Principles fear NCEA co-requisites fail to give students a fair go

Some principals fear new literacy and numeracy tests needed to pass NCEA will mean a backlog of students having to repeat years at school and some dropping out altogether. The NCEA co-requisites are new tests that students have to pass from this year onwards, aimed at measuring reading, writing and maths levels in schools. Students need to achieve the tests along with their other credits to achieve any level of NCEA. However, in the pilot programme, pass rates for low decile schools were abysmal, with decile 1 schools achieving less than 30 percent on average in reading, writing and numeracy, Luka Forman reports.