Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and the Minister for Education Erica Stanford have announced a proposal to replace the entire NCEA programme with new national qualifications.
Year 11 students would be required to sit a foundation test in numeracy and literacy and year 12 and 13 students would receive two new qualifications — the New Zealand Certificate of Education and Advanced Certificate of Education.
Students would be required to take five subjects and pass at least four of them to receive a certificate being awarded a mark out of 100 and grades "that make sense to parents like A, B, C, D, E".
Otago Secondary Principals’ Association chairwoman Jackie Barron, who is a principal at St Hilda’s Collegiate School, said her initial thoughts were the curriculum change would give teachers some certainty and schools some clarity around what was expected of them.
Despite being positive about the changes, she said the information was new and would take time to process.
There was previously some anxiety around what the NCEA was going to look like with recent changes to the qualification made in an attempt to put a stronger focus on literacy and numeracy.
"This gives us a really clear timeline," Ms Barron said.
There was enough time for teachers to adjust to the new curriculum as major changes to year 12 and 13 courses were not expected until 2028.
Ms Barron thought it was the right call to replace NCEA if the new curriculum was inclusive and engaged all students.
She said one of NCEA’s strengths was its flexibility and it was important not to go back to a narrow form of assessment that only tested certain types of learning.
Otago Boys’ High School rector Richard Hall said the proposed new curriculum appeared to be an improvement on NCEA.
He said the existing NCEA framework faced challenges posed by an "attitude that can favour mediocrity".
There were issues with it including excessive credit counting and an over-reliance on internal assessment at the expense of robust external examination opportunities.
Otago Boys’ had maintained a strong expectation for its students to sit exams even if they had already received all the credits they needed to pass.
"We believe that a shift towards a potentially 50/50 model of internal and external assessment [exams] would represent a beneficial step forward," Mr Hall said.
PPTA Otago regional chairman Kussi Hurtado-Stuart was concerned the new qualification would lose some of the flexibility NCEA had.
He said the loss of flexibility would affect neurodiverse learners the most, especially if exams were heavily weighted.
He was worried teachers would not be given enough resource support to transition into the new curriculum.
"I think that there was a moment of solidarity and eye rolls this morning across the country both at the change that was proposed and the support they said we were going to get."
Teachers’ expectations were reasonably low there would be any support.
Ms Stanford said the NCEA change programme was already funded and some proposals like the expansion of Vocational Education and Training pathways would require additional funding that would be considered in future budgets.
The flexibility NCEA offered in externals and internals would be maintained with the new qualification and special assessment conditions would be, too.
