Last year's NCEA achievement rate for year 12 and 13 was the lowest in five years (file photo). Photo: Supplied/ Unsplash - Meredith Spencer
Principals fear many of the 15,000 senior secondary students who failed to reach the critical NCEA reading, writing and maths benchmark last year will give up on school or future study.
Figures provided to RNZ by NZQA showed nine percent of students in Year 13 and 15 percent of Year 12s had not achieved the literacy and numeracy co-requisite by the end of 2025.
That equated to about 5000 Year 13s and 10,000 Year 12s who would not receive any NCEA certificates because they had not yet met the requirement.
While most Year 12s would return to school for Year 13, principals told RNZ many of those who failed to meet the co-requisite were likely to lose heart and give up.
The achievement rates were the lowest in the past five years and principals warned they were likely to drag down the number of school-leavers with NCEA qualifications - in 2024 the number of school-leavers without a qualification hit 16 percent.
Porirua College principal Ragne Maxwell said some of the students who failed to achieve the co-requisite were in fact literate and numerate, but struggled to pass online exams in reading, writing and maths.
"The concern really is that some people are failing who are literate and numerate," she said.
"It's very difficult because they lose hope. It's all very well to say just keep trying but the resilience to keep trying time after time when you just keep failing, it's really challenging."
Maxwell said students who failed were not likely to return to school to keep trying to pass the co-requisite.
Ragne Maxwell Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
"People who might have come back otherwise who have failed perhaps again in the case of Year 12 - failed in Year 11 ... they're giving up hope and not returning."
Maxwell said the achievement rate would worsen in 2028 when the alternative pathway for meeting the literacy and numeracy requirement - 20 credits on top of the 60 required for an NCEA certificate - ended and the only way of achieving the co-requisite would be through the online tests.
"We're just going to see more and more people failing, leaving school with no qualifications and having worse futures as an outcome of this, even though some of them are in fact literate and numerate," she said.
Co-requisite achievement was lowest in schools serving the poorest communities.
Only 74 percent of Year 12s at those schools met the co-requisite by the end of last year, down from 85 percent in 2021 and for Year 13s the achievement rate was 88 percent, down from 93 percent.
Simon Craggs Photo: RNZ / Luka Forman
Papakura High School principal Simon Craggs said the figures were concerning.
Craggs said he hoped senior students who did not have the co-requisite would return, but he feared some would not.
"We're very much hoping that most of them will come back and I think a significant proportion will, but there will be some students who get disillusioned that they've completed Year 12 and they have no qualifications and feel that they're locked out of qualifications who will leave school."
Craggs said the co-requisite had a bigger effect on qualification achievement at his school than at others last year.
"Our number of Year 12s that don't have literacy and numeracy is significantly higher than the national figure or even the equity index band figure, so we've got a lot of work to do to support those students to be able to come back.
"Hopefully we don't lose too many of them and we can continue to work hard with them on getting them across the line so they do leave school with qualifications."
Mākoura College principal Simon Fuller said his school had NCEA achievement rates above 90 percent last year, well above the average for schools in similar communities.
He said students in Year 11 and some in Year 10 attempted the online reading, writing and maths tests, but those in Years 12-13 reached the benchmark through the alternative pathway of 20 extra NCEA credits in literacy and numeracy.
Simon Fuller Photo: RNZ / John Gerritsen
Fuller said the older students would not have performed so well if they had attempted the online tests.
"Those students haven't had the benefit of the minister's investment in structured literacy or numeracy," he said.
"So they wouldn't have performed so well, I believe, in sitting that external [exam] without the prep work."
He said the tests were not well suited to schools in poor communities, neurodiverse students and many boys.
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