Rongotai College principal Kevin Carter (left) and head of maths Dietmar Muck. Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
Schools have been running lunchtime and after-school revision as they race to prepare students for crucial NCEA literacy and numeracy tests next week.
Teachers warn that NCEA pass rates will tumble if they can not get their students across the line in the round of tests that run from 9-20 September.
They say it is a big ask, because many teenagers arrive at secondary several years behind in terms of their reading, writing and maths achievement.
Just 46 percent of the 55,000 students who attempted the numeracy test in May passed, and in reading and writing the pass rates were 59 and 56 percent.
At Wellington's Rongotai College, head of maths Dietmar Muck said the numeracy test was fair if the student was prepared. But many were not.
"We have to do quite a bit because a lot of students come below the expected level of knowledge to the school and we have to get them up to speed," he said.
The co-requisite tests are high stakes - teens must pass all three tests before they can get an NCEA qualification, though for the next two years there are alternative standards.
Rongotai principal Kevin Carter said NCEA achievement rates would drop nationally if pass rates did not improve.
He said English and maths teachers had asked for more classroom time, but that would mean other areas of the curriculum would suffer and the school had offered extra tuition for those who wanted it.
"In mathematics, for instance, students can go along to a tutorial. There are tutorials running in the lunch break five days of the week, different teachers doing them and students can elect which day suits them best. In literacy, we've been doing them after school," he said.
"They're turning up to them which is a good start, in their lunch break. I think it's actually starting to make an impact for them and hopefully we'll see that come through in the September round of tests."
Carter said the college had also adopted a whole-school approach to improving writing in all subjects.
"We've been reaching out to all learning areas to say if there's a written component these are things you need to focus on," he said.
Carter said starting a sentence with a capital letter and finishing it with a full stop might seem obvious, but over the years that knowledge had dissipated and schools had to focus on it again.
Papamoa College deputy principal Shea McEvoy said schools were feeling the pressure to ensure young people passed the tests.
He said teachers were using subject class time for literacy and numeracy tuition, and he questioned whether the tests were the best approach.
"We have some young people that I know of who are receiving merits in level 1 mathematics but are yet to achieve the co-requisite in numeracy due to the challenging nature of that exam," he said.
McEvoy said most of the school's Year 11 sat the tests and this year some Year 10s had too.
He said repeated failures were tough on the students.
"There's a pressure, that looming pressure that sits above kids. If they have not attained that in their first instance or perhaps their second instance or perhaps the third instance, all of sudden you have those kids feeling more pressure to get that co-req or they're not able to get that qualification so you're starting to build that mounting pressure for kids," he said.
"How many times is too many times to sit an assessment before you are disheartened and crushed."
McEvoy said schools only found out in early August which students had failed the May test, which did not give them much time to prepare them for the September tests.
He said schools might reach a stage where more students were passing the co-requisites, but it would take time and effort.
McEvoy said the tests were a one-size fits all approach that was contrary to the flexibility of the NCEA system in terms of assessing students when they were ready.
Kapiti College numeracy coordinator Richard Pittams said most of its students who attempted the tests in May passed, but about 130 Year 10s and some Year 11s failed numeracy and were preparing to have another go.
He said the school provided extra lessons, including lunch-time and after-school sessions.
Pittams said he understood why the tests were introduced but he worried they would leave too many young people with no formal qualifications.
"There's just going to be big piles of kids that leave school without any official certificate or anything to suggest what they've achieved," he said.
"The national averages are looking at 30 percent, maybe higher, who just won't get the numeracy co-requisite which means they won't get NCEA level 1. So I think there's massive issues there around what's fair and equitable."
He said schools received their students' results a few weeks ago and really needed more time to prepare students for the next round. They also needed more detail, and wanted the NZQA to provide the test papers so they can see where students went wrong.
He said schools could select students only when they were ready to sit the tests, but that had an effect on students' confidence too because schools were telling them they were not ready.
A secondary school literacy coordinator who RNZ agreed not to identify said about half the teens that started Year 9 at her high school each year were reading below the expected curriculum level and it is impossible to catch all of them up by Year 10.
"We now teach levels one, two and three of the curriculum in a normal secondary Year 9 and 10 classroom. So we're we're working at all levels of the curriculum and teaching explicit skills now, and that's at the expense of the discipline of English literature. We're teaching, reading and writing."
The teacher said students needed to reach the end of level 4 to have a chance of passing the reading and writing tests.
"We have students that come in in Year 9 that are at level 2 and the beginning of level 3 of the curriculum, so that would require me to accelerate them four years in 18 months to be ready for that exam. And that is not possible," she said.
"I know that my kids are accelerating. I have evidence from PAT testing that proves that. But it's simply they're not ready yet, and it's not fair to them... So I'm having deep conversations with really disappointed kids."
She said repeated failures were tough, but some students needed to try the tests so they could get used to the online 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," she said.
"If you have a nervous kid who has never sat an exam before that's high stakes, who isn't used to working on computers, that just makes it harder for them to succeed. Add on that a layer of 'I'm not very confident in my learning' and you're setting a kid up for failure."