Editorial: NCEA literacy and numeracy test results at NZ’s poorest schools pose challenge

Principals from low-income schools have called for an end to NCEA literacy and numeracy tests.

Editorial

THREE KEY FACTS

• Some school principals want to end new NCEA literacy and numeracy tests, citing unfairness for low-income students.
• Over half of students at low-income schools failed reading and writing; nearly three-quarters failed numeracy.
• Principals say their students are disadvantaged by the online testing format.

The Government must get the balance right in addressing the challenge of bad NCEA literacy and numeracy results in low-income schools.

School principals from some of the country’s poorest communities have called for an end to the new NCEA reading, writing and maths tests.

They argue that the online tests will create a generation of school-leavers – mostly Māori or Pasifika – with no qualifications.

After two rounds of reading, writing and maths tests, more than half the students at low-income schools have failed the reading and writing tests and nearly three-quarters failed the numeracy test.

None of those students can get an NCEA qualification until they pass the tests or complete up to 20 extra credits in literacy and numeracy – an option that is available only until the end of 2027.

The principals want to end the online tests, which they say disadvantage their students, and keep the alternative 20-credit option, allowing it to count towards NCEA credits.

Their concerns have been passed on to an NCEA adviser group convened by the Ministry of Education but ultimately this will be a political call, like the decision to run the tests in the first place.

Education Minister Erica Stanford will need to balance the need for higher standards in literacy and numeracy with some fairness and common sense.

The tests should stay in some form – at least for now – because NCEA is still not ensuring students get a reliable, all-round education that consistently teaches them how to read, write and do maths.

NCEA’s failures have been well documented in the last few years. It encourages a pick-and-mix approach, which allows teenagers to choose easy options that disadvantage them later in life. It often runs on internal assessment, so students can resubmit their work repeatedly with help from teachers until they pass. The incentive is dangerously high for teachers and schools to use this method to pass as many students as possible.

Then there is the wider problem that secondary teachers inherit from primary schools, where guess-and-check methods have dominated the teaching of reading, writing and maths for decades.

It has reached the point where many teachers don’t know the basics of systematically decoding words or numbers themselves, so they have no chance of passing on these skills to young children.

The results have been steadily declining achievement levels in basic literacy and numeracy, which prompted an SOS from universities a decade ago about undergraduates who were often unable to write a coherent sentence, let alone an essay.

So more rigorous testing is long overdue, but it needs to be fair. Students at low-income schools have historically struggled with external tests and online testing seems to have made this worse, possibly because many are less familiar with computers.

A good compromise could be a return to pen-and-paper testing, as suggested by one principal. Keeping the alternative credits pathway is trickier, as it was NCEA’s lack of accountability that led to this problem in the first place.

But something needs to change urgently so we don’t write off another generation of students from low-income schools. Contrary to popular belief, New Zealand’s literacy and numeracy problems have affected young people from our richest to our poorest schools. Our most disadvantaged students should not be sacrificed in the struggle to put this right.

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