staff to supervise their exams.
NZQA said as at Wednesday this week 357 exam centre plans had been fully approved with a further 84 reviewed by NZQA and sent to exam centre managers for changes.
It said 22 plans - mostly from very small schools - were still to be checked by NZQA and progress was tracking well.
The authority said 5774 exam centre staff were ready to be deployed and contracts for a further 1324 were being progressed, a figure comparable with previous years.
NZQA said overall 180 of its staff worked full-time on NCEA assessment and its overall attrition rate of about 14 percent was the average for the public service.
It said focusing on one team did not fairly represent the role multiple teams played in supporting external exams.
"It is always the case that exam plans for schools and contracting of casual staff will continue up until exams start, noting that exams continue for four weeks and casual staff will be rostered on for different periods," it said.
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