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Understanding the benchmarks. What makes them up? There are four major dimensions that make
up the benchmarks. On the outside of the circle you can see there is leadership, programmes
and services and information systems. These are key inputs that are required if we are
going to have successful student transitions through the building of student career management
competencies. For each of these dimensions there is an overarching
statement that describes what the benchmarks encompass, and each of these statements are
broken up into categories and in this example, L1, that’s the first, L standing for Leadership,
and that’s the first category and there is a statement that describes what this encompasses.
Then for each of these categories these are broken up into sub categories and these sub
categories describe what the benchmark descriptors are about, or what this area is about.
So there are four benchmark descriptors for each sub-category and these range from ineffective
through to highly effective. If you liken it back to NCEA it’s quite easy, it’s
like not achieved, achieved, merit and excellence. We’ve interpreted that to say ineffective
means there are some things happening but they’re not making much of an impact, through
to adequate. For a lot of schools adequate is going to be ok. Through to if you’re
adequate, like in NCEA you do a little bit more you have consolidating effectiveness,
and once you’ve consolidated you move into highly effective. It may only be in some areas
that schools aim to be highly effective and in most areas they may want to aim for adequate,
which is why we have adequate shaded, so that this is the starting point. It means that
depending on how you judge or review yourself against that statement depends whether you
move backwards to ineffective or you have a look and you think yes we are doing all
that. From adequate there is a stemming so it means you go ‘yes I’ve got this section’,
and you can move on and you might think ‘yes I’ve got this, yes we’re doing all these
things’ and then you can move on to the last part and you might think ‘ohh, we’re
not quite there’, and so very quickly if you want to be highly effective you would
think these are the things we need to do. The student career management competencies
are similar to the other dimensions in that there is an overarching statement and they
are broken up into categories and sub categories. However there is only two descriptors – competent
or highly competent, because it doesn’t matter what age a student leaves school at
there are certain career management competencies that they are required to build to ensure
that they make a successful transition. If a student is in a school for five years and
has all the inputs – leadership, programmes and services, all the information systems
are there, hopefully there will be some that will be highly competent.
If you require further assistance or resources you can go online (www.careers.govt.nz) or
you can call the free phone line (0800 222 733).