In 2024 and 2025 schools can use regular NCEA standards instead of the online tests to prove students meet minimum reading, writing and maths requirements. Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
The government will give schools a temporary alternative to new online literacy and numeracy tests that many teenagers have found too hard.
It is also deferring major NCEA changes so schools can concentrate on maths, reading and writing.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced this afternoon that in 2024 and 2025 schools could use regular NCEA standards instead of the online tests to prove students met minimum reading, writing and maths requirements.
From next year, students must pass either the online tests or the assessment standards in order to gain any level of the NCEA qualification.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
"Currently there are over 500 maths and 100 literacy standards. From next year there will be a list of the essential and foundational maths and literacy assessment standards that a student must achieve in order to pass NCEA," Tinetti said.
"But in order to get this right we are easing the pressure on teachers by slowing down the wider implementation of NCEA level 2 and 3 and re-focusing the work to refresh the curriculum."
Tinetti said schools would prioritise mathematics, English, te reo Māori and pāngarau but the government had deferred the requirement for schools to implement changes to other areas of the curriculum by one year.
"The refresh and redesign of the curriculum will continue on existing timeframes and be available to all schools from 2026, but teaching it won't be compulsory until 2027," she said.
Changes to NCEA Level 1 would go ahead next year as planned but full implementation of changes to NCEA Level 2 would be deferred to 2026 and Level 3 would be deferred to 2027.
Tinetti said they were committed to giving the NCEA strong credibility.
She said it was about giving students and teachers the time they needed to adjust.
"At the moment, we have a sector who are very completely burnt out, and as at capacity they can be, and this is something that the professional advisory group have been telling me around how the sector has come through Covid, and how it's been a really tough time."
Today's announcement followed a series of trials with Year 10 students that found many did not know how to use capital letters and full stops and did not know there were 60 minutes in an hour.
The writing test had the lowest pass rates with last year's pilots recording pass rates of 34 per cent and 46 per cent.
An independent review said some students might struggle with the tests because they were not familiar with using computers, leading to suggestions the tests were unfair.
Some teachers warned the online tests could become an insurmountable barrier that would prevent many young people, especially those from Māori, Pacific, and low-income backgrounds, from earning an NCEA qualification.
Teachers and principals had also warned that they could not cope with the scale and pace of change expected of them.
Secondary Principals Association president Vaughan Couillault said many people had been asking the government to change its implementation timeline.
"With this adjusted timeline, schools will have more time to build their capacity and adequately prepare for the changes, ensuring that the new standards can be more successfully integrated into teaching practice," he said.
Post Primary Teachers Association acting president Chris Abercrombie said the union was pleased the government was listening to teachers.
But he said the online literacy and numeracy tests should not be introduced next year.
"The pilots are showing there is a lot more work needed to ensure that the corequisites are accessible and equitable for all students. These corequisites are high stakes for rangatahi - if they can't achieve them, they don't get NCEA and their life choices are severely diminished," he said.
"While the minister's decision to allow schools to undertake either the new NCEA literacy and numeracy corequisites, or keep with a restricted list of existing unit standards for two more years, provides a little more flexibility, we would have preferred a complete deferral of the corequisites."
Couillault said he was confident students would be able to meet the new qualifications.
"Our concern is not about the content, not about the direction of travel, our concern was about the pace of that travel and our ability to implement change with fidelity based on the fact that a lot's happened in the last couple of seasons."
He said they still had a lot to do to get student's and teachers up to speed.
"We've got concerns about capacity, not capability, capacity in the current climate, where we're still playing catch up from the issues we've faced in the last couple of years."
He believed the sector could not get up to speed while implementing large scale systemic changes without something going wrong.
Post Primary Teachers Association's Kieran Gainsford said he was glad the government has taken industry advice onboard.
"These changes to NCEA are significant, from a teachers' perspective it's really important we get them right the first time."