4. Question No. 4—EducationANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 4—Education4. ANGELA ROBERTS (Labour) to the Minister of Education: How is the Government supporting teachers to prioritise maths and literacy teaching?Hon JAN TINETTI (Minister of Education): This Government has an ambitious plan to turn around maths and literacy attainment in this country. To help teachers prepare for the changes coming in we have listened to the advice from the professional advisory group and deferred the mandatory implementation of the other subjects by a year. Schools that are ready to implement these subjects on the current time line still can but the new maths and literacy curriculum will be available to teach from term 3 this year. For secondary students from next year all school leavers sitting NCEA will be required to demonstrate a minimum maths and literacy base knowledge to gain their qualification. Three years of COVID-19 disruptions have left teachers and students exhausted so we want to make sure that we are easing that workload and are focusing on what matters to families the most.Angela Roberts: What are the objectives of the new NCEA maths and literacy assessment?Hon JAN TINETTI: The Government has prioritised maths and literacy as urgent foundational learning that needs a dedicated focus. Currently students can gain their required literacy and numeracy credits from over 500 literacy-rich standards and over 100 numeracy-rich standards. Most of the available standards do not directly assess literacy and numeracy skills nor have a strong conceptual link to those skills which impacts the credibility of the qualification. That is why from next year there will be a mandatory assessment that students must pass to gain their NCEA qualification to endorse their knowledge of foundational maths and literacy skills.Angela Roberts: Will students be ready for this new NCEA maths and literacy assessment?Hon JAN TINETTI: Students will be well supported to prepare for this assessment with the new maths and literacy curriculum being taught from the middle of May this year to improve the quality of learning combined with the provision of free tutoring classes for students who need additional support and the investment we have made into more teachers in the classroom. I do acknowledge that this is quite a significant uplift in the assessment requirements for students but students will have until their final year of high school to sit the assessment. They should only be sitting the assessment when their teaching professional considers them ready to do so. This Government is prioritising the teaching and learning of maths and literacy for all our young people.Angela Roberts: What feedback has she had from the education sector on these changes?Hon JAN TINETTI: Well these changes were based on advice from the professional advisory group to NCEA and were made with deep consultation with the sector. The sector is supportive of the Government's changes but have sent a clear message that they didn't have the capacity to cope with the scale and pace of all the changes in light of the disruption experienced in the schooling sector from COVID-19 and other weather events. I'd like to highlight comments from the president of the Secondary Principals Association: With this adjusted timeline schools will have more time to build their capacity and adequately prepare for the changes ensuring that the new standards can be more successfully integrated into teaching practice.""