Education Minister Erica Stanford Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
The Education Minister Erica Stanford says help is on the way for teenagers struggling to pass new NCEA maths, reading and writing tests.
Speaking at the Post Primary Teachers Association's annual conference, Stanford also signalled the government would make changes to recently-revised NCEA level 1 standards, and to the $100-million-a-year Kahui Ako programme, which groups schools together to work on common problems.
She said the NCEA literacy and numeracy tests were top-of-mind among issues brought to her by the union and by school principals.
Stanford said it was "deeply unfair" that secondary teachers were expected to prepare students for the corequisites even though they had not had the benefit of government policies aimed at improving maths, reading and writing teaching at primary and intermediate schools.
"I will be announcing next term... a package targeted at supporting those young people who have been finding it difficult to pass the literacy and numeracy co-requisite and have attempted it numerous times and are still not getting there," she said.
She said the government recently announced a two-year extension to the "dual pathway" - specific standards that students could complete instead of the online tests in order to meet the corequisite requirement, and would consider a further extension if necessary.
Stanford said the future of the corequisite would be on the agenda of a group of principals considering the national school qualification, the NCEA.
She said schools and teachers had high hopes for the new level 1 NCEA standards rolled out this year, but they were not working as intended.
"As the year has gone on, I hear loudly and clearly from you that it's become more and more and more difficult and I'm hearing really strong views now that it is not working," she said.
"I know that there will be many schools that will be looking to pull out of level 1."
She said the Education Review Office was preparing a report for her on NCEA including planned changes to the qualification and the new level 1 standards.
She later told RNZ the changes to level 1 related to the corequisite tests and to the new, bigger level 1 standards that have had a mixed reaction from schools.
"We went from lots of little standards to a few big standards thinking that would solve some of the issues, but unfortunately many schools are telling us now actually those big standards are causing some of the problems," she said.
Stanford said she was also considering the future of the Kahui Ako scheme, which grouped schools and paid some teachers more to work with others between and within those schools.
"I'm looking really closely at what were they designed to do, what are we trying to achieve, and has it achieved the purpose because it's around about $100-million a year that we could be ring-fencing for learning support or for teacher aides of for whatever it is that raises achievement," she said.
"If we continue with Kahui Ako, what does that look like for raising achievement, how do we put belts and braces around to make sure that the achievement challenges are aligned with literacy and numeracy."
She told RNZ some Kahui Ako were doing amazing work but it was not consistent.
The Post Primary Teachers Association said a survey of its members showed the roll-out of the level 1 standards this year had been shambolic.
The union's president Chris Abercrombie said most respondents, about 80 percent, were unhappy with resources and support for the standards.
He said most were also worried about what would happen to students who failed the literacy and numeracy corequisites.
Abercrombie said the union supported the introduction of fewer, larger achievement standards, but the roll-out was shocking.
"The lack of adequate support and resourcing at the national level is taking a huge toll. It's making the NCEA system confusing for students and making the workloads of many teachers completely unsustainable. Subject associations are trying desperately to fill the gaps, however they are volunteers, and the resources provided by the mnistry have been inadequate," he said.