Achievement rates are likely to decline… especially for Māori, Pacific, disabled, and low-income learners. The Government’s own words. The Government’s own choice.
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- 4 min read
by Rebecca Thomas
Every parent, every whānau, every citizen in Aotearoa should be furious. This isn’t an outsider’s opinion—it’s the government’s own words, buried in their Cabinet paper. They admit achievement rates will fall most for Māori, Pacific, disabled, and low-income learners, and they are pushing ahead anyway.
“Achievement rates are likely to decline… especially for Māori, Pacific and disabled learners and learners facing more socio-economic barriers.” — Cabinet Paper, 2025
"It feels like school is a performance, like we’re ticking boxes so the grown-ups can pretend we’re okay. But outside school? We’re drowning in stuff no one taught us how to deal with."
That’s what a Year 13 student told me—eyes heavy with the kind of fatigue no curriculum can measure. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t being dramatic. She was just done with pretending that everything is fine.
And yet, the adults keep pretending.
We release reports with neatly packaged solutions. We debate educational models from podiums and press conferences. We argue about testing, curriculum, structure. All the while, our young people are quietly fending for themselves—dealing with trauma, climate anxiety, social media chaos, racism, identity, and a rapidly changing world that most policy-makers have never had to survive.
This isn’t about failing standards. It’s about failing adults.
And the worst part?
The government knows it.
Buried in their Cabinet paper on replacing NCEA is this chilling admission: attainment will drop, especially for Māori, Pacific, disabled, and low-income learners.
Read that again.
They know it will hurt the most vulnerable. And they’re pushing forward anyway.
That alone should shock every parent, every whānau, every citizen in Aotearoa. This is not about lifting standards—it’s about knowingly sacrificing those already carrying the heaviest load.
That is not reform. That is neglect.
In my hometown in Te Tai Tokerau, young people already feel the sting of decisions made far away in Wellington. The closure of NorthTec isn’t just a line in a budget—it’s an creator in their future. And yet, they are not staying silent.
Student Voice NorthTec launched the “Hands Off NorthTec” petition during a Meet the Candidates hui at Te Puna o Te Mātauranga Marae. They stood up, called out the betrayal, and reminded us that their education is not a soapbox.
“We’re calling to get people on board and show that this is a problem. In Te Tai Tokerau, we are not for this proposal.” – Lataire Murray, student representative
“That uncertainty, that ‘what if’... really puts everyone on edge.” – NorthTec student on the looming threat of campus loss
Young people are fighting to hold onto what little certainty they have. And while they rally, Cabinet Ministers sit in Wellington drafting tidy proposals that openly admit: the vulnerable will pay the price.
Back at the supermarket checkout, I ran into a former student. She was juggling groceries, NCEA prep, and the weight of a generation learning to survive systems that don’t serve them. Her father, a former Board of Trustees member, was echoing the government’s line. “It’s less confusing,” he said of the new proposals. “More structured. Makes sense.”
She rolled her eyes, but not out of disrespect. Out of disbelief.
"Social media is more confusing than NCEA," she told me. "That’s where we live. We don’t get to choose AI-driven chaos. At least mock exams are regulated by something."
This is the truth adults refuse to see. While Ministers fret over international comparability, young people are drowning in complexity we can’t even grasp. And instead of listening, we push policies that will strip away flexibility, erase local voice, and punish those already standing on fragile ground.
Here’s what our rangatahi are teaching us, even when we refuse to hear it:
You can’t rank belonging.
You can’t audit trauma.
You can’t test your way to trust.
You can’t fix education without the voices of those living inside it.
And you definitely can’t save schools by knowingly hurting the most vulnerable.
So let me say this plainly—because Rebecca Thomas would:
The NZ Initiative’s model is tidy, test-driven, and monocultural. Cabinet’s proposal to replace NCEA is cut from the same cloth. And in black and white, they admit: our most vulnerable kids will be the collateral damage.
That should shame every politician who signs their name to it.
That should shame every educator who stays silent.
That should shame every parent who shrugs and says, “At least it’s less confusing.”
Because this generation has grown up with more technology in their back pocket than the people we sent to the moon with. They are smart. Despite the ‘low literacy’ levels our generation has decided to test them on—in the shadow of our own historical failings—they are more emotionally aware for sure. They are socially awake. They are emotionally literate. They will see right through our hollow empathy.
They will remember who stood up.
Who spoke truth.
Who stepped back and made space.
And they will not forget who stayed silent.
So here is the provocation every whānau, every citizen must face: are we prepared to accept the continued policies of a government who openly agree to harm our kids?
If we stay quiet now, we are complicit in that harm.
Silence is not neutrality—it is consent.
Some will try to argue that admitting harm is responsible, that the government is ‘committed to supporting students through the transition.’ But support after harm is not equity—it’s damage control. Would we ever accept a health policy that knowingly increases death rates for Māori and Pacific patients ‘in the short term’? Of course not. So why should we allow it in education?
Should governments be allowed to deliberately cause harm to children in the name of “higher standards”? Or is this the line where we, as whānau and citizens, finally say: enough?
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