The Government has delayed making a final decision on the proposal to abolish NCEA and replace it with a new education qualification system.
Public consultation on the plan ran between August and September, with analysis and summary to identify changes before Cabinet was due to consider final policy recommendations in November, according to a Ministry of Education discussion document.
However, Education Minister Erica Stanford told 1News she intended to take decisions to Cabinet in February next year.
"We are carefully considering the feedback we have received on the proposal to replace NCEA. Nearly 11,000 submissions were received during public consultation," she said.
"The Ministry of Education is undertaking further analysis of the submissions before having further conversations with key sector groups based on specific areas of feedback."
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Stanford announced in August that the Government was looking to replace the current NCEA with new national qualifications, saying while the system had been designed to be flexible and inclusive, "the flexibility has gone too far and the complexity has masked poor performance".
The reforms aimed to move away from the current standards-based assessment model. Instead, students would follow structured, subject-based programmes designed to provide a more coherent and meaningful learning experience.
The proposal included:
- Removing NCEA Level 1, requiring students to take English and Mathematics at Year 11, and sit a foundation award (test) in numeracy and literacy.
- Replacing NCEA Levels 2 and 3 with two new qualifications (The New Zealand Certificate of Education at Year 12 and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education at Year 13).
- Requiring students to take five subjects and pass at least four to attain each certificate.
- Marking clearly out of 100 with grades that make sense to parents like A, B, C, D, E.
- Working with industry to develop better vocational pathways so students are getting the skills relevant to certain career pathways.
Some schools were supportive of dumping NCEA and moving to a more structured system, but others said the reforms would unleash a "tsunami of work" on teachers and principals.
The timeframe for implementation laid out in the proposal was for the new Year 11 foundational award to begin in 2028, followed by the Year 12 certificate in 2029 and the Year 13 certificate in 2030.
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