New Literacy and Numeracy Achievement Standards for all Year 10 Students

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From 2024, the NCEA qualification will undergo significant changes, one of which will be the introduction of the Literacy and Numeracy Co-requisites. This means that all students must pass these three standards, in order to be awarded the National Certificate in Education Achievement. 

The standards themselves are aimed at students at Year 10. Thus, this year, students in Year 10 will be sitting all three. There are two assessment windows: the literacy and numeracy standards will be assessed in mid June, and for those who don’t achieve one or both, again in early November.

Any students who still do not pass, will have the opportunity to resit in the following year - and must do so until they achieve. Do note that this does not mean they must repeat the year, but that their academic record won’t credit them with passing any level of NCEA until they have passed. It is also worth noting that students who are eligible for 'Special Exam Conditions' will have access to readers and writers

There are two separate literacy standards. The reading standard requires students to show they can understand key information from a range of written texts. The writing standard requires students to produce two pieces of writing and then correct a series of errors in short answer questions. The numeracy standard requires the students to answer a range of problems that involve number, locations and navigation, statistics, chance and measurement. Examples of the previous assessments and additional information is available through the link here: https://clicktime.symantec.com/15uBY339oSJwcKngMDj5e?h=8f_eauDTigqZzStkSfRXskH5qvjmFAtJfqUihtCttC0=&u=https://ncea.education.govt.nz/literacy-and-numeracy/literacy/assessment

In order to prepare students for the literacy standards, they will be spending some time at the beginning of each lesson enhancing their skills, and will have a literacy lesson once per week in the library. Additionally, there will be some targeted, focussed skill building in the weeks preceding each examination. In preparation for the numeracy standard, classes are working on number skills all this term and next term will be concentrating on other problem solving skills that will be needed.

The single most important thing you can do to help ensure your son/charge is able to achieve the literacy standards is to encourage their personal reading for pleasure. Please encourage a good routine where at least 15 minutes of time is set aside for reading each day - just before lights out at night is always a good time. Please talk about books with them - read to them or read the same book they are reading - or encourage them to read books you’ve loved. It would be great if they could see you reading, and hear you speaking positively about the joy of reading. If reading is a real struggle for them, please encourage them to access the audio-books on e-platform, through the library, and read along as the story is read to them.

Thank you in advance for supporting your son/charge in raising their level of competency with reading, writing and numeracy - the benefits of this are so very clear and wide-reaching, and they will enjoy them in years to come.