Why we need to replace NCEA
Wednesday, 3 September 2025
Erica Stanford is the minister of education.
Join the discussion and have your say in the comments.
OPINION: Every parent wants the same thing: for their child to leave school with the knowledge and skills they need to build the life they want. That’s why the debate about NCEA matters. At its heart, it’s about a simple choice: do we keep lowering the bar so more students can step over it, or do we raise expectations and give our kids the support they need to reach them? I am firmly on the side of lifting children up because I know they are capable of so much more.
That’s why I want to hear from you. Public consultation on these proposals is open now make sure you have your say and contribute to shaping a qualification that will best serve the next generation.
Since announcing the proposal to replace NCEA with a stronger, more reliable qualification, the feedback I’ve had from parents, employers, and many educators has been overwhelmingly positive. They know that for the best part of 20 years, our national qualification has not been delivering what it promised.
It has been unusual to hear some people dismiss these concerns as a “political agenda” or a “manufactured crisis.” That couldn’t be further from the truth.
The reality is that concerns about NCEA have been building for years, across governments, schools, employers, and parents. The 2024 Education Review Office report on the redesigned NCEA Level 1 gathered more than 6,000 responses from teachers, principals, students, and employers. The report was damning. It concluded that the qualification was too flexible, failed to give students full subject knowledge, and too often reduced learning to collecting easy credits.
NZQA, an independent Crown entity, also provided me with extensive data. They warned that, in their view, “the flexibility of NCEA was being used to prioritise credit accumulation over meaningful learning and clear educational or vocational pathways.” That is not a political opinion. That is the judgment of the very organisation responsible for administering the qualification.
And if anyone is looking for a political agenda – here it is. I am ambitious for our kids. I want every student to receive a world-leading education that leads to a meaningful qualification so they can live the life they want. Every single action I have taken since the day I signed my ministerial warrant has been to achieve this.
The claim of a political agenda also ignores the fact that this process was sector-led. Top principals from a wide range of schools around the country spent the best part of a year grappling with how to design a system that would best serve students and set them up for success, and now we are widely consulting on the proposal. It also ignores the fact that I openly expressed a wish to work with Labour to ensure we have a solution that survives political cycles.
So let’s be clear: this isn’t manufactured. The evidence is real, consistent, and impossible to ignore.
Some argue we should just improve NCEA rather than replace it. The truth is, we’ve been down that road so many times. Multiple governments have tried on multiple occasions, and all have failed. Most recently, Labour undertook a major overhaul of NCEA, consulting widely for years, and promising that the redesigned Level 1 introduced in 2024 would solve the problems. Instead, it made them far worse. I make this point not to bag Labour, but to show how impossible it is to fix NCEA.
The evidence speaks for itself in ERO’s report on the recently revamped NCEA Level 1:
60% of teachers said the new Level 1 was not a reliable measure of students’ skills and knowledge.
75% of principals said credit values were an unreliable indicator of the work required.
70% of employers said it wasn’t a meaningful signal of skills or knowledge.
Almost half of parents admitted they didn’t understand the system well enough to guide their children.
And perhaps most damning: in mathematics, only 11% of students attempted all four standards under the new Level 1. That means most are entering senior maths without even covering the basics.
After two decades of failed tinkering, it’s clear NCEA cannot be patched – it must be replaced.
Some have said that Level 1 is still worth keeping because it gives students “something meaningful.” But the evidence says otherwise. The ERO report found that 64% of teachers believe NCEA Level 1 doesn’t motivate students to achieve. Employers don’t value it, teachers don’t trust it, and schools have been walking away from it in large numbers. Even the Auckland Secondary Schools Principals’ Association has said Level 1 should go in their latest survey of principals.
That is why the principals who advised me recommended replacing Level 1 with something better: a foundational award in literacy and numeracy at Year 11. This will give students and parents confidence they have the basics they need for success, while freeing up the rest of the year for deeper learning rather than being cut short by exam season.
Just as importantly, this new qualification will provide strong, industry- and tertiary-aligned vocational pathways, fully integrated with academic pathways. This is not about sending some students down a less valuable track, as some have claimed – it is about recognising that every student deserves a qualification that is respected by employers, valued by tertiary providers, and gives them real options. Whether a young person wants to be a master builder, an automotive engineer, a teacher or a lawyer, the system should set them up for success, not split them into separate lanes. This proposal provides students with the option to integrate vocational and general subjects into their secondary school qualification. It is a modern, flexible and future-facing solution that maintains the best features of NCEA whilst building something that is rigorous, robust and internationally-comparable.
The most serious claim from critics, however, is that equity will suffer if we remove the current flexibility. I fundamentally disagree. For too long, NCEA’s extreme flexibility has meant students could cobble together credits from standards seen as easier to achieve with no external exams, combined with unit standards for things like filling in a form, or participating in a group activity. These might add up to a certificate, but they don’t add up to success. Parents know it, students know it, and employers know it.
That isn’t equity – it’s false equity. Real equity is making sure every child leaves school with knowledge and skills that open doors, not close them. Equity is making sure a qualification means something in the real world. It’s about raising student achievement to meet the bar, not lowering the bar to meet declining standards.
That’s why this proposal isn’t happening in isolation. It’s part of a wider reform programme to raise achievement right across the system. We are requiring one hour a day of reading, writing and maths in every primary school. We are rolling out structured approaches to literacy and numeracy, training tens of thousands of teachers in explicit, evidence-based teaching. We are putting maths books into every classroom, funding maths tutoring at intermediate, and delivering a writing action plan to target 150,000 students. All of this is underpinned by a year-by-year, knowledge-rich curriculum and regular progress reports for parents. These reforms are about ensuring that by the end of intermediate, students are at curriculum so that they can experience success in a robust national qualification.
And in 2026, our new senior secondary curriculum will be released. Schools will have a full two years to engage with it, with compulsory use beginning at Year 11 in 2028, Year 12 in 2029, and Year 13 in 2030. This timeline ensures teachers have enough time for professional learning, and schools are supported with resources and exemplars well in advance. We cannot afford to do nothing. We cannot afford to wait.
Every teacher wants the very best for their students. I share that commitment. That’s why I will work alongside principals, teachers, parents, and employers every step of the way to build a qualification that sets students up for success.
Because at the end of the day, this isn’t just about qualifications, it’s about your child’s future. Education is often called the great equaliser, but only when it is ambitious for all children. If we lower the bar, we deny children the very opportunities education is meant to provide. Parents are ambitious for their children, and so am I. Our kids deserve a system that lifts them up, and I will not accept anything less than a world-leading education system that delivers for every child.
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