3. Question No. 3—EducationJAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of EducationQuestion No. 3—Education3. JAN TINETTI (Labour) to the Minister of Education: What recent steps if any has the Government taken to ensure that young New Zealanders leave school with the skills they need to succeed and thrive in the workforce and in society?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS (Minister of Education): Earlier this month I announced a number of improvements to the National Certificate of Educational Achievement or NCEA. They address limitations and unintended consequences that have built up over time such as over-assessment. We're going to strengthen the literacy and numeracy requirements have fewer larger standards simplify the NCEA structure and importantly show clear pathways to further education and employment as a result of qualification attainment. These improvements will make NCEA more credible and more robust.Jan Tinetti: How will these changes make sure that students are getting a good grounding in literacy and numeracy? Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Literacy and numeracy has been one of the big concerns around NCEA since it was first introduced and various steps along the way have been made to try and address the issue. What we're going to do now is develop a coherent 20-credit package of standards for literacy and numeracy. These new requirements will need to be met as a co-requisite requirement in order to gain NCEA at any level rather than be part of the qualifications themselves and students will be able to meet those standards when they are ready which may be as early as year 7 in schooling. The standards are also going to be externally graded to avoid increasing teacher workload and also to strengthen the credibility of the literacy and numeracy requirements.Jan Tinetti: Is there a risk that these changes will take us backwards towards an excessive focus on exams?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: No and I want to be very clear about that. No changes have been made to the types of credits needed to gain NCEA. It will still be possible to gain NCEA through a large amount of internal assessment. What we're aiming for is that half of the standards available be now externally assessed so for schools where they are teaching standard subjects external assessment would make up around half of the credits in each subject. But it is important to remember that not all external assessments are exams. They can also include things like portfolios reports performances investigations and common assessment tasks.Jan Tinetti: Will these changes improve support for students to undertake NCEA through Māori-medium education?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: Yes and this is long overdue. The default choice that many whānau face is to revert to English-medium schooling or English language schooling at secondary level. The Government has already announced more investment to recruit and train teachers in Te Reo Māori and we'll be ensuring that a much greater range of teaching materials are developed so that mātauranga Māori and Te Ao Māori have parity with the NCEA qualification and within our schools and kura.Jan Tinetti: How will these changes make NCEA more affordable?Hon CHRIS HIPKINS: I'm very pleased to say that families of secondary school students will no longer have to pay fees for NCEA and New Zealand Scholarship. More than 145000 households are estimated to benefit from the removal of the NCEA fees that they pay for around 168000 secondary school students every year. As part of the Wellbeing Budget we're abolishing these fees to make things a bit easier for those families to make ends meet but also importantly to ensure that every student who achieves the NCEA can receive their qualification.