DevOps, CI/CD and Automation

I am doing this:
L_IMPORT_XML VARCHAR2(10000);
L_XML_TYPE XMLTYPE;

L_XML_TYPE := XMLTYPE(L_IMPORT_XML);

L_IMPORT_XML has the following XML in it
<NOC_ITEM>
<NCB_CODE>1></NCB_CODE>
</NOC_ITEM>

L_NODE_VALUE := L_XML_TYPE.extract('//NOC_ITEM/NCB_CODE/text()').getstringval();

This returns 1&gt; and not 1>

How do I get this to return 1>
or
How do I get
L_XML_TYPE := XMLTYPE(L_IMPORT_XML);
to keep it as > and not convert it to &gt;