Photo: RNZ
Some students are so stressed by new high-stakes NCEA exams they are suffering extreme anxiety and sleeplessness.
Schools say teens who have reached their final year of school without passing one or all of the online reading, writing and maths tests are under the most pressure and they are taking extra measures to help students across the line. But the office of the Minister of Education says the testing, and the support offered alongside it, is designed to help children achieve their best educationally, and to ensure they reach the numeracy and literacy level they will need for life after they leave school.
The tests will be offered in May and again in September.
Maths teacher Richard Pittams said students were definitely dismayed or dejected after failing the literacy or numeracy tests, but his school's counsellors had confirmed that some took it particularly hard.
"I can definitely say in class there are dismayed kids that are, you know, demotivated and dejected and all of those sorts of things, and the counsellors definitely said yes, it has gone further than that with some students where it has been like you've reported with kids feeling suicidal or kids feeling a lot more than just what I've seen in the classroom, a lot more than just dejected or demotivated," he said.
Pittams said teachers had to walk a fine line between wanting students to pass the tests, while also telling them failure was not the end of the world.
"You know how serious it is to them and what the implications it can have on them. You can't hide that from them so I think the genie is out of the bottle in the sense that you can't really pedal this back easily by saying 'okay, don't worry about the results, it'll be okay'," he said.
Pittams said the knowledge that students could achieve the literacy and numeracy corequisite through the alternative 20-credit pathway, rather than through the tests, was little comfort to them in the moment they learned they had failed the tests.
"It's a band-aid on a wound," he said.
Pittams said his school was talking to Year 11 students who failed the tests last year to ensure they were feeling okay about having another go.
"What we're trying to do before sitting one is talk to the the kids, about 80 of them in our Year 11 as it stands, and go, you know, 'how are you feeling about this? What anxiety is this giving you? Is it manageable in your view?' In which case we will probably enter you again in sitting in one will hopefully work towards passing it then. But there are certainly kids who will go: 'I'm not sleeping, I'm up, this is causing me a lot of anxiety a lot of stress'."
Pittams said he hoped the transitional pathway became permanent because refusing to grant a student an NCEA certificate solely because they had failed a single reading, writing or numeracy test was not fair.
"I don't see how they can get to the end of Year 13, possibly have 200 credits across the three years [of senior school] and then say to them, 'well since you didn't pass the numeracy tests, as a result you don't get NCEA'. I don't see how that can be palatable to anyone," he said.
'Some extreme reactions'
Aotea College principal Kate Gainsford said students who were otherwise doing well at school could be worst affected by failing the tests.
"There may well be some extreme reactions of disappointment and frustration around understanding why someone has not achieved numeracy and literacy and especially if they have been able to achieve at higher levels of NCEA in statistics and calculus, but not been able to achieve in numeracy," she said.
Gainsford said some schools were managing the pressure on students by involving families in conversations about readiness for the tests and in some cases families were refusing to allow their children to sit the tests.
"They've had a conversation with teachers and there's been a level of readiness identified for a student in terms of readiness to sit the test and the family have said 'no we don't want them to. Not this round. We'll say next time thanks.' Because they just don't want that pressure at that particular time," she said.
Aorere College principal Leanne Webb said not knowing the outcome of the tests could be upsetting for students in their final year of school because their qualification hinged on the results.
"We did have kids that came back that were distressed that they hadn't passed it... for the child who's working toward getting a qualification in their leaving year, that can be quite distressing knowing it's all hinging on the numeracy or the literacy which they have struggled with," she said.
Webb said the school last year used three hours a week of form or kainga class time to form a class for students who were struggling with the tests.
"This year we've sort of hit it harder and we've put more into it. The class that we've formed, it's an English and it's a maths class. So they do both the preparation for the CAAs and work on getting English achievement standards," she said.
"Concentrating on the CAA tests for an entire year, it's unproductive, really, because essentially it's basic literacy that is being assessed. And if you just put together a programme that's just, you know, drill and skill sort of programme, it's incredibly boring and they would lose focus on that. So we give them a richer programme, which is thematically organised and they're doing English standards that they're able to use for literacy as well as preparing for the CAAs."
Webb said some of the school's students finished school last year without achieving the corequisite and therefore did not receive an NCEA qualification.
"They didn't even get level 1. So they've been in senior secondary school for three years and they didn't even get level 1. They had enough credits for it, but they didn't have either the literacy or the numeracy," she said.
Webb said the school recommended the students return to school to get the literacy and numeracy requirement.
Burnside High principal Scott Haines said it was running tutorials and had set up a special literacy and numeracy course for students who needed it.
"They've nailed their NCEA credits, the other credits that they need for NCEA but they're struggling with either literacy or numeracy or both," he said.
"Instead of picking up a standard English or mathematics class, students with an identified need for literacy or numeracy, we will put them in a literacy or numeracy boost class and the entire focus of those four hours a week plus homework is around preparing them for those common assessment activities and getting them those literacy and numeracy standards," he said.
Haines said the school was trying to make less use of the alternative pathway.
He said it was valid, but it would not be available after 2027 so it was important the school focused on its approach to preparing students for the online tests.
The minister's office responds:
The office of Minister of Education Erica Stanford said the Ministry of Education had advised that it had not received formal advice that the co-requisite requirements were negatively impacting students. However schools had raised anecdotal concerns - from high equity schools.
"We are committed to giving all Kiwi kids the knowledge and skills they need to experience success in the future, a key component to that is adequate levels of literacy and numeracy," a spokesman for the minister said.
"The co-requisite is a foundational requirement for Year 11 students and sits at the level of what's expected at the end of intermediate, it's critical students achieve this so they can live the life they want. For those who need support to get across the line, we invested $2.5 million to support 10,000 students who need it most, with targeted and personalised teaching support."
The new literacy and maths testing was designed to help students achieve the best they could while in school, he said.
"This is a whole of system response, that's why we're working with 3000 Year 7 and 8s who need extra help to accelerate their maths achievement. That's why we've mandated structured literacy and mathematics in primary school and introduced a clear, detailed and knowledge-rich curriculum grounded in the science of learning.
"No matter where you are in the country, parents can have confidence this government is putting the foundations in place so their child can strive to do their best at school."
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