Education, Exams and the Future of Learning in New Zealand

Opinion article written by Stacey Shortall

The air in school halls across Aotearoa feels different this week. You can almost hear it - that quiet blend of nerves, determination, and hope as thousands of teenagers sit down to begin their exams. Pens tap against desks. Teachers walk the aisles. Outside, the year tilts towards summer, but inside, the focus is sharp.

Every November we test our students. But maybe what we’re really testing is ourselves - how well we’re preparing them for a world that refuses to stand still.

Across government, schools, and communities, there is a shared desire to get this right. The discussions about strengthening NCEA - around literacy, numeracy, clarity and consistency - come from that same place: the belief that every young person deserves the strongest possible foundation. There is no shortage of good intent. The people shaping policy, the teachers delivering lessons, the principals navigating change, the whānau supporting from the sidelines, are all working hard to help our young people thrive.

Rigour matters. Standards matter. And strengthening qualifications is important. The opportunity is to ensure that increased rigour also supports curiosity, confidence, and a sense of purpose for learners.

Because the world our students are stepping into will ask more of them than subject knowledge. It will ask them to collaborate across difference, to navigate uncertainty, to hold empathy, to think imaginatively, to rebuild when things change. Employers say they need these skills. Communities need them too. And our young people often have them - even if they don’t always show up on results sheets.

Change in education is never simple. And it affects real people.  Students forming their identities, teachers holding together classrooms, whānau trying to make sense of expectations. Attendance has fallen. Level 1 attainment has dropped. These are not necessarily failures. They are signals.  Reminders that learning happens inside relationships, wellbeing, and belonging. When any of those are stretched, learning stretches too.

If we want higher standards, we need strong foundations: trust in teachers, clarity for parents and whānau, coherence for schools, and stability for learners who simply want to know what they are working toward. These are goals shared by everyone involved in education - across governments, across sectors, across decades.

Much of the progress in recent years has come from that shared purpose. The focus on literacy and numeracy, the work to support student wellbeing, the widening of vocational and applied learning pathways, and the continued effort to make assessment clearer and more consistent, all reflect a long-standing commitment to improving outcomes for young people. These priorities have spanned successive governments. They belong to all of us.

This work has never been the work of one side, one term, or one policy. It has always been bipartisan in spirit.  Shaped by educators, researchers, communities, whānau, employers and students themselves, alongside those who serve in government, regardless of who sits on which benches at any moment in time.

The invitation is to stay the course together:

• To allow improvements to mature.

• To listen closely to those in classrooms.

• To assume good intent when perspectives differ.

• And to design not only for today’s challenges, but for the world our young people are moving toward.

Through my work in communities, I have met students whose strengths might never be captured by a mark on a page. A boy who spends afternoons helping younger siblings with homework. A girl leading her kapa haka group with quiet authority. A teenager learning to wire a house, or care for elders, or volunteer at a marae. These young people are already contributing and learning in ways that lift others.

If we celebrate success in all the ways young people learn and contribute - in classrooms, in whānau, in communities - we help them grow into the capable, generous adults our country will rely on.  Because education has never been only about performance.  It has always also been about participation, contribution, and the capacity to lift others.

The young people sitting in exam halls this month are not only future employees or graduates.  They are future parents, neighbours, volunteers, thinkers, carers, builders, innovators, and leaders.  Our responsibility - collectively - is to help them become capable of shaping the world, not merely fitting into it.

So as the papers are handed out and silence settles, I find myself hoping for something larger than good results.  I hope students feel that what they’ve learned matters beyond the page.  That the adults shaping their environment are working with care, respect, and genuine collaboration.  That rigour and relevance can walk side by side.

And that is work none of us does alone.  It takes teachers and whānau, employers and communities, researchers and policymakers all learning alongside one another, with patience and care.

Everyone agrees we don’t want an education system that narrows the path.

We all want one that helps young people find their path, and walk it with confidence.  Because the purpose of education has never been to sort people into categories.  It has been to reveal potential.  And to strengthen the connections that help that potential grow.

So perhaps that is the quiet invitation exam season offers us every year: to remember that learning is not something that ends at the classroom door.

It is something we carry - as communities, as institutions, as a country - in how we listen, how we value one another, and how we choose to build the future together.