Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime has finally met with Education Minister Erica Stanford to discuss the proposed NCEA changes, but she’s still unable to say whether her party will support the Government’s approach.
The highly anticipated meeting took place on Monday evening, with Prime viewing it as an opportunity for her to share feedback she had heard from the sector on the proposal.
It’s understood Stanford asked Prime during the meeting for Labour’s position on elements of the change programme, but the Labour MP wouldn’t say, instead relaying what she was hearing from the education community.
The formal consultation process on the Government’s plan to abolish NCEA and replace it with a new qualification regime concludes on Monday. It comes as a rift in opinion emerges between schools over the changes, with some wanting the current system strengthened and others wanting it scrapped.
Since the August announcement of the NCEA changes, Labour has been cautious about providing its view on the changes. It’s instead zeroed in on the length of the consultation period and what the party believed was a lack of sector involvement.
The Herald revealed last month that Prime was offered multiple opportunities to be briefed on the NCEA change process in the months before the new qualification was announced. However, she initially didn’t respond to these invitations and then flat-out declined them.
The Labour MP defended her approach, saying she wanted to meet teachers, parents and others in the education community before the minister. Labour leader Chris Hipkins said that wasn’t unreasonable, but made clear she should have responded to the minister earlier.
A meeting finally took place between the Labour and National politicians on Monday night, after Prime met with officials a couple of weeks ago.
Prime told the Herald she asked Stanford to consider pausing consultation or extending the timeframe to provide “more time to work with the sector”.
“I believe she does not want to do that,” Prime said, raising concern that the changes were being “rushed for political expediency over ensuring that we get this right”.
“You can see it’s causing a lot of division. More and more, we are hearing from people who have concerns about what’s being proposed, the fact they don’t have the information they need.”
She described the meeting as an “opportunity to share things that I have been hearing from the sector”.
“I know that [Stanford] and I have received similar correspondence about it, similar feedback from the sector. We’re both copied into the same submissions and survey results and open letters and so on.
“I was able to raise that and ask the question, what does she intend to do with the feedback that she has received, the concerns that have been raised?”
Asked about Labour’s position on the changes, Prime said her focus was on the feedback from the sector, including the desire by some for more time.
The Labour MP said there was a lot of detail still missing from the NCEA change proposal, including about the curriculum that will be taught at the time – it’s currently going through a refresh programme – and the split between internal and external assessments.
She also wants to know more about the vocational education pathways under the new regime, which are expected to be driven by industry.
“[The sector is] asking for more information on those sorts of things, to be able to say whether they think that is an improvement or not.”
Prime said: “In the absence of that information, it’s really difficult for everybody to be able to support the proposal that [Stanford] has put out there”.
“It’s really on her to provide the information that the sector need to answer the questions that they have and the concerns.”
Prime pointed to the announcement on Thursday morning of the new list of secondary school subjects that will have to be taught when the new qualification comes into effect.
She is worried that this information is being provided only five days before the consultation on the new qualification ends, because it could inform people’s submissions.
Stanford told the Herald her meeting with Prime was “fruitful” and the Labour MP “asked some questions”. But the minister said she wouldn’t be pausing the current NCEA change consultation.
“What [Prime] doesn’t understand is that there are multiple layers of consultation. This is very broad, high-level direction of travel. We’ve already started to look at some themes that are popping up, and we will take that back out for consultation.”
The minister said some of the details Prime wants will “of course” be consulted on to add “meat on the bone”.
“I explained that to her, and I know she’s talking in the media about wanting more detail, but I did explain to her that we’re doing this a different way around,” Stanford said.
“If we had done all of the detail up front, gone out to the public and teachers and principals, and they said ‘we don’t like it’, we would have wasted all of that time. So we’re doing it slightly differently. We’re doing it part by part.”
Stanford dismissed concerns that the subject list should have been released earlier, saying it’s “very separate” from the qualification design.
“We’re just talking about a very broad, high-level direction of travel with NCEA. Is this the direction of travel we want to go in? Do we want to have a curriculum that leads what is assessed? Do we want to have integrated pathways? We can make those decisions without knowing the subject lists.”
Prime said that, upon taking office, Stanford delayed the previous Government’s NCEA changes because, she said, assessments were being designed before the curriculum had been written.
The Labour MP believes Stanford is now talking about assessments without a curriculum.
But Stanford repeated that the current qualification changes are just a “broad framework” and not related to the list of subjects. She said the “curriculum will 100% drive assessment, and that’s the correct way”.
“You have to have curriculum before you have what is being assessed. That is still the case. We will have curriculum, then we will start to talk about what we assess and how we assess it. [Are] there more internals for some subjects or more externals? What will the weighting be? That will come later.”
It comes as factions of schools emerge with differing views on the proposal.
A coalition of about 64 principals on Thursday urged the Education Minister to press ahead with haste, saying scrapping NCEA was needed because of under-achievement by Kiwi students against international benchmarks, and any delay would be a backwards step.
But another group of 90 principals earlier called for an “immediate halt” to the reforms, saying they had been rushed and could lead to Māori, Pasifika and disadvantaged students falling further behind.
Jamie Ensor is a political reporter in the NZ Herald press gallery team based at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. In 2025, he was a finalist for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.