Under the new scheme, Year 11 students will face what is being called a “Foundational Skills Award” with a focus on literacy and numeracy. English and mathematics will be required subjects for students at this year level.
It comes after a series of damning reports on the state of the qualification, including from the Education Review Office (ERO), which found despite a recent overhaul, NCEA Level 1 remained “difficult to understand” and was not preparing students for future achievement.
The Herald also revealed two ministerial briefings from the New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) warning NCEA faced a credibility crisis over its “overused” flexibility, a lack of coherent vocational education pathways, students gaming the system to accumulate credits and an over-reliance on internal assessments.
Universities New Zealand and education union the PPTA broadly supported the direction of the changes signalled but wanted to see more detail.
The Labour Party is taking a wait-and-see approach while the Green Party is opposed to the changes, saying scrapping the decades-long scheme is “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”.
Labour’s education spokesperson Willow-Jean Prime said “rushing changes through now for political expediency isn’t the answer”.
She said schools and parents told her they were concerned about “how hasty” the proposed changes were.
“Previous rushed overhauls have led to students being the guinea pigs for failed change – like national standards – so we must get this right."
The Green Party’s education spokesperson Lawrence Xu-Nan said NCEA was not perfect but it recognised learning took place in different ways.
“[The] announcement is another classic case of the Government favouring one-size-fits-all approaches. Our education system is too important to be reduced to a single, rigid framework that will leave many behind.”
Julia Gabel is a Wellington-based political reporter. She joined the Herald in 2020 and has most recently focused on data journalism.
