New student assessment tool plagued with glitches

Thursday, 25 June 2026

Less than a third of eligible students have been assessed with a new tool designed to track progress in reading, writing and maths.

Now, with hundreds of thousands of students yet to be registered, the Ministry of Education is asking schools to upload data to help build the tool.

‘More of a trial’

Education Minister Erica Stanford launched the Student Mentoring Assessment Tool (SMART) in February.

It replaces a 20-year-old framework, and is designed to give parents of year 0-to-10 students progress markers, and twice-yearly updates, using online assessments.

As a result, Stanford said 2026 would mark “the first year of nationally consistent assessment and reporting” across primary and intermediate schools.

But two school terms in, the tool appears to be still in test phase, with an email from the Ministry of Education this week telling educators they had an “opportunity” to “shape how SMART supports assessment and aromatawai” by taking part in trials in Term 3.

The trials, the email explained, will help bank up the tool with data for future assessments. “…The more diverse the group of students involved, the more meaningful the information we gain to improve the tool.”

Last week Stanford said 220,000 children had been assessed using the tool, less than a third of the country’s 665,000 primary and intermediate students.

Douglas Park School principal Gareth Sinton said SMART was “sold as a finished project”, but without benchmark data, was still incomplete and his school, in Masterton, would not use it.

“It’s definitely more of a trial I would say. They’re kind of still building it. The only way to build the norms inside the tool is for kids to use it.”

Post Primary Teachers’ Association president Chris Abercrombie said teachers had raised concerns about SMART’s quality.

Teachers found it time-consuming and needed extra resourcing to make it work, he said. And the Australian-made tool was designed for 90-minute assessments, whereas Aotearoa’s schools generally worked to 60-minute timetables.

The choice of texts included Dickens and Shakespeare: not suitable for younger learners, Abercrombie said.

Other glitches included the writing tool’s AI marking students higher for writing more, regardless of the quality.

“Teachers’ feedback is that it is a ‘one size fits all’ system that does not cater for students with learning needs and the fact that it is run by AI is clearly problematic. It is simply not going to work, in its current form.”

For parents, or for teachers?

Sinton had completed a handful of reading assessments - testing around 10 children, with a range of abilities - but did not plan to use the results in his school reports.

The assessment involved reading passages and responding to questions.

The result was a score, marked out of 45. There was no qualification of what that meant, he said.

“As a tool it was useless because it didn't really give you any kind of further breakdown of how well the kids were going against the curriculum, it just gave you a score. That's not really useful because you don't really know what that means.”

He understood more nuanced reporting would be available next term. But for now, Sinton did not want the assessments to form the basis of his reports.

Stanford has previously said SMART would give parents the information they needed.

“Parents have long called for clearer, more detailed reporting on academic achievement, and this new framework delivers that clarity,” she said in February. “It supports parents to understand their child’s progress over time and to be active partners in their learning.”

But Sinton said assessment should help educators teach and learn.

“That's the real purpose of assessments: how well are the kids going based on what I've taught and therefore what do they need next, and what do I need to do to improve my practice.

“If the purpose is for reporting, there's just no point in even using the tool.”

The numbers behind SMART

$177.9m: This is the Government’s projected 10-year spend on the tool, delivered by an Australian company.

This breaks down to a $23.077m project capital expenditure; $37.8m operating cost; and $116.952m ongoing operating costs.

303,000: This week, a Ministry of Education email told school leaders that 303,000 students were registered. This represents just under half the country’s year 0 to 10 students, of which there are about 665,900.

220,000 children across 1331 schools: This is the number that education minister Erica Stanford said (last week) have been assessed by the tool during this year.

A Ministry of Education email said the number of children who had completed an assessment broke down to reading: 191,467; writing: 181,097; and maths: 197,391.

158: An Official Information Act request showed that 158 schools have registered for the tool, but have not uploaded an assessment.

Antony Harvey, from the Curriculum Centre, said the ministry was working with those schools “to understand the reasons and use these insights to strengthen future assessment windows”.

‘Pain points’

The Post also requested feedback and complaints held by the Ministry about SMART.

That was refused on the basis the request would take too much time to carry out, Harvey explaining that “engagement” had come through several channels, and would not be easy to collate.

“The Ministry has not formally tracked feedback and complaints relating to SMART; the primary focus was on resolving any identified minor pain points where possible.”

There was a large volume of “sector inquiries” relating to the tool, mostly focusing on “practical and technical questions”, Harvey said.

“Where minor pain points for teachers have been identified, we have made targeted, point-in-time adjustments to improve usability.”

SMART is optional for schools, which are required to conduct standardised testing twice a year.

Sinton said he had no plans to adopt the tool, preferring to continue using assessments developed by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research which had New Zealand context and questions.

“SMART is an Aussie test that our content's been shoved into.”

However, he understood why some schools had switched to SMART. “There’s an appeal in a tool that helps schools make judgements against the New Zealand Curriculum.”

The tool is also free, he noted. By comparison, his school spent about $2000 on testing last year.

However, despite the cost, Sinton said he would continue using the existing assessments.