Kate Gainsford: Secondary Principals' Council chair on thousands of students failing compulsory NCEA literacy and numeracy tests

Thousands of young people have failed new co-requisite NCEA literacy and numeracy tests.

It's the first year students have needed to pass them to achieve NCEA - and in May, 54 percent failed the maths test.

Secondary Principals' Council chair Kate Gainsford says it's not the end of their NCEA journey because students get repeated opportunities.

She explained there's the online external and extra standards made available from an approved list next year - and the following.

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
How much. Yet another gent Taylor has posted a huge
profit its meridian energy up four times what it was,
more than four times what it was last year. We'll
have a chat to the CEO, Neil Barklay after six
about that. The huddle standing by hither. My issue with

(00:25):
the Independent Infrastructure Commission is that politics and ideology will
just enter through those who are hired. We only have
to look at the other commissions, like the Human Rights
Commission and even the Reserve Bank. You know what, Jonathan,
that's actually a really good point. Thank you for making it.
We will talk to the huddle about it very shortly.
Right now, it's twenty four away from six. Now it
looks like there is reasonable trouble with NCEA. This is

(00:45):
the first year that students must pass the corequisites of reading, writing,
and maths in order to get the NCEA qualification, but
as many as fifty four percent have already failed the
maths exam, as more than thirty thousand kids. Kate Gainsford
is the Secondary Principle's Council Chair and the principal at
Altier College High Kate, No.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
How are you this afternoon?

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Very well? Thank you mate. Now, Kate, this is not
a trial. If these kids fail, can they actually get NCEEA?

Speaker 2 (01:12):
That it can because there are repeated opportunities to gain
the literacy and numerous the standards, both by the online
through the online external and in twenty four and twenty
five the extra standards that are made available from an
approved list from NZQA in the ministry. So it's not yet.
So there are other opportunities.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
So are you saying basically they have to either sit
the exam again or they have to do something else
to make this up in order to get these the
credits that they have failed.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Well, the idea was behind it that there would be
multiple opportunities for someone to gain these corequisites so that
it's not just a one shot and then you have
to repeat the year kind of experience. So originally my
understanding is the idea was that students could switch them
at external when they were ready. But mza's provision of

(02:04):
materials doesn't really suit that. They haven't got multiple kinds
of assessments ready to have multiple goals at it except
for the two shots during the year. So yes, there
are opportunities to reach it, not the same exam. They
have to rebuild the exam, so that it's not a
repeat experience of the same questions.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
But I mean, I mean, these are staggering numbers. What
is going on here, Kate? That these kids and so
many of them are not learning the things they're expected
to have learned and know.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Well. I think there's a couple of things. One is
that there's a gap in the policy lag and the
practice lag between setting a standard that is being put
into operation through these online exams, and the clear acknowledgment
that the government has wanted to put in a lot
of professional learning well ahead of time, starting at year

(02:55):
zero around literacy and unracy that they're starting with now
what we've got as young people in our schools now
who haven't had that. So there's secondary schools are in
the really difficult position of trying to catch up students
to meet the standard when they haven't had the provision
of all of that.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Yeah, I mean, I don't end your position, but how
badly have failed these kids that they don't know this stuff?

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Well, I am a determined optimist in this space, and
that I think schools are bending over backwards to really
make up the ground in secondary schools and the multiple
opportunities have to be part of that. But I do
think there's another kind of issue attached to this. We
have to be really clear when it comes to the
mechanics of the actual assessments that when we are assessing numeracy,

(03:46):
if the student is managing to get all of the
calculations right are either numbers, which to me is what
numeracy is, then there shouldn't be any room for someone
to not get that numeracy standard if they just haven't
been to put into words i e. Literacy, English fluency,
the explanation for their working. I think we've got to

(04:08):
look at that because at the moment there is a
possible anomaly that we could see where a year thirteen
or student doing Level three could possibly gain Level three
NCI statistics and fail a level one numeracy standard. Now
that's just silly. So we've got some more work to do.
I think with NZQA about understanding the tool that is

(04:31):
being used. It's not necessarily at the moment doing the
job that we intended it to do, which is to
really make an a sense.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
And that's fair enough. I take that. I mean, you
might be good at maths, but you may be really
bad at writing that sentence. Out in English. But how
much of this can we split it out and say
this proportion of it is the way that we're asking
them to do the exam, and this proportion of it
is that they don't know what they need to know.
Do we know?

Speaker 2 (04:55):
No, we don't, No, we don't. And that's part of
the problem is that this needs to be you know,
a lot of work still needs to be done with
NZQA around making sure that the tool actually can separate
those two problems out and eliminate the one about numeracy
versus literacy so that we know what we're dealing with.
Because you can see in the steps that the number

(05:16):
four people gaining the numeracy is significantly lower than the literacy. Well,
if that's because you're assessing literacy and numeracy, then you've
kind of missing the mark of it in the use
of the assessment tool, so you're blurring what this information
can tell you.

Speaker 1 (05:32):
Yeah, Kate, listen, thank you for talking us, so I
really appreciate it. Kate Gains for Secondary Principles Council Chair,
also Altier College Principle. For more from Heather duplessy Ellen
Drive listen live to news talks. The'd be from four
pm weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio