Teachers told RNZ many students needed experience with the online testing system, but repeated failures could be demoralising. Photo: 123RF
Should teens sit high-stakes NCEA literacy and numeracy tests before they are ready?
It is a question confronting schools up and down the country as they prepare for this year's second round of reading, writing and maths tests.
Teachers told RNZ many students needed experience with the online testing system, but repeated failures could be demoralising.
They said many of the teens enrolled to sit the online reading, writing and maths tests from 9 to 20 September had failed in the May round of tests.
In that round just 46 percent of the 55,000 students who attempted the numeracy test passed, and in reading and writing the pass rates were 59 and 56 percent.
Most of the students attempting the May tests were in Year 10, but about 20,000 were in Year 11 with the remainder spread across other year groups.
Teens must pass each of the tests or - this year and next - specific NCEA standards before they can receive any NCEA qualifications.
The benchmark was introduced because a significant proportion of young people who achieved an NCEA qualification could not pass a test of basic adult literacy and numeracy.
Hutt Valley High School principal Denise Johnson said deciding who should sit the tests and who should wait was not easy.
"You don't want to end up streaming kids and destroying their self-confidence, and equally, you don't want kids sitting a test they are not ready for."
Johnson said this year the school decided to leave the decision largely to students and their families.
Deputy principal Nick Larkin told RNZ the school suggested to some students that they wait, but did not stop them from attempting the tests if they wanted to.
"What we didn't want to do is to say 'no, you shouldn't be doing it' but you might say 'we recommend you wait till the next one but if you want to give it a go, give it a go'. And for some kids giving it a go is good, they see where they are. For others, it's going to be quite a demoralising process if they sit and they fail, and they sit and they fail - and we've got a number of Year 11s like that."
Larkin said considering the preparedness of borderline students was extremely time-consuming, and took in not just academic achievement but also emotional and social factors.
"We also ran it past guidance and they would come through and go 'actually James is having a horrendous time at home', so we put that lens over it as well," he said.
Larkin said most of the school's Year 10s sat the numeracy and reading tests in May and most would attempt the writing test this month. Also sitting this month would be students who did not pass the reading and numeracy tests in May.
Kapiti College numeracy coordinator Richard Pittams said the school entered all its Year 10 in the May round of tests, as well as Year 11s who did not pass when the tests were offered last year.
"There are few Year 11s now who have failed it three times, and the big struggle there is how does that not make their heads drop? And how do you keep them motivated and interested? That's the biggest concern we've seen with the co-requisite tests."
Not all students had access to and familiarity with computers. Photo: 123RF
Pittams said teens who worked hard and were confident about their chance of passing the test were hardest hit if they failed.
"The happier they're feeling beforehand, if it doesn't go their way, the lower they tend to fall afterwards. Whereas the ones who sort of think, 'oh, I don't have a chance', the results come back and they're not too phased by it."
Pittams said allowing students to enter only when their teachers judged them to be ready was not as straightforward as it might sound.
"Even though it's coming from a good place, if you hand-select some and say 'not you, not you', then you're kind of just saying 'you're bottom of the pile'. and it becomes quite self-fulfilling at that point. You're sort of damned if you do in some ways, and you're damned if you don't."
A secondary school literacy coordinator who RNZ agreed not to identify said she was having difficult conversations with disappointed students following the May tests. She said many students had little exposure to computers and needed to sit the tests just to familiarise themselves with the system.
"Our kids don't have access to devices at home, they're not digitally literate. They might have a phone, but they don't know how to use those computer programmes effectively and that's a real barrier."
Teachers want more detail faster about failing students
Teachers told RNZ they needed clearer feedback from each round of tests so they could see where their students had gone wrong. They also wanted the results faster so they had more time to prepare those who had failed for the next round.
Hutt Valley High principal Denise Johnson said administering the tests and organising extra classes had created a lot of extra work for schools. She said a particular problem was a lack of feedback from students on their attempts at the numeracy test.
"No one knows what they did well, what they missed and therefore where to target teaching. And if your literacy is not up to scratch - you struggle to understand what you are being asked, despite probably being able to problem solve and calculate things."
The New Zealand Qualifications Authority (NZQA) said it currently took about eight weeks to return results to students from marking 175,000 assessments.
"NZQA is looking at ways to significantly reduce this turnaround time for the assessments in 2025," it said.
However it was able to provide results from the May reading corequisite on 23 July rather than 5 August because they were auto-marked and ready earlier.
The authority said it did not return students' responses for the corequisites, which it said was in line with international best practice for that kind of assessment.
"A range of information is available to help teachers identify where to focus more of their teaching and learning time. This includes a consolidated feedback report for their students who did not achieve the standard, and Interim Assessment Reports, which show areas where the student cohort as a whole performed well."