NCEA Changes: What Kiwi Parents Need to Know

What parts of the makeover do we actually need to care about?

May 10, 2024

If you’re in New Zealand you may have heard that our national NCEA qualification is getting a bit of a makeover. But what exactly is changing? And what do you and your teen need to be aware of?

Key Takeaways:

I don’t expect the changes will drastically change the way your teen experiences school or NCEA, but there are a few things it’s probably good to be aware of.
I think the most important thing to be aware of is that from now on your teen HAS to attain what NZQA is calling 20 “co-requisite” credits, comprised of 10 Literacy credits, AND 10 Numeracy credits, before they leave school. Without these 20 credits, the NCEA Level they would otherwise have left school with won’t be awarded.
Your teen can achieve these 20 co-requisite credits at any time during Years 11-13, so if they attain all 20 credits in Year 11, that’s it, they don’t have to worry about them again.
This means there is a scenario where a student is about to finish high school — they have attained the 60 credits they need from Levels 1, 2, and 3 — but if they haven’t also attained their 20 co-requisite credits, they won’t be awarded any of their NCEA qualifications until they bank those 20 co-requisite credits.
The Level 1 Achievement Standards have been revised and those new Standards were effective from January 2024, while new Achievement Standards will be introduced for Levels 2 and 3 in 2028 and 2029, respectively.
Any credits your teen already has are safe and will carry over.

This post is public so feel free to share it with any other parents who might find it useful.

By way of background, these changes are being made as a result of the NCEA Change Programme, which was set in motion by the previous Labour Government. According to NCEA Education the changes “will be the most significant reform of NCEA since the qualification was introduced in 2002”.
The changes are significant, because of the mandatory requirement to attain the 20 “co-requisite” credits, and because all of the Achievement Standards (i.e. topics your teen is taught) across Levels 1 - 3 are going to be revised.
The ‘new’ Level 1 is already in place, effective from January 2024 (but it’s being revised; it appears the rollout wasn’t as slick as it could/should have been). The new Level 2 will be fully implemented by 2028, and the new Level 3 by 2029 (the roll-out of new Levels 2 and 3 has recently been pushed back by two years by the new coalition government).
All Levels (1, 2 and 3) will become 60-credit qualifications (Level 1 used to require 80 credits, and at Levels 2 and 3 students could ‘carry over’ 20 credits from the level below; that leniency has now ended).
Importantly, the 20 co-requisite credits for numeracy and literacy sit outside of the 60 credits required at each Level.

So exactly how many credits does your teen need?

In 2024 and 2025, every Level requires 60 credits, but students also need those 20 “co-requisite” numeracy and literacy credits before they leave school, regardless of when they leave.
So if your teen is going to leave school at the end of Year 11 or 12 (i.e. with Level 1 or 2, respectively), they’ll need those 20 numeracy and literacy credits before they leave, otherwise they’ll leave with nothing.

If you’re more of a visual learner (like me), hopefully this wee diagram helps:

Other changes over the next few years:

All NCEA subjects are being “re-developed” so that every subject will be comprised of four achievement standards — two internals and two externals — and 20 credits in total (presumably 5 credits for each Achievement Standard but I’m not sure on that yet).
This means that when your teen has exams at the end of the year, they will only need to study for two Achievement Standards.
The NZQA has also warned that while there will still be exams at the end of the year, some external assessments might be completed during the year.
The Authority has also warned (my choice of word) that more external assessments will be done online or uploaded to NZQA via its website. We’ll watch that space carefully…

My thoughts on all this

As the Herald reported on, the goal of the NCEA Change Programme was to make the NCEA qualification “more accessible, with a simpler structure, stronger literacy and numeracy requirements, and to provide clearer pathways to further education or work”.

My take is that yes that all sounds great; I just hope the politicians and the MoE get it right, because schools, teachers, and most importantly students are relying on them to not make a pigs ear of it, and to provide a curriculum and testing (examination) infrastructure that is academically rigorous while also being manageable and achievable.

I was only the second cohort to go through NCEA and it was pretty mental. Not that I can compare it to anything else personally, but they shoved a lot in. For most subjects we didn’t just have internals throughout the year, we had to blitz through up to FIVE achievement standards in the external exam.

If the term Achievement Standards means nothing to you, I just mean we had to write a shit-tonne in exams. I think it put a lot of pressure on a lot of students, and resulted in an unfair portion of students not getting the results they otherwise deserved.

So I’m glad that the external exams no longer have five achievement standards shoved into them. In my view it is (or should be) achievable for the vast majority of students to get through two Achievement Standards in an external exam setting.

However, I am a little concerned that we might see a continued lowering of expectations of student achievement. Students will only meet the expectations set of them and nothing more, and I expect there is / will be a portion of students who can pretty much ‘cruise’ through NCEA, at least until Year 13.

I’m basing this on the changes to NCEA over the years and what I hear from teacher friends. I’m not sure that NCEA satisfactorily prepares students for university or the workforce where deadlines are actually deadlines and there’s usually no one around to hold your hand. But that’s just my own speculation…

Overall, the changes do sound like they will make the structure of NCEA simpler which is great. And in theory I am all for students having to reach a certain level of Numeracy and Literacy before they leave school, given their primal importance in being a functioning adult.

But the question then of course becomes, how.

As the Herald reported on, Papatoetoe High School Principal Vaughan Couillault said the challenge of the 20 co-requisite credits is:

“… how we can make sure students reach the required standard through whatever pathway they’re using, whether actually the common assessment task — the exam for want of a better phrase — or the standards pathway, the alternate route … That’s cause for concern in many communities.”

I guess for now, we will just have to wait and see.

For more info on the NCEA Change Programme all of the details are set out here: https://ncea.education.govt.nz/literacy-and-numeracy-resources

Thanks and happy Friday,

Clare

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Sources:

Sources: NCEA Education: https://ncea.education.govt.nz/understanding-how-ncea-requirements-are-changing

https://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/government-rephase-ncea-change-programme

https://www2.nzqa.govt.nz/ncea/about-ncea/ncea-changes-for-2024-and-2025/

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/ncea-change-programme-education-minister-erica-stanford-announces-delay-to-qualification-reforms/B4TCQTSQDVCQ3JAVP5MJMM5KGU/

https://ncea.education.govt.nz/what-ncea-change-programme