NCEA replacement ‘not going to suit our young people’ says teachers’ union
Saturday, 16 May 2026
The Government has announced the new NZCE scheme to replace NCEA in high schools.
The new certificate will involve students taking five subjects, with each involving both internal assessment and an exam.
Results will be recorded for the students on a grading scale of A+ to E.
The new scheme was set to begin in schools from 2028.
High school students will soon receive a new six-point grading scale from A+ to E as part of a major overhaul replacing NCEA with subject-based certificates.
Education Minister Erica Stanford confirmed on Saturday details of the new qualifications: the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) for Year 12, and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE) for Year 13.
Under the new system, students in Year 12 and 13 must study at least five subjects annually. To achieve each qualification, students must pass a minimum of three subjects.
Assessment for every subject would consist of both internal assessments and an examination. The best performing students will be awarded new endorsement awards.
Science will join English and mathematics as a compulsory subject for Year 11 students, starting in 2028.
The PPTA union, representing secondary teachers, has strongly criticised the changes, telling Stuff they are a “significant over-correction”, which will bring in a “rigid” system that will mean more students leave school without qualifications.
“Is the answer that we make sure more young people fail? That is the solution to the problem? I don’t buy that,” said Chris Abercrombie, PPTA president.
“We have significant concerns that we are going into this really rigid, one-size-fits-all assessment that is not going to suit our young people in a time when we are moving towards a world of AI, when the world’s knowledge is at your fingertips,” Abercrombie said.
“New Zealand students are recognised internationally for their creativity … that is what we need in this changing world - problem solvers, innovators, and not this, ‘Everyone must do an exam for every subject.’”
The Green Party and Labour are also opposed to the changes, which Labour’s education spokesperson Ginny Andersen said “don’t set our children up to succeed in the future”.
“Erica Stanford received advice from her own officials that these changes will lead to worse outcomes for children from lower-income families,” Andersen said. “NCEA changes shouldn’t be pushed through before the election. Our children’s education is more important than politics.”
The new qualifications won’t be awarded unless students have also passed a literacy and numeracy “foundational award”, benchmarked at Year 11 level and which will typically be sat in that year.
The new certificates will explicitly list the number of subjects passed, and the specific grade for each. To pass a subject, a student will need to gain a C grade or higher.
Stanford announced the changes in Ōrewa, north Auckland, at National’s northern region conference, where Prime Minister Christopher Luxon also spoke, and criticised NCEA as “hard to navigate”.
“Gone is the ability to make up your overall qualification by choosing between thousands of different standards. Gone are fully internally assessed subjects. Gone is the ability to avoid exams,” Luxon said.
“Instead, students will study at least five subjects and learn the curriculum for the whole subject, and for each subject you sit, we are bringing back something called grades.
“This is, folks, about rewarding hard work and incentivising our kids to actually keep pushing themselves, to keep striving to achieve their very best, and it makes the results easier for everyone else to understand.”
Students who pass at least five subjects and excel in them will be eligible for endorsement awards. For example, three A grades would achieve a “distinction” endorsement. The exact design and names for these endorsements will be confirmed in the coming months.
New subjects confirmed for the senior curriculum included one for civics, politics and philosophy, another for journalism, media and communications, and also advanced mathematics.
Stanford said industry-led subjects like building and construction, outdoor education, and primary industries would also be included with 'parity of esteem'.
Current Year 9 students would be the first group to progress through the new system.
The overhaul was part of “one of the most ambitious programmes of reform in New Zealand’s history”, Stanford said, and replaced an NCEA system that’s “way too easy to game” for one designed to “reward hard work and to encourage students to strive to achieve more”.
The new qualification would be supported by a “knowledge-rich, internationally-benchmarked, nationally-consistent curriculum”, Stanford said, with students “learning the same thing, no matter where you go to school - English at [Auckland’s] Rangitoto College will be the same as English down at Burnside in Christchurch”.
At a media stand-up after the announcement, Stanford was asked why only three subjects would need to be passed, when, under an earlier proposal, it had been four.
“I've had a principals advisory group and a technical advisory group around me, and we wanted to make sure that the certificate was both achievable but also aspirational,” she said.
‘Throwing the baby out with the bathwater’
Asked if NZ had enough science teachers given the subject would be compulsory at Year 11, Standford admitted some schools would “struggle” to fill vacancies, but said she had levers to “make sure I'm surgically putting science teachers into where they need to be”.
She couldn’t put a number on the current shortage of science teachers, but said such data would be available from the Ministry of Education from next year.
Asked if the new system would provide less flexibility to achieve University Entrance, and could mean more students leave school without qualifications, Stanford said it was “more rigorous”, with “deep subject learning”.
“If you work hard and you turn up every day, you will succeed and get the skills and knowledge you need to build a successful future.”
Lawrence Xu-Nan, Green Party spokesperson for education, said scrapping NCEA - a “world-class” system - “entirely guarantees” thousands of children will leave school without both a qualification and love of learning.
“They want more students to fail rather than more students to succeed … the real world does not exist in neat little five subject boxes,” Xu-Nan said.
“Education is about encouraging curiosity and nurturing our future generation’s love of learning … New Zealand has seen the harm of standardising assessment, where some students are left further behind - especially Māori, Pasifika, disabled and neurodivergent, and rural students.”
Abercrombie, president of PPTA Te Wehengarua, told Stuff there was no doubt the changes would mean more students would leave school without qualifications.
“That’s not just us thinking that, that is the Ministry [of Education], in some of the original documents they say [that] … do we need to make changes? Absolutely. But this feels like we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.”
Abercrombie said there were not enough science teachers now, and there wouldn’t be in 18 months’ time.
“I’m not convinced we even have enough science labs for this to happen.”
That spoke to the need for a well-resourced, clear plan to implement the changes, Abercrombie said, “so we don’t have the schemozzle we’ve had with previous assessment rollouts”.
Under the announced changes, there will be transitional arrangements for students part way through NCEA. For example, a student in Year 13 in 2029 who still needs 10 credits to get NCEA Level 3 in 2030 will be able to get those credits in school or at a tertiary provider.
The Ministry of Education said it and NZQA are doing further work on the exact arrangements for such transitional arrangements, which “will apply in specific situations and for a set period”.
Other details yet to be worked out include how reassessments will work. NZQA will also review the minimum University Entrance requirements.