Weaving is the Big Idea of NCEA Numeracy, but it is starting to unravel. Although an NCEA Literacy disaster is looming too, I shall focus on Numeracy in this post, partly to reduce the word count, partly to avoid referring to the curiously punctuated Literacy & Communication and Maths Strategy, but mostly because I have first-hand experience of some of the work done on the Numeracy side, whereas I have only been an observer of the work done on the Literacy side.

Trials tests in 2021 and 2022 of the new NCEA Numeracy standard have not gone well.  So poor were the results of the 2021 pilot, the Ministry of Education had no choice but to postpone the co-requisite unit standard, by one year, to 2024.  In the first instance, the standard will not be mandatory as originally intended, otherwise too many students might fail to achieve the NCEA qualification.  

Questions about the readiness of secondary schools and their students, the practicalities of administering the test, and indeed the test itself, are being raised.  This debacle more or less confirms what we should have known all along: there is no quick fix to address New Zealand’s numeracy crisis.  

It is understandable that familial familiarity with the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) prompted the then recently appointed Minister of Education to launch a review of the NCEA in 2018.  Feedback gathered during the review supported the findings of a Tertiary Education Commission study in 2014: the current NCEA numeracy requirement – a minimum of 10 Numeracy credits gathered from a selection of unit or achievement standards – “cannot be used as a reliable indicator of students’ numeracy capabilities”. (Unfortunately, I can attest to that.  Teachers and educators like myself do their utmost to get their students to pass, but unless students appreciate that we are not just teaching to the test, rather the skills acquired will be of genuine value in everyday life, there is no guarantee that students will retain those skills and go on to become numerate adult citizens.)

The official response was to replace the current NCEA numeracy requirement with a direct assessment of “foundational numeracy”.  Most people would agree this is a sensible idea.  But where is the roadmap for teachers and students?  How can we reasonably expect students to be ready for this assessment when we haven’t changed the teaching and learning of Mathematics and Statistics in all prior school years?  The Maths Strategy and Action Plan published this year as part of The New Zealand Curriculum Refresh announced in February 2021, comes too late.  To quote a retired principal, “the decline in maths achievement in primary schools needs an immediate solution, not a five-year plan”.  By enacting the NCEA Change Programme before the Curriculum Refresh, the Ministry of Education has clearly put the cart before the horse.  

New Zealand’s maths education system is fractured, with no realised vision of the minimum 10-year journey towards Numeracy and beyond. The Ministry pumps out documents “filled with a lot of bureaucratic speak”, or inspirational videos aimed at…who? Oh, so the key message now is that “all [high school] teachers will be teachers of literacy and numeracy. All teachers will need to know their learners even more.” Sense the urgency, as high school teachers are given guidance on how to weave numeracy into their specialist subject. How ironic that we already have a workforce of primary school teachers who know their learners well. They teach across all subjects, including Mathematics and Statistics, and are perfectly positioned to weave the maths they are teaching into all aspects of their students’ learning. That, folks, is how we develop true numeracy.

Full disclosure: In 2020, I was part of the Numeracy Subject Expert Group (SEG) that developed the new NCEA Numeracy standard: a single standard and assessment worth 10 credits, which is a lot for a single standard – all standards worth Numeracy credits currently range from 2 to 6 credits. Many aspects of the assessment had already been pre-determined, e.g. the content level and the number of credits, but the structure and the timing of the assessment were up for discussion.  

My initial recommendation was that the Numeracy assessment should be split into three standards, as per the three strands of the Mathematics and Statistics curriculum, the rationale being “a single standard/assessment would be overwhelming for most learners, particularly given the importance and mandatory nature of the credits at stake”.  I also suggested that “we should allow for the accumulation of 10 Numeracy credits over more than one year.  For example, students might be able to apply their number knowledge to solve problems well before they are able to reason statistically.” A modular approach to the assessment would have relieved some of the pressure on students and their teachers.  In fact, one wonders why the Ministry did not simply look at developing the rarely-used current package of three numeracy unit standards (total of 10 credits – all three required) into the mandatory co-requisite.

Sadly, my recommendations were not taken up, and secondary schools are now faced with a single high-stakes assessment that takes so long, it causes major disruption to the usual school routine. Even more worrying is that the trials have focussed on students in Year 10, as if the standard is a pre-requisite for the NCEA, not a co-requisite. The intention is that students will sit the test when they are deemed ready by their teachers’ assessment tools. The mathematical level of the content might be suitable for Year 10, but that does not necessarily extend to an assessment of numeracy. At the time of developing the standard, numeracy was pre-defined as “the ability to access, use, interpret and communicate mathematical information and ideas, in order to engage in and manage the mathematical demands of a range of situations in learning, everyday life, participatory citizenship and work.” (Try saying all that in one breath…) Does that description align well with the maturity level of a Year 10 student? Why are trials not being run with older students, as suggested by a participating principal?

In 2007, one of the original writers of the Numeracy Project hoped that in fifteen years we’d be closer to having every child effective in mathematics. This is the year of reckoning…I think we’ll call that “Not Achieved”. And in the true spirit of the NCEA, the Numeracy Project writers are apparently allowed as many re-sits as they like; they are still contributing at every level, digging us into an ever deeper hole, writing ever longer sentences. As long as the Ministry of Education continues to rely on such expertise, we are likely to be waiting another fifteen years.

Dr. Audrey M. Tan
September 2022