The NCEA is going on the scrapheap. What’s replacing it, and what will it mean for learners?

Monday, 18 May 2026

Current year 9s will be the first to study under the new system.

The Government has consigned NCEA to the scrapheap, but what will its replacement look like? Amy Ridout looks into the changes on the horizon for high school students.

What’s happened

Education Minister Erica Stanford confirmed on Saturday details of the new qualifications that will replace the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA).

It will make way for the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) at Year 12 and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE) at Year 13.

What is NCEA?

NCEA is the main qualification for Aotearoa’s secondary school students. It was introduced in 2002, replacing the School Certificate, Sixth Form Certificate and Bursary qualifications.

NCEA was a shift away from the “norms” based assessment, which scaled student achievement to fit predetermined pass and fail rates. Instead, NCEA was standards based: a student could achieve a credit by demonstrating the required skills or knowledge. These credits are totted up to gain an NCEA.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said NCEA was confusing, and Education Minister Erica Stanford said it allowed students to game the system.

Students work through the three NCEA levels in years 11 to 13, choosing subjects or courses to study, and they’re tested with internal and external assessments.

Why is it on the scrapheap?

NCEA’s flexibility allowed schools, teachers and students to create their own learning pathways. Its advocates say this is its strength, especially for students who benefit from learning in a flexible way: Māori and Pasifika students, neurodiverse learners or English as a second language speakers.

However, NCEA’s critics say this flexibility allows teachers and students to “game the system”, with Stanford saying learners were getting too many credits from avenues like a short barista course.

On Sunday, Erica Stanford told Jack Tame on TVNZ’s Q+A that NCEA had lowered the bar for students in Aotearoa.

Under the new qualification framework, each subject will include at least one exam.

“We know that we've been able to game the system, we know that we can pick credits up here and there and they're not actually meaningful and they're not connected to anything.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said NCEA was “hard to navigate” and that the new qualification would be “easier to understand”.

What will replace it?

The NCEA will make way for the New Zealand Certificate of Education (NZCE) at Year 12 and the New Zealand Advanced Certificate of Education (NZACE) at Year 13.

The qualification framework will begin in 2027, which means current year 9s will be the first to test it out.

Under the qualification, year 12 and 13 students will study at least five subjects each year. None will be compulsory, but they will need to pass at least three.

They will also need to obtain the new literacy and numeracy Foundational Award. This is benchmarked for year 11, but can be sat at any time. This award can also be achieved if a student passes English or maths in year 12 or 13.

From 2028, all year 11s will be required to take maths, science and English.

Year 12 and 13s will take at least five subjects, and must pass three to gain the qualification.

New subjects will be introduced along with the qualification: these include Civics, Politics and Philosophy; Advanced Mathematics; and Journalism, Media and Communications.

There will also be support for students as they look to post-school life, including “industry-led subjects”, which will be developed with Industry Skills Boards.

According to the Ministry of Education, this will help students into careers like construction, engineering, health and community services.

What will assessments look like?

Subjects will include coursework and at least one exam, and most students will complete up to four assessments per subject each year.

Assessment will be consistent nationwide, which means for each subject, students will be assessed in the same way, whether they live in Southland or Northland.

The new qualifications will have a six-point grading scale from A+ to E, with D being a fail: like the old days of School Certificate.

Principal Claire Amos is frustrated at the perception that students and teachers are “gaming the system” - flexibility isthe NCEA’s strength, she says.

Three A grades will be considered a pass with distinction, and students with excellent results across the board will be eligible for endorsement awards.

What are educators saying?

Albany Senior High School principal Claire Amos said while there was a case for refining and strengthening NCEA - for example, ensuring credits were applied consistently - she felt it was unwise to throw it out altogether.

Amos was sick of hearing the phrase “gaming the system” - flexibility was the qualification’s strength, she said.

“For some time, NCEA hasn’t been working as well as it could,” says Shirley Boys' High School principal Tim Grocott, who is in favour of the changes.

“We’re going to lose the incredible amount of flexibility that has enabled them to do rigorous, reliable courses of teaching and learning they have designed for their context.”

Those contexts included Māori and Pasifika learners and neurodiverse students: the learners a cabinet paper acknowledged would be disadvantaged by the new framework.

With technology allowing for greater opportunities for personalised learning than ever before, Amos said winding back the clock set Aotearoa back in the global stakes.

Chris Abercrombie, President of PPTA, echoed Amos.

“NCEA was designed to create space for different pathways and ways of demonstrating success … What is being proposed feels imported, rigid, and over-engineered.”

Former secondary principal Bali Haque said while he agreed NCEA needed changing, scrapping it altogether was “extreme”, and he was concerned there were too many unanswered questions.

Without a fleshed-out framework, he was concerned the new qualifications would be a repeat of the NCEA introduction, where “we made it up as we went along, and it was not pretty”.

However, some educators are in favour of the change.

Shirley Boys’ High School headmaster Tim Grocott told The Press he welcomed the proposed changes.

“For some time, NCEA hasn’t been working as well as it could.”

He said students had “gamed the system” - earning enough credits during the year and then not taking their end-of-year exam.

A more “high-stakes” system could improve this, and keep students engaged for longer, Grocott said.

Auckland Grammar School headmaster Tim O’Connor told RNZ that NCEA meant there had been inconsistency across the country, which the new qualification could address.

“Students from Invercargill and Tokoroa will know that they’ve learnt and been assessed against the same as students in Auckland and Wellington.”