School cert ftw.
You used to have to learn everything, just in case it came up in the exam.
Now internal assessment gives you half the marks, then you only need to learn the 3 achieved questions (and I literally remember teachers telling me to ignore trying to learn the excellence questions and focus on getting the achieved ones right) to get over the line.
It may have changed since then however as that was 7-10 years ago.
Don't you think a mix of internal assessment (ooh err) and a national exam is better?
Sounds like you had teachers who weren't in it for the students.
Actually yes, and it prepared you for university better. I did like that aspect of NCEA (despite being better at exams than internal assessment).
But the rest...I really hope they've changed it since I was there because it was a joke.