Schools' partnership culminates in exams

Two Christchurch schools worked side by side for one of the last times yesterday as 800 pupils took over the school hall, gymnasium and a classroom to sit their English exam.

The Avonside Girls' High School and Burnside High School pupils are among 17,808 Canterbury pupils sitting their National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) over the next three weeks.

The schools have been site-sharing since the Avonside school was damaged in the February earthquake. However, the school will return to its own site next year.

More than 143,000 year 11, 12 and 13 pupils across the country are sitting the NCEA exams which began yesterday.

Burnside High School deputy principal Tim Grocott said setting up the school to hold exams for both schools had been logistically "quite hard".

"Because of the sheer size we have had to use both gymnasiums and the dance studio, so that means throughout the whole of exam time there is no access to those facilities."

Another challenge to overcome had been the lack of desks and chairs. Avonside Girls' had had to transport desks and chairs from its school, he said.

The junior schools had also been disrupted with classroom changes because of lack of space, and two "teacher-only days" being used to free up exam room space on Monday and Wednesday.

"Otherwise we would have had to send the juniors home."

This year's largest exam session will be level 1 English on Wednesday, with nearly 47,000 pupils across the country and 5632 Canterbury pupils expected to attend. The smallest is New Zealand scholarship Latin on November 21, with 29 pupils nationwide.

New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) deputy chief executive Bali Haque said he was confident the authority had taken sufficient measures to help Canterbury pupils affected by the quakes, including a quake derived-grade process.

Results will be available this year via the NZQA website.